The Realism is perhaps too strong?

I have to admit I struggled with this review, and sat on my thoughts for a couple weeks, hoping to wrap my head around this novella's true message. I fear I've still allowed my offense at the protagonist's actions and denials to color my review, but maybe that's okay. The author's effort to make this as unapologetically realistic as possible is evident, but I can still jump up and state the obvious: "If this is how the average man would react in an apocalyptic situation, we're all (literally, if you're a female) screwed."



We follow a man as he finds the world in ruins, and though his mental transformation from welterweight wimp to self-designated Savior of the Species is more than abrupt, we watch him handle his new situation more or less as we'd expect. He tries to be smart and to use his skills and know-how. He attacks others in self-defense. He goes in search of his wife, only to find out she must be dead. And then...WTF...he encounters women and assumes each should wish to repopulate the species with him immediately and thankfully. He self-talks through embracing the caveman inside him.



This is where I lost focus. He murders one woman's family, and then hopes she'll promptly forgive him and want to have sex with him. She tries to kill him, and he kills her, not once feeling perhaps it's his fault for creeping on her. He obsesses over the people he's killed. Then he murders another girl's family, and rapes her, a virgin. He never worries that he's raped her, he is still fully ruminating on the murders and hoping his god will forgive him. She is petrified of him, yet he believes she should be thankful as he molests her again and again. From that first rape forward she is catatonic, and finally she commits suicide rather than face him, yet even then, he assumes it's the apocalypse she cannot handle.



Is the message that all men unapologetically turn into rapists at the world's end? I can see how some rules of civilization may change, but the re-emergence of Old Testament, women-as-possessions stuff isn't the first place my mind goes, or wants to go. Perhaps this is all resolved in When Gods Fail II? I want to read to find out, but I fear I'll discover the apocalypse isn't what my nightmares should be made of, but rather the (cave)men who survive it.