The Children of Men (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl..." (more)
Key Phrases: fertile sperm, porn shops, Warden of England, Five Fishes, State Security Police (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her 12th book, the British author of the two series featuring Adam Dalgleish and Cordelia Gray ( Devices and Desires and An Unsuitable Job for a Woman , respectively) poses a premise that chills and darkens its setting in the year 2021. Near the end of the 20th century, for reasons beyond the grasp of modern science, human sperm count went to zero. The last birth occurred in 1995, and in the space of a generation humanity has lost its future. In England, under the rule of an increasingly despotic Warden, the infirm are encouraged to commit group suicide, criminals are exiled and abandoned and immigrants are subjected to semi-legalized slavery. Divorced, middle-aged Oxford history professor Theo Faron, an emotionally constrained man of means and intelligence who is the Warden's cousin, plods through an ordered, bleak existence. But a chance involvement with a group of dissidents moves him onto unexpected paths, leading him, in the novel's compelling second half, toward risk, commitment and the joys and anguish of love. In this convincingly detailed world--where kittens are (illegally) christened, sex has lost its allure and the arts have been abandoned--James concretely explores an unthinkable prospect. Readers should persevere through the slow start, for the rewards of this story, including its reminder of the transforming power of hope, are many and lasting. 125,000 first printing; BOMC main selection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"A book of such accelerating tension that the pages seem to turn faster as one moves along." —Chicago Tribune

"As scary and suspenseful as anything in Hitchcock." —The New Yorker

"Extraordinary. . . . Daring. . . . Frightening in its implications." —The New York Times

"Fascinating, suspenseful, and morally provocative. The characterizations are sharply etched and the narrative is compelling."—Chicago Sun-Times

"Extraordinary ... daring ... frightening in its implications."
—The New York Times

"She writes like an angel. Every character is closely drawn. Her atmosphere is unerringly, chillingly convincing. And she manages all this without for a moment slowing down the drive and tension of an exciting mystery."
—The Times (UK)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 241 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (December 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307279901
• ISBN-13: 978-0307279903
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #30,123 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Here's a real dystopia, December 30, 2006

By	Frikle - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Children of Men (Paperback)

Note: for those who have seen the movie, remove your preconceptions when starting to read this book. It is quite unlike the movie.

The premise is simple - the entire human population has been rendered infertile. Any scientific attempts to find or fix the cause have failed spectatularly. And so, the world is heading to a very quiet and desperate extinction. The population ages and diminishes as people await the inevitable fading away of humanity. More importantly, hope and meaning have gone. There is no longer a point in doing anything because it will all soon disappear. The result is a world of atrocities and chaos. These have been largely avoided in the UK due to the rational dictatorship of the Warden and his cabinet, who have engineered calm and stability, with many tradeoffs on human rights and freedoms. Enter Otto, the Warden's cousin who is an academic and an unsympathetic snob. He is drawn into the beginnings of an extremely small, almost laughable rebellion, but one that changes Otto and the future of the country forever.

This is an extremely simple novel in its world description. Everything flows naturally from the premise, including all the new neuroses that society is stuck with. The book almost feels sparse. So if you insist on fast-paced thrillers only this is not for you. The reason I loved it was because in its sparseness it gives itself - and the reader - a lot of space to think and consider the issues. Unlike the movie where the government is sadistic and evil, things are much less black-and-white in the novel. There is almost an ambivalence for most of the work as to the question of whether the Warden's methods are wrong. The book is very emotional and almost spiritual -- James is magnificent at giving a sense of longing and nihilism present in a world that has no future. It's worth a read just for that.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At the world's end, February 14, 2007

By	Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This subtle and thought-provoking work of science fiction is quite different from P. D. James' detective stories, but as well-written as the best of them. The premise is brilliantly simple: in 1995, all over the world, the human race has become incapable of propagation; now, in 2021, an aging and dwindling population faces an existence without future, hope, or apparent purpose. England has become an outwardly benevolent police state, maintaining a veneer of normality with the tacit acquiescence of an apathetic population. James does not belabor the process by which these social changes have taken place, but her vision is all too plausible.

I read the novel in the movie-tie-in edition, with a picture of Clive Owen on the cover looking through a broken window of grimy glass. From what I have seen of the trailer, the photo is a perfect summary of the movie's atmosphere of apocalyptic urban decay, but it couldn't be less suitable as an illustration for James' book. I shall have to wait to see whether this is merely a question of emphasis, in that the scenes shown in the trailer perhaps do not represent the balance of the whole, or whether the entire movie has been transposed to a quite different world. For now, I am writing only about the book.

