Book Review: Children of Men -- P.D. James

As with most multi-media offerings, I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie. One reason is for comparison. Some movies are true to the books they originate from; others are separate entities altogether. Another reason is to better know the characters. No matter how good an actor is, you cannot read his mind. You are privy to the characters' inner thoughts in novels. Third: there is a continuity in novels that is sometimes missing in movie versions, sometimes due to time constraints and/or editing, sometimes because of poor screenplay adaptation. And besides, it is sometimes good to get the author's original intent, which may become obscure in the visualized movie version, which is influenced by screenwriters and directors (unless the screenwriter and director are also the author, which is rare).

Children of Men is a dark account of the fall of modern man. For some reason, all of mankind have become sterile, unable to procreate. The end of the human race is not only assured, it is in sight.

P.D. James has crafted a beautiful novel of apocalypse, so crushingly sad it literally tears at your heart. She brilliantly projects a future where people pointlessly exist, where a last generation is exalted, where women hysterically care for dolls and cats as if they were real children, where people plan mass suicides, where governments do whatever they can to protect what is left and test and study to attempt to save the race. It is a dismal existence and 25 years after the last person on Earth was born in Brazil, it is a funeral procession with everyone walking to their self-appointed graves.

The protagonist is a rather colorless and stoic Oxford historian named Theodore Faron. Once he sat as an advisor to the Council of England, of which his cousin, Xan Lyppiatt, is the all-powerful Warden. As the novel begins, he is simply an historian, writing a journal, teaching the few who still wish to be taught.