Book Review: The Children of Men – PD James

In Year Omega the entire human race becomes infertile. No real reason is given for this, but the after-effects are dire.

As someone who reads and writes sci-fi, I would have loved to come up with an idea like this. It’s an epic idea for a story because you can do so much with it.

The Children of Men was my first PD James novel and for me the biggest plus was the prose. The novel starts off with a first person narration of Theo writing in his diary. Later, the narration goes into third, still following Theo’s story. Both are brilliant, but I particularly liked the diary entries because to me the story really centres around this history teacher, divorcee, father and friend.

The prose is really dark and depressing, capturing the essence of this apocalyptic setting really well.

Here’s an example:

“The undergraduate Omega’s I taught were intelligent but disruptive, ill-disciplined and bored. Their unspoken question, “What is the point of all this?,” was one I was glad I wasn’t required to answer. History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future, is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.”

I have good days where I wonder, “What’s the point of all this?” But in the novel this sense of pointlessness is amplified to the extreme because of the infertility. I often felt sorry for Theo—and humanity. There are numerous social, political and psychological consequences of this catastrophe of no new babies being born and PD James explores all of these avenues quite well except the technological side. She gives reasons for this in the novel, like people didn’t care to innovate after Year Omega, but I couldn’t help but wonder if this was unlikely. I did think that there would be certain technological advancements (or distortions) as a consequence of global infertility, and being into sci-fi myself, I would not have minded some exploration in this regard.

There is a strong religious theme throughout the novel. To me, this is relevant and effective when it comes to the meaninglessness the characters experience, but ineffective as a plot device.

In conclusion, this novel is beautifully written—so if that’s something that you like, read it!