The End of Men

by Karen Rinaldi

The novel that inspired the acclaimed Rebecca Miller film Maggie's Plan, starring Julianne Moore, Ethan Hawke, and Greta Gerwig.

Isabel, Anna, Beth, and Maggie are women who aren’t afraid to take it all. Whether spearheading a pregnancy lingerie company, conspiring to return a husband to his ex-wife, lusting after an old lover while in a satisfying marriage, or trying to balance motherhood and work—they are sexy, determined, and not looking for a simple happily ever after. Through punchy, hilarious, and insightful storytelling, The End of Men shatters the confines of society, and more importantly, those we impose upon ourselves.

Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit, Relationships, Womens, Audiobook, Adult Fiction, Contemporary

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 2017

Reviews

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A LibraryThing win!

So basically this book is about 4 unlikeable women who whine, bitch (sorry), complain and bash the men in their lives. If this story was meant to be funny I certainly didn't laugh. I know motherhood isn't easy especially for working mothers and that men can be turds at times but my goodness! Grow up, get over it and work on a solution which actually these women finally did. Without giving away any spoilers the ending did involve martinis which I had one after reading this book! This is my honest review. And honestly I had a martini!

[rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reading The Handmaid's Tale, and about cancer, and going through a depression that feels a little more than seasonal, I desperately needed some lighter outlet. As it turns out, this book is like Sex and the City if all of the women were mothers and if Sex and the City were written entirely with the emotional subtlety of Carrie Bradshaw's column, and/or a Lifetime movie. The writing style is that of bland summary and passive voice. Infidelity is treated in an alarmingly cavalier and selfish manner in multiple stories, then all is wrapped up in a tidy good-times women's martini gettogether at the end. Blech.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The End of Men, follows four women, Anna, Isabel, Beth and Maggie as they try to make sense of their lives. But being wives, mothers and career minded women sometimes takes it toll and they are faced with questions large and small as they try to find and understand what it is they want out of life.

Unfortunately, this book didn't do anything for me. From the description, I was expecting a funny book but I found it to be, if I'm honest a bit boring. I never felt drawn into the story and for some reason, which I can't quite put my finger on, I just didn't feel for the characters, which meant the book didn't really hold my attention. At times the writing was interesting but at others the story seemed forced and perhaps a little corny. To me it all seemed to mundane and I didn't find the tension or electricity to pull me through this one.

Thanks to Library Thing for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
More reviews at: www.susannesbooklist.blogspot.com

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was thinking this was going to be a wonderful summer read.

I was terribly disappointed.

The characters are completely unlikable. They are whiny and bitter about life twists even though many of the twists life throws at them are the results of their own bad choices.

Disappointed.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I see what this was trying to dof, I'm just not quite convinced it managed it successfully, though bit of it were brilliant.

[Katelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contemporary women's fiction to get me out of my reading slump. Focuses on three women and their lives/pregnancies. Some of their actions/choices made me pretty uncomfortable (ex: cheating on a spouse), so I felt a sense of unease while reading this, but I still enjoyed it.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four women, successful in their careers, make stupid decisions in their personal lives, putting blame on their men, while wondering why they even want men in their lives.

It was hard to relate to these women, except for their relationship to their children. The issues felt dated. I did appreciate how they came to embrace healthier understandings and relationships.

The whole book can be summed up in the later interchange between two of the women. One character complains about equal opportunity meaning doing it all without men taking up their equal share of work at home and she is countered, "Do you think that doesn't come at some cost? " and "you've created the life that you wanted." She admits, "Somes I just think I can't handle what I want."

I received a free book as a LibraryThing win.

[Kara · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me so long to finish reading this book that I honestly don't even remember when I started it. I even thought about abandoning it on more than one occasion because the story line just was NOT picking up like I thought it would. Alas, I persevered thinking it would get better, but sadly it did not.

Anyway, the book sounded promising from the description, so I took advantage of the free download onto my Kobo thinking it would be a fun, light read after the heaviness of the last book I read. As it turned out, the storylines were rather anti-climatic and it seemed like a lot of them hit dead ends. I mean, the character who's "conspiring to return a husband to his ex-wife" doesn't actually conspire anything until the last 15% of the book. And the huge "riot" at the beginning? You'd think more emphasis would be made of that throughout the story but not so much. Highlighter guy ... meh.

It almost seemed as though Rinaldi had 100 ideas floating around in her head for the storyline but couldn't pick just one or two, so she jammed as many as her publisher would allow in.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the title of this book and the description — neither of which ended up reflecting the actual content of the book. It’s not about the end of men by any stretch of the imagination. That’s just an offhanded comment one of the characters makes near the end. Instead, it’s about four wealthy Manhattan women and the various shitty things they do (cheat on their husbands, get secretly pregnant, etc).

They’re supposed to be four distinct characters, but I found them all to have roughly the same personality, and it was difficult to differentiate between them.

The book eventually devolves into a “you go girl” martini-drinking, never-ending brunch, and it made me cringe to read this, especially during the police brutality riots happening daily across the country. If you want to read about entitled rich white women behaving badly and experiencing no real consequences, this is the book for you.

