The Children of Men

Baroness James of Holland Park is probably best known for her novels about Adam Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray and for the television series based on the former, but I chose her dystopian novel The Children of Men to begin my acquaintance with James.

I'd seen the 2006 movie based on the novel, and I begin the book curious about why the movie changed the cause of the impending end of human reproduction. (It's mass male infertility in the book, female infertility in the movie -- a commercially wise decision, perhaps, given that men are said not to read books anymore. Who wants to pick up a book and get blamed for the impending extinction of humanity?)

The novel's strength in its opening chapters is the matter-of-fact first-person narration by a historian named Theodore Faron, who begins a diary of his middle age with the news that the last known human being to have been born on Earth has died. Oddly enough, the world has managed to continue on its way for two decades after the end of human fertility, and Faron's diary is as personal and idiosyncratic as diaries are supposed to be, yet full of chilling details. I'll leave you with my two favorite, then go back to my reading:

"History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future, is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species." 

and

"It was in that year, 2008, that the suicides increased. Not mainly among the old, but among my generation, the middle-aged, the generation who would have to bear the brunt of an ageing and decaying society’s humiliating but insistent needs."

© Peter Rozovsky 2012