The Children of Men (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

Since her debut as a detective fiction novelist in 1962, P. D. James has striven to break out of the familiar limitations of the genre. In 1980, she wrote INNOCENT BLOOD, her first mainstream novel, but her next three books were mysteries. With THE CHILDREN OF MEN, she once again has written an atypical work. Set in England during 2021, it is about a world in which women cannot conceive, and babies have not been born since 1995. Xan Lippatt, Warden of England, is the dictator of a country afflicted by a pervasive negativism and malaise, with people finding solace with dolls and kittens, which they treat like their own newborn and even baptize, one of the few remaining religious rites.

Oxford historian Theodore (Theo) Faron, whose diary entries comprise much of the book, is its protagonist and moral center. A former student asks him to intercede with his cousin Xan on behalf of a small reformist group; when his approaches fail, and the Warden moves against the renegades, previously passive Theo joins the fugitives and becomes their de facto leader.

The second half of the novel is a compelling narrative of the rebels in flight, motivated primarily by the discovery that Julian, one of their two women members, is pregnant. The child’s father is not her husband Rolf, but Luke, another renegade and a former Anglican priest. Luke is killed by a marauding gang, deceived Rolf deserts, and—soon after Julian’s son is born—midwife Miriam, the other woman, is murdered by Xan’s Grenadiers. Only Theo, Julian, and the baby remain. In the climactic confrontation, Theo kills Xan, takes his “wedding ring of England,” the Warden’ssymbol of power, and baptizes the baby, having assumed both temporal and spiritual authority in what, after all, may not be a dying world.

Notwithstanding their foolhardiness, pettiness, selfishness, and disunity, the rebels represent the indomitability and indestructibility of the human spirit against all odds. While P. D. James indicates through Theo that the decadence of the 1990’s led to the universal infertility, she also suggests that if faith and love prevail, deliverance may come. The Christian symbolism in THE CHILDREN OF MEN is unmistakable.

Sources for Further Study

The Christian Science Monitor. March 16, 1993, p.14.

Commonweal. CXX, April 23, 1993, p.26.

Locus. XXX, April, 1993, p.17.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. April 4, 1993, p.12.

New Scientist. CXXXVII, March 20, 1993, p 41.

The New York Times Book Review. XCVIII, March 28, 1993, p.23.

The New Yorker. LXIX, March 22, 1993, p.111.

Time. CXLI, March 1, 1993, p.69.

The Times Literary Supplement. September 25, 1992, p.26.

The Wall Street Journal. February 19, 1993, p. A12.