[SJChar · Rating 2 out of 5]

I find it hard to empathize with women who make poor choices then cast their blame net over their significant others. Be a polyamorous lover but at least make sure your spouse is cool with it. Discuss child rearing or domestic duty expectations BEFORE getting married. Many of the issues these ladies face seem avoidable with either honesty or accountability. These are great career women but terrible partners. I'm more interested in this business and it's drama.
Jab: do these women a) forget they're pregnant or b) care only about GETTING pregnant and not the lifelong commitment that comes after it?

[Debbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the name of this book "The End of Men". I was fortunate to get win a copy of the book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers Books. Alas, after starting to read it, the fortunate feeling dissipated.

Ugh. I really wanted to like this book. I thought it was going to be lighthearted and an enjoyable read. For me, it just turned out to be characters I really could not connect with who complained. A LOT!!

I have passed by it every day, several times, for over a month and have never went back to it. I thought if I shamed myself a lot, it would happen. Nope, never, ever ever is it going to happen.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is bursting with love: friend love, maternal love, self-love. Refreshingly and daringly female-centric, Rinaldi isn't afraid to give voice to four dynamic women: no goal, no need, no emotion, no relationship is taboo. Unabashedly feminist, this book is a delightful and equally satisfying counterpart to more traditional chick-lit. Four stars.

[Jeanisse · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book took me forever to finish. I just couldn’t get into it. I rushed it just to finish it.

[Kait · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really weird book. I’ve never read anything like it, I expected much more to happen. I really expected that the protesters would escalate or that the OPS would at least be confronted by Beth. It seemed like he was just picked up by security and that was that. I kinda wanted to know more of his story than the author shared. This book was really just a look into the lives of these women (Beth, Anna, Isabel and Maggie) and their struggles through having/starting a family. The Maggie twist of getting her husband back together with the ex was something I wasn’t expecting but it paid off in the end. The ending was a little abrupt but over all this was a good three star read. Nothing exciting but an interesting story that may (or may not) have you hooked.

[Louise Bennhult · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grabbed this book on a sale over a year ago without really knowing anything about it (the title made me buy it), but since reading the reviews I’ve been dreading to read it. But hey, this book was such a pleasant surprise! It won’t be the most exciting book of your life but it was a perfectly fine and enjoyable read. I liked the subjects of it and the characters felt both relatable and stupid, but I prefer a mix of characters rather than perfect people that can do nothing wrong. I quickly went through the pages and although nothing was extraordinary, it was a fun read that I would recommend to people similar to me, I guess.

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I expected more from the title but it was basically a story and rich women deciding they had the privilege to not need men.

[Ellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I disliked this book because it’s supposed to be an indictment on men/masculinity but instead I spent the whole book disliking every single woman character.

[Haven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, and a really interesting read.
I’m uncomfortable with infidelity and found it hard to swallow, but I was still able to appreciate the overall theme of feminine power/womanhood/motherhood.

[Karen Bartlett · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a self indulgent story about 4 women, 3 of whom work for a company producing sexy and unconventional lingerie for pregnant and breastfeeding women, and one who is a publisher at a women's magazine called PINK. The lingerie company is the target of threats and abuse by protesters, and each of the women are grappling with issues that didn't exactly leave me feeling sympathic to their cause.
Isabel is pregnant and discovers that her boss thinks they should "hire women who are either too old to get pregnant or too ugly to get knocked up—haha!”, but nevermind that outdated, chauvinistic bullshit... Isabel is too busy bonking a long-time friend as often as she can while her unsuspecting husband is away for work.
Isabel's sister, Anna, is really pissed off that her husband doesn't help as much as she'd like with their kids and around the house, but she's pregnant again so that's not likely to improve.
Beth's husband, who only admitted to her that he was gay when he was diagnosed as HIV Positive, is nearing the end of his life, and Beth is not sure how much detail about this she should tell their daughter.
And Maggie stole her husband from another woman, but now she's sick of him and realises that his previous wife really is more suitable for him so sets about trying to get the two back together again.
This is a clunky and awkwardly told story that seemed to be trying to elicit sympathy for the cause of women, but only managed to make me feel more sorry for the men in the lives of the characters.
I didn't feel like the storyline really went anywhere, and the characters annoyed me.
Apparently based on similar events in the life of the author, this felt like some sort of cathartic exercise for the author that fell short of the mark for me.

[Erin Cataldi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The epitome of chick lit/ beach reads. I'll admit I was not a huge fan. It was well written but I didn't particularly care about the four women and I will even go as far to say that I even despised one (I'm looking at you Isabel!). Four women wrapped up in careers, marriages, affairs, and motherhood explore and try to make sense of the confusing female experience. Even when they have everything they want their not happy, Why is it so hard to be a working mother in the twenty first century, if only they could have men to share the burden with. Maggie had an affair with a married man, had a child with him, married him and took in his two older children as well, and now regrets everything (except her child). Isabel is married to the perfect man, is in the middle of a glowing pregnancy and embarks on an affair with her long time friend and former love interest. Beth works on being a good single mother to her daughter while her ex-husband is dying of AIDs. Anna tries to balance being a mom of two and a breadwinner when she thinks she really wants to be a stay at home mom. All four women are going through different trials and tribulations but it all goes back to womanhood and the end of men.

[Mamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to care about the protagonists, sympathize with their challenges and learn from their choices. But I found that their actions and and feelings were often shallow and left me wanting them to go deeper, wider, make a real difference. For example, a person was stalking the office where they all intersected, and because he wasn't caught with an actual threat in his hand, he was let go with a warning. One of the women, relieved he would most likely not harass them again, still worried that he would move on to harass another feminist group...and that was it. So no attempt was made to put this guy on notice- like an interview on a women's show or an article in which they shared what happened and called on women and men of good will to band together and stand up to creeps- at least it would have been something. I read the whole book because I wanted the characters to experience a revelation, and because I was close to caring but, at the end, they were not people I'd be proud to call friend, especially Isabel, who thought it was ok to take a lover while carrying her loving husband's child. No, Isabel, what you did was disrespectful. Answer your sexual questions before you're in a position to wound someone deeply.

[Megan Hill · Rating 2 out of 5]

I try really hard to never give books 1 star because I want to find something good and worthwhile in everything I read/watch/listen to because I know it was somebody's labor of love. That said, this book was rough for me. It would seemingly skip parts of a story and have a character just have a specific ending and that would be that. I'll be honest and admit that I did like Maggie and Beth at the beginning, but their stories in particular just skipped ahead to resolution (or so, it felt like) which left me feeling unresolved. Isabel's affair had absolutely no redemption which drove me nuts. Lastly, Anna's storyline was the hardest for me to follow. She just wanted to be angry and grumpy and when the circumstance changed to help her, she was angry and grumpy again. Her husband sounds like he was a saint, but she was unnecessarily cruel to him at points in the story.

I would have liked this book better as a series where one book would focus on one woman's story and introduced the other women, but saved their stories for their own book. I would have liked that better because it would have given a lot more detail and context. Like I said, storylines would just skip ahead.

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. The title, the description, and the first paragraph all drew me in. I thought I was in for a fun sex-in-the-city-style ride with some heart and dialogue about what it means to be a woman in today's society.
What I got was a story that didn't seem to be about anything. Yes, events happen and a few of them tugged at my heartstrings briefly but overall, the story was just an expositional ball of randomness that was hard to follow and not enjoyable to read. The writing style is, honestly, abysmal. "Show, don't tell" is the mantra of creative writing but the author tells everything. We are told how people feel, how the people they're speaking to feel, and none of it lends any depth to the characters. Everyone felt flat and lifeless, and they were tossed into storylines that were incongruent, difficult to follow, and simply unenjoyable. It's a shame because the premise was promising.

[issi⁷ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I basically had to force myself to finish this. I don’t really read much adult contemporary, but I thought I’d challenge myself. The characters were unbearable at times, and I basically wanted them all to get divorces. The ending felt rushed, and there wasn’t much plot. Things happened that didn’t seem necessary or plot furthering. There were tender moments about motherhood, but that was about it.

[Tess Forte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unlikable characters, expositional style, and just too much going on. Each of the four characters could have had their own novel or novella-- it was too much to follow and not enough impetus to care.

[Curby · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t great. It took a while to really get to a point where I couldn’t stop reading because I wanted to know more about a situation. Overall, it was an ok read but not really a book I would recommend with intensity to others.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was just awful. I was able to get to about chapter five before I had to close it and decide to stop reading, which I very rarely do. The story was very hard to get into and was very confusing, jumping place to place, and through different times of the characters lives. Very disappointed.

[Jennifer]

I couldn't get past the first few pages. The writing is pretty awful

[Wendy Karr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book. The characters were interesting and believable.

[Hussaina Gambo]

It was supposed to be a light and funny read so I didn’t have my expectations up, yet it still managed to disappoint me.
The story is about women trying to have to all, the evolution of our relationship with men. I respect that it would be hypocritical to discuss such a topic without adultery appearing in the book, so the adultery was part of the evolved relationship between men and women, likewise Maggie’s decision to hand back her husband to his ex-wife. All very mature and modern and evolved.
However I had a problem with the passive aggressive behavior by multiple characters in the book. Maggie never confronts her husband about allowing her to pick up the slack, always shirking from his responsibilities. Likewise, Isabel was passive aggressive in how for ten good years she allowed Christopher to ride roughshod over her feelings, never once confronting him about it. It did not matter if afterwards she gained the upper hand.
Finally and most importantly, Beth-Paul-HIV thing was the most passive aggressive of all. The man clearly wanted to infect her and their unborn child, yet she continued living with him, after he reluctantly admitted the truth. Not only that, after all the cheating and betrayal, she refused to let go and live her life. She was always lurking in the shadows, even helping him maintain the lie he was so intent on maintaining. But the worst of it all was 1. Taking the blame for his illness with his mother 2. Restricting her child to the back of the church on Paul’s mother’s say So. ENOUGH PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR TO LAST A YEAR
Just before I round off, I have a question. Can anyone tell me a rational reason why Georgette would want her wimp of a husband back?