Children of Men, The
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Product Description
Product Description
The year is 2021. No child has been born for twenty-five years. The human race faces extinction. Under the despotic rule of Xan Lyppiat, the Warden of England, the old are despairing and the young cruel. Theo Faren, a cousin of the Warden, lives a solitary life in this ominous atmosphere. That is until a chance encounter with a young woman leads him into contact with a group of dissenters. Suddenly his life is changed irrevocably, as he faces agonising choices, which could affect the future of mankind.
About the Author
P. D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. All that experience has been used in her novels. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts and has served as a Governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, where she was Chairman of the Literary Advisory Panel, on the Board of the British Council, and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She is an Honorary Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. She has won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature (US). She has received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983, and was created a life peer in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors. She lives in London and Oxford and has two daughters, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cracking good read,
By
This review is from: The Children of Men (Paperback)
Theo Faron is an uncomfortable hero, perhaps even an anti-hero. Beginning with Theo's diary entry for 1st January 2021, we are asked to empathise with a fifty year old man who has never loved, in spite of having been married and fathered a child. He writes with more warmth of the family cat, and turns his back on an old colleague in his hour of need. It's hardly surprising that Theo isn't exactly slitting his wrists at the idea of humankind dying out. He doesn't seem to like humans very much anyway.
All this changes, however - as so often happens - with the arrival of a beautiful woman, the oddly-named Julian, a pre-Raphaelite goddess with a misshapen hand. (The polar opposite of Julianne Moore's gung ho character in the film, if you've seen it.) Julian is one of a small group of would-be activists, wanted by the State Security Police. The moment that Theo's diary gives way to breathless ramblings about this nubile creature buying oranges in the supermarket, you know it's only a matter of time before he too is in trouble. The book is divided into two sections - Omega and Alpha. Omega makes good use of the diary conceit to feed us the ghastly details of James's imagined Britain: desperate woman pushing dolls about in prams; christenings held for kittens; old people 'encouraged' to take their own lives. With this cowardly new world firmly established, book two - Alpha - cranks up the pace, with a cat and mouse pursuit through the countryside. A more traditional third-person narrative takes hold of the story when it's no longer safe enough for Theo to keep a diary. The violence is real and bloody, and some tight plotting saves plenty of surprises for the end. Religious symbolism is there in spades if you want it. It's a genuinely thought-provoking book for many reasons, but just read it as a good old-fashioned thriller if you like. Yes, P.D. James is a little stuffy at times, a litte stern - a tightly-corseted Victorian governess of a writer - but once Theo is free of his precious Oxford museums the story itself takes on new life. If you've seen the film and didn't like it, try the book anyway - they're chalk and cheese. My only real complaint is that James has an annoying habit of introducing several characters at once - in painstaking detail. The scenes where Theo meets the activist group and then, later, the Warden's Council, remind you all of a sudden that you're reading about this in a book instead of actually living the story. The narrative breaks for an intricate description of each character, one by one, and then resumes just as suddenly. An amateur mistake for such a smoothly professional writer.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A thought provoking novel...,
By
This review is from: The Children of Men (Paperback)
In a world where no child has been born for 25 years a small group of five rebels begin to plan to challenge the ruling dictatorship of England. But the five are far from united and seek help from Theo Faron, an academic who is the cousin of Xan the Warden of England. He believes there are many injustices and agrees to help them albeit reluctantly. He is also strongly attracted to Julian, a mysterious and lovely member of the group.
The Children of Men is a beautifully written dystopic novel The infertility has caused changes in attitudes and morality as the population becomes distorted. Many social issues are raised: -"voluntary" suicides of the elderly -indulgence of last born Omegas leading to criminality -importation of other races to fill the labour gap but without being given any rights -brutal suppression of criminals The author also explores the way in which the regime in power wants to "do the right thing" but ends up prioritising policies and never quite coming to grips with the most serious problems. A really interesting and thought provoking novel - and Theo is a great invention as the reluctant hero.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Faith, hope and love in an unforgettable dystopia,
By vilcxjo (Southampton, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Children of Men (Paperback)
The premiss of this novel is without parallel to my knowledge; and for all its unfamiliarity it comes across as thoroughly convincing and moving both because of the skill and care taken over the presentation of its setting and because of the way James blends the outworking of its grim thesis with the timeless themes of "faith, hope and love.""Sci-fi" is a total misdescription: it may be set in an hypothetical future, but this future is - deliberately - so close to the present that literal accuracy or technical prediction is clearly beside the point. Like "1984" and other dystopic visions, its strengths lie in its terrifying picture of a world which can be all too easily extrapolated from the commonplace realities of the world that we accept almost without question. I've read and much enjoyed several of the author's Dalgliesh detective novels, but I have no hesitation in saying that this is a greater, more imaginative and probably more important work than any of them. It's one of those really rather few books that I can't imagine ever forgetting.
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