The Chrysalids

My youthful memory of was how much I enjoyed this very good Sci Fi. I recalled the first chapter clearly, the young girl with an extra toe, and the ending as well. With that in mind, it was interesting to read this again in my mid-sixties.

So how has it stood up? Remarkably well but with big reservations, an ending that seemed very ham-fisted. The major protagonist David tells the story in the first person, and what a riveting tale it is of those that are not normal in his fundamentally religious society. After a nuclear holocaust, much of humanity has not survived. In a small patch in Labrador, those that did were full of fire and brimstone towards those that they found in their midst that were not in the image of man and women as they interpreted the surviving bible. So an individual that had 6 toes, for example, was outcast into the fringe lands. David and a few others find they are able to communicate via a form of telepathy but once found out had to make a run for it. It was a well written and stirring adventure that covered the story well in a YA type of delivery.

The drawback was that after they were rescued by a telepathic society on the other side of the world, there was a high-minded speech by one of the rescuers that in a Social Darwinist piece of rhetoric justified the actions of the religious fundamentalism of the society our heroes escaped from. I suspect when I read this in my teens I might not have noticed this odd anomaly, but I have now. Still a fine adventure and well told for the vast majority of the book, glad to reread after all these years.

Recommended to the Sci Fi reader.