Children of Men, by PD James, was recently made into a motion picture. The trailer for the film looked pretty amazing, and I read some great reviews, although it didn’t quite hit home that the praise in those reviews was targeted primarily at the filmmaking and cinematography, as opposed to the underlying story itself.
I just finished the book, and I kind of wish I’d have spent the seven bills to see the movie instead. The book started off pretty okay. The writing style was elegant but comprehensible, and the premise of the story was downright intriguing. The year is 2021, and all of humankind has become infertile. The last children born were born in the mid-1990’s, and the entire population of the world has grown older, as well as somewhat jaded because of the impending demise of the human race.
The story takes place in England, and tells the tale (partially through narrative and partially through journal entries) of Theo Faran, a college professor at Oxford who also happens to be the cousin and former advisor to the Warden of England. Theo is divorced from his wife and is pretty much a loner until he meets Julian, a member of a separatist faction of five individuals with lofty objectives and a big secret. Theo unwittingly/unintentionally/inadvertantly joins forces with this group as they run from the law.
I’m not going to waste a lot of time getting into the details of the situation, because I don’t think the book merits the effort, and here’s why: after a couple hundred pages of setup and storytelling, it seems like James got tired, because the denouement (which is somewhat lacking and ridiculous) takes place over the course of about three pages. Now I’ve stated before that I’ve got a short attention span, but come on! This undershot even my low standards for getting to the point.
July 1st, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I saw the movie, and it as pretty good. I remember that it was “loosely based” on the novel. Whatever that means. See the movie and let me know what changed.
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:21 am
Well, I actually felt sort of bad after writing that post, because the book is pretty good up until the last three pages or so. James is a good writer, and I found her description of this bleak world very engaging. But I felt absolutely cheated at the end and wrote my post in the heat of the moment. I thought about editing it after the fact, but that would be disingenuous.
I have no doubt that the film could be good, because a director could build out the ending and depict it in a more credible way.
July 7th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Does the book include the midwife’s monologue about figuring everything out because there were no appointments on her calendar? Just wondering, because, in the movie at least, it’s eerily similar to the opening of Mr. Adam, an out of print novel by Pat Frank. I mentioned it on my blog but didn’t get any hits. Just curious.
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