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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Killing for the sake of Living,
This review is from: Death of Grass (Alpha Books) (Paperback)
"The Death of Grass" is John Christopher's best known novel and probably the ultimate disaster story. The world is dying of starvation. Every kind of grass we need for food is being destroyed by a virus, resulting in carnage, anarchy and a rapid descent to barbarism. In England, now a brown and unpleasant land, two of the principal characters learn of a government plan to depopulate the country. The only way to survive is to escape the hungry mobs and make it to a refuge in the countryside. Like "Lord of the Flies", this story shows how civilized decency and good manners will easily slip away and expose the brutality within us when faced with a fight for survival. John Christopher's writing reminds me of John Wyndham, another writer known for his end-of-the-world scenarios. "The Death of Grass" is a frightening story because in the beginning we identify with the people and their normality. As the book progresses the people become something less than human, but in the end we get a glimmer of hope.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love it when the world gets it!,
By Jason Harris (Calgary, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Death of Grass (Alpha Books) (Paperback)
This isn't the latest book I've read but it is probably the best book I have read in a long time. It's a basic end of the world story. Some disease attacks plants of the grass family, eventually spreading across the whole world wiping out a pretty hefty portion of the world's food supply. So with no wheat and no rice things get a little tense, especially when all the livestock starve to death. And so it goes. All of it. And, like all such stories, there is a band of survivors seeking salvation; in this case a brother's natural fortress of a valley farm.The action isn't particularly quick but I was on the edge of my seat pretty much the whole way through the book. It's not that it is suspenseful (I had figured the general shape of the story early on), it's how so normally some people approach this incredible disaster. Don't get me wrong, Christopher isn't a stilted writer and there are plenty of characters who act just like you would expect people to act in a whole-world-goes-belly-up situation. This story is about what happens when a bunch of people start thinking for themselves calmly and rationally about the titanic heap of crap they are in rather than wait for a festering mob of self-interested politicians to tell them what to do and that everything will be just fine. Then, these people start to act. They start tossing away social 'norms' like smelly old shoes as the situation worsens and brutality means survival. The protagonists don't actually become brutes themselves. They just figure out which brutal actions mean the difference between their next meal and going hungry. That's what kept me on the edge of my seat. The incredible tension that built up within and between characters as they consciously crawled down off the lofty moral peak of Western Civilisation into something less than barbarism, more or less intellectually intact. Christopher's writing delivers this tension right into your core. Unlike my reviews, Christopher's descriptions aren't peppered with colourful simile and metaphor. They are crystal clear so that you really get the sense of the atmosphere. However, probably because he was writing in 1956, some events are kind of softened with contemporary euphemisms which kind of jolts the reader a little for their incongruity. But, it doesn't detract so much from the book as a whole and it's probably a better book for not having absolutely every detail of those events described with the same clarity as a grassless landscape. I enjoyed this book and will probably read it again.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The societal earthquake is the death of grass.,
By Irja (Gladstone, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Death of Grass (Hardcover)
The Death of Grass speaks of how much of our civility in society is hinged to the availability of food, and how a group of Englishmen and women find new order. The emergence of a virus in Asia spreads throughout the world and in its wake upturning the every day pattern life and societal behaviour. The virus attacks monocotyledons, which includes rice, wheat, oats, grass, etc. As not only people, but livestock and other animals are affected. The implications of such a virus are staggering to consider and not that far removed from our current day. The author's grasp on the reader seems as if the book was written today, or reported in a daily newspaper, not of a book written in the 1930's. With the increased scarcity of food, anarchy sets in the cities and hamlets of England. Ordinary citizens form bands looking for a means to feed, clothe and protect their members. There is little love lost and distrust between the groups of nomads that now travel through the lands. Despite the supposed flattening out of the structure of society, leaders, followers, and betrayers emerge as the situation reaches a flash point for our nomadic group. A new order is established and the outcome for our new order entrepreneurs is not expected, but as close to human nature and sibling rivalry as one would prefers not to experience. I had this book, but ironically, it was attacked by mildew and now I am looking to replace the original.
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