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The Children of Men, by P. D. James

Vintage (reprint), 2006 $13.95

Oftentimes, books which become films suffer in the translation, seeing the sparkle of pacing and detail fade or disappear. P.D. James’ The Children of Men, scheduled for release as a major motion picture soon, is likely spared this fate. It is hard to imagine a studio thinning the text anymore than the author herself already has.

The story centers on Theodore Faron, a detached British historian living in a near-future where humanity has inexplicably lost the ability to procreate. The tale is told in an alternating pattern of Faron’s diary entries and a traditional third person vantage; the distinction is ceremonial, as the voicing between the two is indistinguishable.

James is at her best when exploring the impacts the global sterility has on a dying species struggling for meaning—e.g., the value of pornography/the evolution of romance and sexuality—but these promising avenues are elided. Much of the work focuses on Faron’s involvement with a group of rebels called the Five Fishes, who seek his alliance against the popular dictator Xan Lyppiatt, the Warden of England (who happens to be Faron’s cousin). Initially skeptical of the group’s motives and proposals, Faron naturally falls for one of their members, turning a bizarre love triangle into an even more bizarre love rhombus. At that point the story disintegrates into “How a Cauterized British Historian Bafflingly Got His Groove Back.”

Ultimately these micro, human elements of the plot are the least compelling ones, and James’ shorthand characters and premature plot points are all the more aggravating because they fence off the fascinating social allusions dotting the fringe of her impressive imagination. The ending of The Children of Men provokes the same suffering for the reader that the stagnant generation within the story endures: a sudden, stunning vacuum of sense, with no hope in sight.