‘Out they came, away from natural predators, nesting in damp corners and in the tops of trees, crossbreeding with common cousins and laying thousands upon thousands of eggs. Then… the eggs hatched and an army of hungry caterpillars spread their tiny toxic threads on every breath of wind.’
The threads spell doom for humanity – half of it, at least. All around the world, men are dying in their sleep or turning into rage-fuelled killers. The world, as we know it, ends. However, humanity adapts and society moves on.
Many years later, very few even remember what life was like before the change. Mary does, though, and when an opportunity presents itself, she is faced with soul-searching decisions to make. Will she cling to the only strand of the past she has left or will she risk it all in the name of equality?
I rarely give 5-star reviews but this one was warranted and earned. Amazing.
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Tense, scary, emotional.
What a ride!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Brilliant dystopian page turner
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I raced through this book in a couple of days -the story was utterly gripping.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A game changer in dystopian fiction
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I absolutely loved this book
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Why is there no Internet in Moths? Isn’t the Internet a high priority?
Good question. I had to create a world where all men suddenly stop being able to go to work, pretty much overnight. I would love to think that women could just pick up and carry on WWII style. However, in 2019, a report from the Society for Women Engineers (swe.org) found that women accounted for between 8% and 14% of engineers in the fields of oil and gas; petrochemical, power, renewable energy and nuclear energy. Even if every woman engineer went into work, braving the risk of hoards of infected homicidal men, there is no way that so few could continue to run our energy infrastructure. That is not even taking into account the fact that civilisation in the rest of the world has collapsed and the oil on which we depend to run our power networks would not be getting through. Also, it’s estimated that women make up less than 20% of engineers in the tech industry - without whom, no Internet network, or mobile phone signal would be possible. And don’t get me started on petrol for cars…
In your ‘after’ world, everyone is same-sex relationships Does this suggest that homosexuality is a choice?
Not everyone is homosexual forty years after the infestation. Both Emily and Luca avoid same-sex relationships. However, the vast majority of characters both the woman in society and men in facilities, are in homosexual relationships. It is my belief that sexuality is not a matter of choice, but also - that we lack options in our society today. Without the patriarchy shuffling us down a heterosexual pathway, sexuality might be more fluid. The world of Moths offers a view on where our desires might lead us in a homo-normative rather than a hetero-normative world.
Is Moths sympathetic towards Men?
The novel explores male violence against women. There are times in the novel where I parody patriarchy by recreating parts of it with women as the main players (Daisy is an example of this, and Skylar). The toxin affects all men, so “Not all men” becomes… “well all men, actually.” In our world, the male/female power dynamics continue to be tilted in the favour of white middle class wealthier men (even if some members of that section of society don’t recognise that bias in their own lives). However, I’m a mother of two lovely sons and wife to a wonderfully supportive husband. Many of the ideas in this novel are born of trying to help the men in my life navigate a (hopefully) changing world where they can acknowledge their position without being ashamed of their white cis identity.
The men in the facility - the ‘future men’ - are all written sympathetically.
Is there a sequel to Moths? I want to learn more about the moment the world changed, and what happens after Moths.
There is a sequel. It was released on the 12th of March 2024 and is available now!
Could the Moth thing really happen?
No. Don’t be silly - killer moths taking over the world?
Well actually - we are cutting down Amazon habitats at an alarming rate, new species of moths are found all of the time, and there are types of moth caterpillars that cause allergic relations in humans. Also, some moths can travel up to 400km per night during migration, flying at speeds of more than 50kmph. The monarch butterfly, for example, migrates from southern Canada all the way down to wintering sites in central Mexico!
Speculative fiction doesn’t have to be possible - it just needs a drop of imaginative plausibility…
Why is there no petrol-driven transport?
So glad you asked! Obviously, new oil and petrol would involve drilling and refining, neither of which would be possible in a world where the male population has recently been decimated (see answer regarding women engineers). Also, a favourite bugbear of mine in speculative post-apocalyptic scenarios is when writers conveniently ignore the fact that refined gasoline goes off quite quickly (TWD - I’m looking at you here). A year or two at most, before all the extracted refined fuel is useless.
How did your husband react to the gender themes you explore in this book?
He didn’t. He was too busy doing the dishes and considering the latest trends in navy blue M&S trousers, to worry his pretty little head about such things.
How do you treat the trans community in the novel?
There is, of course, a problem with making a toxin that affects “all men.” The premise itself boils gender down to biology. - an idea to which I do not subscribe. The fate of Claire - how she is caught in the crossfire of my story, is something I thought about long and hard. So… (spoilers) she’s herded away with the ‘other’ men, stripped of her identity, denied her medication and finally, due to a paperwork error, she’s sent to the sanitorium under her dead name, which Mary doesn’t know, so has no way of locating her. Claire is the most interesting character, and I gave her the hardest time.
Forty years later, there is only one gender out in general society. Men are locked away so the average citizen has never seen one. The ‘women’ in this one-gender (ungendered?) society are both as masculine and as feminine as they wish to be. I have not addressed the fate of trans men to the same extent, only as far as suggesting they do not suffer from the toxin but may hide their true male identity for fear of reprisals. I go into more depth on this point in Toxxic - In Toxxic, I especially try looking at how those with non-conforming or undefined gender identities are treated in society. (Spoiler) When men are reintroduced into society - some in the community reject them. these ‘non-inclusionary radical women claim that men are unsafe - they are an abomination, they are unwelcome etc.
What motivated you to write this book?
I LOVE this genre. I love all types of speculative and apocalyptic fiction, right from serious introspection of the nature of reproductive rights to graphic novels about zombies. There are a few excellent writers out there that look at homo-normativity and gynocracy in their writing and I wanted to be amongst them.