The Death of Grass

Thank God for the blogosphere. Last month I recommended several blogs, one of which was the excellent Bookseller Crow. Mr Crow found my recommendation and reciprocated by posting one of his own, the brilliant Caustic Cover Critic. I clicked on the link and found a kindred spirit - someone who has a fascination with apocalyptic novels. CCC recommended several books by John Christopher and as a result, I have read six of his novels within the last month.

Yesterday I finished The Death of Grass, which is widely regarded as John Christopher's best work and has, regretably, been acclaimed as the finest science fiction novel of all time. I say regretably because this novel deserves a wider readership. If The Death of Grass is sci-fi, then so is Cormac McCarthy's The Road and a number of other novels I could mention. I believe that speculative or apocalyptic novels like these are a sub-genre within mainstream fiction.

Christopher is no Cormac McCarthy, but The Death of Grass is a compelling novel about the human condition and in an age where we are increasingly concerned about the end of oil, it is as relevant as it was 50 years ago.

Why isn't this book in print today? Like some of John Christopher's other novels, the dialogue and attitudes are dated. Do we really need to be told that a person is swarthy and Jewish-looking unless it's somehow relevant to the narrative? Also, comments like 'the kind of failure in thoroughness that might be expected of Asiatics' will grate with most contemporary readers. However, for all its faults, The Death of Grass is an extraordinary, visionary novel.

I think many of us are increasingly aware how fragile contemporary society is. It is not just the prospects of global warming, terrorism, nuclear war or the end of oil that threaten us, but also the fact that we are so interdependent. As individuals we are extremely vulnerable. Our grandparents' generation were more likely to know basic skills like growing vegetables, knitting, sewing and carpentry. What would we do today if the supply chain suddenly ground to a halt, for whatever reason?

The Death of Grass offers the likely answer. In an over-populated country like Britain, the competition for resources would inevitably lead to social collapse within a short space of time. There is nothing like hunger to break down the veneer of civilisation.

I hope that some forward-thinking publisher reissues this novel. With a decent jacket and an imaginative marketing campaign, The Death of Grass could find a whole new generation of readers. In the meantime, second-hand copies are selling for at least £25 on Ebay.

NB - Penguin reissued this novel in 2009 as part of their Modern Classics series.

The Adventurous Four

I was quite a sickly child and at ten, spent a year in an old-fashioned sanitorium. I don't remember it as a particularly distressing time. On the contrary, the prospect of not going to school and spending all day reading Enid Blyton books seemed too good to be true. I read and re-read the Famous Five, Secret Seven, Five Find Outers and even the Naughtiest Girl series. I liked them much more than some of the worthy but dull children's classics I received as Christmas presents.

I thought I'd read almost everything by Enid Blyton, but the other day I spotted a book in a charity shop called The Adventurous Four. It was only £1 (no full price books for me anymore), so I decided to buy it for my oldest son's bedtime story. At first he seemed underwhelmed by the narrative, but I persevered and by chapter five he was hooked, begging me not to stop.


It's a corker of a story, written as a morale-booster for British children during the Second World War. The Adventurous Four consist of Tom, his twin sisters Jill and Mary and Andy, a local boy from the Scottish fishing village they are staying in. Their adventure begins when a simple boat trip goes horribly wrong and the children find themselves shipwrecked on a deserted island.

I know that some people hate Enid Blyton's books for their implausible plots, casual racism, two-dimensional characters, negative portrayals of women, jolly hockysticks dialogue and leaden prose, but there is a reason for their enduring popularity. Blyton taps into every child's fantasy, creating a world in which children are almost completely independent. Parents, aunts and uncles are peripheral figures and seem quite unperturbed when their kids disappear for several days at a time. The only grown-ups who are allowed a more significant role in the narrative are the baddies.

As I read The Adventurous Four to my son, it was clear that the main appeal of the story was the ingenuity of the children in dealing with the challenges they faced. When they successfully freed their shipwrecked boat from the rocks, he clapped his hands with excitement. Blyton's world, in which children are independent, competent, courageous and resourceful is far more attractive to the average eight-year-old child than some of the more critically acclaimed works of fiction.

I hope that my son isn't too heavily influenced by Enid Blyton. A few weeks ago I found him digging a huge hole in the garden and only later remembered that we'd recently watched The Great Escape together. If he starts saying 'Dash it!' then I'll know who the culprit is.

Poverty

The good times are over. A life of poverty beckons. It's 'Goodbye Waitrose, hello Asda!' and as for going on holiday, forget it. It's not as if I had much money to start with. I have never earned more than £25,000 a year, which I'm told is the average salary these days, but somehow we always seemed to get by, until now. As from last Thursday, my income has dropped by over 50%.

This should feel like a huge setback, but I feel strangely elated. I have spent a long time dreading this moment, but I now understand that the fear of being poor has enslaved me far more than any drop in income. After several months of living frugally I have realised how much money we used to waste and although we will now have to count every penny, I doubt that our quality of life will suffer.

I apologise for being a little enigmatic. I will explain fully at a later date, but for the moment discretion is the better part of valour.

The World in Winter

I've just finished my second John Christopher novel, The World in Winter, which was so compelling that I almost managed to read it in one sitting. Once again the parallels with John Wyndham were striking and I wonder if Christopher would be more popular today if he hadn't been consigned to the ghetto of science fiction. My edition was published by the SF/fantasy publisher Sphere and if I'd seen it on the shelf I wouldn't have bothered picking it up.


John Wyndham used to complain that his novels were speculative fiction rather than SF - a term that has since been adopted by many authors. Margaret Atwood used it to describe her brilliant novel Oryx and Crake, claiming that speculative fiction is a genre in its own right. I'm sure that if John Christopher was 'rebranded ' as one of the finest exponents of this genre, he might start to receive the recognition he deserves.

As for the book itself, it begins as a straightforward catastrophe story in which Britain quickly finds itself in the grip of a new ice age. At first life continues as normal but when spring fails to materialise, rationing and martial law are swiftly followed by rioting, looting and social collapse. At this point the novel suddenly changes gear and it soon becomes apparent what the novel's true purpose is.

I will not give the plot away, except to say that this is a story about racial prejudice and the relationship between Britain and its former colonies in Africa. From a present day perspective it makes an uncomfortable read and I suspect that one reason why it hasn't been reprinted by a mainstream publisher is the preponderance of words like negro, nigger, sambo, mammy and darkie. It is also hard to see where Christopher is coming from. Is he bravely confronting the ugly realities of racism or giving voices to his own prejudices? On the one hand the novel seems to delight in seeing the relationship between black and white reversed - a reflection of the fact that Britain's African colonies were all gaining independence during this period. But at times it felt as if the demise of the white man is the novel's true disaster. This would certainly be a good book for reading groups to discuss!

Next on the list is The Death of Grass if I can find a copy that doesn't cost the earth. At the moment they seem to be selling on Ebay for at least £30, even for a battered old Penguin, so it might be some time before I read it. Perhaps I'll sell a few unwanted CDs to pay for it, as my financial circumstances are a little precarious at the moment (I'll explain why in the next post).