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Death of Grass

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"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.

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.

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.

John Christopher (real name Samuel Yowd) writes some pretty gripping science fiction novels about alien invasions (The Tripod trilogy) catastrophic shifts in the earth's weather (The Long Winter) and terrifying tales of the savagery that humans revert to when civilization breaks down (A Wrinkle In The Skin)-- potent stuff indeed. His books share with JG BALLARD a fascination for post-apocalyptic settings but are also psychological character studies about how people change to fit their environments. This book is perhaps Christopher at his starkest and most frightening. A man simply tries to take his family safely out of London to his brother's farm in the North after a genetically engineered bio-weapon gets out of control and wipes out the world's food supply, causing anarchy and chaos to erupt all over the globe.

I read this book, although of the title _No Blade of Grass_ just recently, and because I always enjoy the author's work.

A virus is affecting grasses. At first only rice in the Far East, and then all grasses. No wheat, no rice, no oats, none of the staple plants needed by man to feed himself and his livestock. Panic strikes the world. A few small families have the hope of a farm on the other side of England, and flee London when they can.

They survive. But how would you change if you were constantly deciding between your own humanity and your family's well-being?

Find the book, and read it. I don't think you will be disappointed.

I read this years ago as _No Blade of Grass_, reissued in a Science Fiction Classics series. While it's set against a doomsday scenario, like most of Christopher's novels it's more concerned with the dynamics of leadership and the basic resiliency of human society at its most basic, small-band level. [Note: This seems to have gotten detached from its subject. The review was for an old John Christopher novel (for adults) that was titled here _The Death of Grass_.]

John Christopher was one of a small band of British Sci-Fi writers writing in the 1950s and 1960s who delighted in destroying civilisation in an amazing array of natural and unnatural ways. The results are future dystopias that have given us some true classics: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham for instance.

This work is not as well known as the Triffids, but in this genre, I think it really should be. this is no formulaic treatment of the subject, but rather was an original, intelligen and thoughtful story set in a world in which grasses are wiped out by disease. Without grasses we lose cereals (when I read this first as a teenager, it was news to me that cereals including Maize are grasses!). Without cereals and grazing land, the food crisis quickly becomes acute.

The story focuses on two brothers - well one of them in particular, and his fight to survive and make a new life for himself as society quickly disintegrates. John Christopher writes it well, and I think this may well be his best work (I have read them all).

I first read this as a teenager, and I was deeply affected by this book. Definitely a moving story designed to make you think. Throughly recommended. Personally I think its better than Day of the Triffids. Even if you disagree, you ought to enjoy it.

This is one of the few books that having read at school I have returned to read numerous times. It is a fiction about a world surving, or not, against a virus which attacks all grasses. The determination by the party of people we follow while reading the book is ruthless, yet understandable.The book really draws you in and is difficult to put down. There have been times when I have been able to liken this novel to real life, for example when the United Kingdom faced Foot and Mouth recently, and when we had the Petrol Crisis. At times like this I think back to the book and wonder, could it turn out like that? Anyone who has read the book will agree, lets hope not.

I read this one at school many years ago, and found it a rather gripping read, and quite violent for a book in a childrens library. I would dearly love to read it again and see if it has stood the test of time!

Well, This book is one of a few books that you can't put down, it moves well, never stalls and should be put on to a reading list for schools.