The Children of Men
by P.D. James
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Book Reviews of The Children of Men
Book Review: Not science fiction, but I didn't expect that.
Summary: 4 Stars
I found it a little slow in the beginning, but the first part was so well-written that I thought it worthwhile to continue, and I'm glad I did. I'm not familiar with this British author, but I was suitably impressed, especially as I read it after slogging through McCarthy's "The Road." Anyway, the world is looked at from the POV of an English history professor living in the UK of the near future. For some unexplained reason all the men (everywhere!) have become sterile, meaning that the human race is doomed, since there is no prospect for reproduction. People in that time adjust their lives and viewpoints accordingly, and living for the moment seems to be all that really matters, with no posterity to judge their accomplishments. Still, some people continue activities that aren't logically justified, but done more from habit than anything else.
The protagonist, Theo Faron, is a rather passionless human being, but not really unlikable, just rather dull. One day, after a lecture, he finds an attractive young woman with a deformed hand waiting to speak to him alone. She wants him to present certain requests to the Warden of England, his cousin, who happens to be the man in charge of the whole country. These requests, which soon become demands, have to do with civil rights and justice, and are the dissenting views of a small group of 5 persons. Theo reluctantly agrees to this proposal, although he thinks the whole exercise will come to nothing, since he knows his cousin will not be swayed by any of their legitimate concerns. Indeed, they might put them - and himself - in some danger, since the Warden will do whatever's necessary to maintain his unchallenged power. So, why does he undertake the mission? We don't really know, but it seems he has an attraction for the young woman.
About halfway through this rather short novel the action begins to pick up a relentless momentum, so the reader keeps going to find out what happens next. The author alternates from first-person diary description to third-person narrative, but it's not terribly distracting. Just when the small group of dissenters, self-named the Five Fishes, become politically active and put themselves at great risk, Theo is informed that the young woman is pregnant, a seeming impossibility. The action picks up after this and leads to conflicts of Theo with the group, a murderous attack on them by "Omegans," the last generation born, and pursuit by the secret police of the Warden. What will be their fate?
I won't tell the conclusion and spoil it for those who haven't read the book, but it's one that shouldn't depress you. (I never saw the movie, so I'm judging just what was written.) This book is not properly science-fiction or a post-Apocalyptic story, but might be described as a dystopian novel of the near future, though it is not as grim as "1984" or "Fahrenheit 451." Still, it has gloom amid relative comfort as the generations await the death of the human species on the planet.
That's a thought that could severely depress anyone, and the foreknowledge of it colors everything in their world.
This is a book worth re-reading, if only for the author's capable use of her writing skills. One could almost wish for a sequel, but there aren't that many unanswered questions or loose ends that would demand it. Still, I liked it, as the author is not nihilistically obsessed with herself or her language, and she does show consideration for her readers. I don't give it 5 stars because it's not perfect, but it's not a costly book, not over-long, and is worth reading, IMHO.
Book Review: Good, but no where near as good as the movie
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm a big fan of the Children of Men, the movie, so when I saw the audiobook at my local library, I grabbed it. Probably 90% of the time someone compares a movie and the book it was based on, they're going to think the book is better. It's just the nature of written and filmed works that you can't pack the same detail into a film as you can a novel. But at least for me, The Children of Men is one case where the movie was better than the book, much better.
Both the book and the movie share the same basic outline, and some of the same characters. About 20 years previous, babies stopped being born, as all males in the world became infertile. In that time, society has changed, become authoritarian, and dissident groups have sprung up to protest the increasing power of the government.
But while the plot of the movie seemed to make perfect sense, that of the book kept me wondering how or why things were happening the way they were. For example, characters fall in love after meeting each other only a few times for a few minutes, and I couldn't understand why so much emphasis was being placed on the child, when it seemed to me that the father of the baby would be much more important. If the child was a girl, then what? There would still be no way of propagating the human race, and even if it was a boy, they'd have to wait 13 or so years for him to be able start attempting to produce offspring.
And in any case, is one human male, when paired with an unlimited number of females, enough to re-start the race? Wouldn't that involve a lot of inbreeding? So the fact that a woman is pregnant is definitely cause for celebration, but it really only matters if other males are becoming fertile again as well. The movie is able to sidestep these issues by simply stating that the father is unknown, and focusing on the child as a miracle in itself, not necessarily as hope for the human race to survive.
The book is also very different from the film in that it's not anywhere near as action oriented. A third of the way through the book basically nothing has happened. It's full of backstory between Theo and his cousin, Xan, who has now become Warden of England, and their childhood together. It is Xan who wants the child for himself, to cement his power as leader, and Theo must overcome his feelings of friendship for his cousin and protect the baby.
I don't want to make it sound like the book is horrible, it's really pretty good; I had no problems sticking with it to the end. But just be warned that if you go into it having already seen the film, don't expect the book to be similar, or you may find yourself disappointed.