Although the future setting may take the reader into an alternate reality, the book is still very much anchored in the familiar world of the present. A common theme of all James' novels is what happens when the civilized world, the comfortable world of the upper middle classes, is touched by evil, and the books depend upon the author's ability to invoke that world and its inhabitants. The first half of the novel takes place in and around Oxford, the city in which nothing ever changes, as one character remarks. And when the action goes further afield, it moves into the English countryside, a little overgrown perhaps, but restored to its primal richness and described with a loving eye. The more tense the action gets, the more James seems to linger on brief vignettes of rural beauty.

The people are also reassuringly normal. Theodore Fanon, the leading character, is a fiftyish professor of Victorian history, safe in his ivory tower. Xan Lyppiatt, the Warden of England, though effectively the country's dictator, is Theodore's cousin and childhood friend. The four-person Council of England (one of whose members is described as "the universal grandmother") seeks only to provide its people with "protection, comfort, and pleasure" and give them a measure of dignity in which to end their days. This is not Orwell's 1984; there may be ruthlessness here, but no obvious hypocrisy or corruption. The evil, if evil there is, cannot simply be ascribed to some Big Brother figure; it is always there as a potential in people like ourselves, and there are several places in the story in which apparently good characters are at least tempted towards the ways of evil. I find the apparent normality of the characters and setting truly frightening -- far more so than a feral wasteland where it is every man for himself.

I described the book as science fiction, but it can also be read on other levels. It is very much the work of an older writer facing a life that has passed its mid-point. The universal childlessness can be seen as an allegory for a perceived loss of purpose in modern society, reflected in the pursuit of pleasure, the destruction of the environment, and the dissolution of faith. As a minor but significant theme, this is also a religious work, about the meaning of God in a world which seems to deny the most significant aspect of his existence: his role as the Creator of Life. But while these matters may provide food for later thought, I would not want to make the novel seem too solemn. Quite simply put, it is an excellent story, succinctly told, full of character, emotion, and suspense, and suffused with nostalgia for the richness of English rural life. Read it!

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No Emotion, Please. We're British., January 1, 2004

By	C. T. Mikesell (near Eugene, Oregon) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Children of Men (Paperback)

The premise of this novel is intriguing. Unfortunately, the intrigue ends there and is replaced with a drab portrayal of a depressing future.

The greatest problem is I have with this book is the detachment with which the year 2021 is explored. Objective perspective may work well in a detective novel, but in The Children of Men, James' prose is affected by the same ennui that has overtaken her Twenty-First Century world. In the opening chapters, for instance, there is a scene where one woman brutally destroys the porcelain doll another woman has been treating as a baby. The initial moment of violence is shocking, but beyond that the scene lacks emotional impact: We see the people around her react by not reacting, simply continuing on with their lives. Unfortunately, the ultimate result of James' technique is that we don't care if England is living under a totalitarian regime because none of her citizens, her protagonist chief among them, seems to care either.

Another problem comes from the fact that nothing exists in 2021 that didn't exist in 1992 when the book was written, and for the most part little that existed in the 1980s is present either: no computers, no cell phones, etc. If James took little risk in exploring the emotional depths of her characters, she took even less in exploring the potential for the use (or misuse) of hypothetical future technology. Cloning, an obvious solution for the book's dilemma, is never even mentioned. Why set the book in the future if everything about it is identical to the past? Sure, things won't come to pass exactly as you imagine, but 1995 came and went without global infertility and that's the element people enjoy most about the book.

Finally, the novel fails to look at the situation in England, which we are told - but never shown - is despotic, by comparing it to the situation in any other European country. At the end of Book 1 Faron travels to France, Spain and Italy, but we're never told if or how things fare better or worse there. His travels serve only to provide a reason for the time gap between Books 1 and 2. James misses an opportunity to provide a context for or comment on the political situation in England, and all the reader can do is shrug his or her shoulders and keep reading (the ennui is contagious).

Maybe there's a subtext I'm missing - maybe James is saying that people can numb themselves into accepting totalitarianism, or that nothing really changes, or that life's the same all over - but if she is she's doing it far too subtly for most of her readership (based on the majority of reviews here). I don't regret reading this book, but I can't find much in it to recommend to others.