The Children of Men

Dystopian books have a certain appeal. Dystopian films also appeal so when I watched Children of Men several years back I was impressed enough to think that I would one day read the book. I finally have.

Now this is not meant to be a “film is better than the book” review and vice versa. I, for example, love the Terrence Malick version of the very good book by James Jones The Thin Red Line. What I liked about that film was that Malick took an idea and made it into something other. The same can be said for The Children of Men as well. Alfonso Cuaron took an idea and headed into very topical issues such as refugees. It worked.

The book alas has left me cold. It is slow, it plods and it just seems out of date. Of its time maybe? Even that question worries me. Now I am happy to be corrected here but being written in 1992 surely the author would be aware of a few of the more “modern” communication methods such the internet and mobile phones for example. Even such technology such as infra-red / heat seeking devices were around then. Nope we get none of that. We get a Britain written about as if it is the 1950's as opposed to the 2020's that is the era we are supposed to be reading about. On the other hand we get mention of drugs that can cure Alzheimer's. In the book people have drugs to control a horrendous disease but there is no communication such as the WWW?

I suppose that maybe the author wanted it to seem slow, after all this was a world that was made up old people. If so it did not work for me. If this had been written in the 50's by say John Wyndham I would be more forgiving but it was written in the information age. The author missed this sadly. Very disappointing.