Book Review: The Children of Men Doesn't Bear Out Its Great Idea
Summary: 2 Stars
From ISawLightningFall.blogspot.com
TWO-AND-A-HALF STARS
P.D. James' The Children of Men is built around a single question: What would happen if women couldn't conceive? That's exactly what's on the minds of everyone on earth in the year 2021, not least of Theodore Faron, historian and only surviving relative to the despotic Warden of England, Xan Lyppiatt. Sterility has held sway over the human race for 25 years, and outlying towns are falling into disrepair as the population shrinks. Bizarre cults and mass suicides are the order of the day. The youngest generation, dubbed Omegas, roams the countryside, delighting itself with vandalism and murder. Even the sleepy academic circles in which Theo moves are being shaken. One day he is approached by a woman named Julian who wants him to use his influence with the Warden to secure much-needed humanitarian reforms. But Theo learns there's more to Julian than political ambitions -- she's pregnant.
The setup is wonderful, a great idea. Unfortunately, "built around" is an accurate way of describing the story that accompanies it. Children was James' first and only detour into SF, and the inexperience shows. She alternates between exposition and action by erratically switching between first- and third-person perspectives. And "action" isn't really an appropriate descriptor, since nothing much happens in the first half of the novel. Readers must content themselves with long passages about crumbling infrastructure, political maneuvering and new social trends (dolls and kittens become inadequate substitutes for babies). Liberal trimming would have helped the pace, but the characters are another matter. To wit, they're a selfish and vapid bunch, quick with a sharp retort and slow to finish up mopey musings on religion and relationships, suicide and sex. (Indeed, I found it surprising that such subjects could be boring.) It's not that they're merely unlikable. They're uninteresting, so that you've stopped caring by the time the novel finally snaps into genre mode near the end.
And yet, there are moments that make you want to forgive Children's sins. There are meditative passages on the decline of science following the quiet disaster and the inverse relationship between pornography and lovemaking, poignant bits about laying down wine that will never be drunk and a cancer-stricken father whose tin-can-sliced index finger becomes symbolic of his terminal disease. You can see the great idea inside all the wordiness and meandering motivations and ceaseless talk of swilling claret before blowing one's brains out. It's a shame that Children didn't have the strength to bring it forth.
Book Review: Quite different from the movie but interesting
Summary: 3 Stars
As a former fan of PD James, I was surprised to find out that the movie of the same name was based on her book. PD James is a fine writer and I read many of her detective novels for both the plot and the character development (think Jane Austen writing murder mysteries). However, I stopped reading her books after she portrayed a British anti-nuclear activist as an isolated, hapless, socially inept bumbler. (Full disclosure: I was once a full-time anti-nuclear activist so maybe I took it a little personally.)
Once I saw the movie, which was quite impressive, I decided to take another look at her work. However, those folks who are looking for a read which mirrors the film will be quite disappointed. While there are many characters with the same names, they play different roles in the plot and in some cases have different personalities.
Where the book is not as good as the movie: The activists are much more like the anti-nuclear activist described above. Hapless, naive, and clueless about how one mobilizes other people to join a social movement. They contact Theo in order to get the ear of his cousin, Xan, who is the dictatorial leader of the UK. Sorry, Ms. James, but no real activist with half a brain expects that just talking nicely to the man in charge is going to change things. As well, some of the character development makes no sense. People make choices that don't always make sense to me and the pace at which things occur doesn't always work.
Where the book is better than the movie: The book does an effective job of portraying a world which is emptying out. In the movie, the UK is a crowded, busy place, I guess, primarily because of refugees adding to the population. While it makes for an exciting movie, it doesn't really show how the world is becoming emptier and emptier and how empty space and quiet starts to take over people's lives as they have to make decisions about how they will face their deaths in a world without a younger generation to perform the various tasks that keep society running. PD James is a master at portraying what it means to watch the world dying around you.
In closing, if you loved the movie, you may be disappointed by the book but it's still quite interesting on an intellectual level even if the plot is lacking at times.
Book Review: Unlike the movie, but worth reading regardless
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm writing this review in 2007, and this book was first published in 1992. If you're interested in this book, it's likely because you saw the movie and want to see where it came from. That's my scenario in a nutshell: I saw the movie, thought it was tremendous, and when I stumbled across the book at a used bookstore, I decided to give it a try.
Be warned: the movie bears very little resemblance to the novel. Only the premise (first pregnant woman after a couple decades of planetary infertility) was retained (and the title, I suppose), but the similarity ends there. The events, the characters ... you might find a similar name here and there, but that's it. Even the protagonist, he has nothing in common between the two versions except his name.
But that's not to say it's a bad read. It was a leisurely, yet compelling book, and engrossing in spite of its flaws. It's not a thriller, by which I mean that the pacing is slow, but it still works very well. The author is a master of words and the writing itself is part of her product.
(Sure, I mentioned flaws; being written in 1992, the book predates the recent technological revolution, and there were moments when the plot's credibility was stretched simply because the author hadn't predicted the boom of the internet, satellite surveillance and mobile phones. Also, I'm not a fan of fiction that proceeds through journal entries -- especially journal entries that are written with an impeccably beautiful narrative and talks mostly about backstory -- and some of the character situations, notably the setup of the climax, were 100% implausible. Oh, and the ending was a heavy disappointment.)
If you're looking for a scene-by-scene movie novelization: stop. Turn back now. But otherwise I would recommend giving this book a try, especially if you're not turned off by character-driven narrative fiction that doesn't try to drag you through the grass at flank speed. It's fun to see what the filmmakers started with, where their inspiration came from, and imagine the path they took toward creating what I feel was one of the best movies in recent years.