Im writing a book about a pandemic but I feel like I keep neglecting to talk about the actual effects of the illness in the midst of all the other drama
I’m mainly trying to find good examples of prose and interiority, where a sickness is a constant source of pain and drama in the background of the narrative
by HeyImMarlo
7 Comments
Maybe Station Eleven, though only a small part of it covers the disease part of the pandemic, I do recall it being described >!when one of the POV characters dies from it.!<
Definitely the stand, the first few chapters where it all goes down are so vivid and descriptive. If you’re not familiar, it’s a pandemic that wipes out like 99% of the global population and it’s all flu symptoms. It’s classic King so there are a lot of tangents, but the actual symptoms are definitely a primary part of the drama to start.
Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis. Involves time travel and the plague. Very good! Actually, several of her time travel novels seem to have characters with flu-like symptoms
Fever – Deon Meyer
The Last One – Alexandra Oliva (I love this book and I so rarely see it suggested. It’s probably a 4-star book, but I gave it 5-stars because of the delightful Survivor + apocalypse juxtaposition).
The Weight of Ink flips between modern day and the 1600s, London during a plague.
The Andromeda Strain.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell has a lot of descriptions of the effects of the plague, while it’s not entirely flu-like there’s definitely some symptom overlap