"In the bleaching beam of the headlights the pustulous road looked as eerie and alien as a moon landscape, at once close yet mysteriously remote and perpetual. Rolf was gazing through the windscreen with the fierce intensity of a rally driver, wrenching the wheel as each fresh obstruction sprang up from the darkness."
I am not making this up.
It's in the opening paragraph of chapter 24 in "The Children of Men" by the amazing P.D. James. The fantastic book has been made into a movie and a lot of my friends are talking about it. So I scrounged around town and found a used copy for $5 and read it. Huge waste of time.
A tiny part of me found the plot and/or "set up" compelling but most of me wanted to finish only so that I could stop. I was reading it in conflict. Why do I care how this ends? I can tell it's dopey, unbelievable and poor, sensationalistic writing -- but I read on. So many books are like this... horrible, but compelling. Bad, but I read them anyhow. The characters in this one are all either whiners, those who hope their high prinicples will make them martyrs, or two-dimensional dictators; or they change from one Type to the other very abruptly with very little warning from their past actions.
I don't want to hate it because I like books, I like holding them, reading them, shelving them, finding them, buying them, carrying them around, etc. But this one frustrated me. The hype and the unique story made me want to like it and I fought my distaste as I was reading, hoping it would all come together in the final chapters. Then the ending is sort of like she ran out of paper but had to turn it in anyway. She should have written "timed out" at the bottom of the last page. The story of universal sterility and a miracle child could have been really interesting -- even from an unchristian background (which I assume she is. But I could be wrong, she quoted the Book of Common Prayer...) -- but it fell flat. In all areas, plot, dialogue, pacing, ideology, scope, believability...
I liked the font it was printed in.
But I hear the story changes a bit in the movie. I've seen the trailer and people throw things at a subway train. That's not in the book. Maybe the changes are for the better.
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2 comments:
Well. You kicked my sacred cow. I think much of my opinion of the book kind of falls under the 'anything worth doing is worth doing badly' category. I readily accept that the book is rather one-dimensional often times, and the whole diary style thing bothered me a bit, but I tend to be of the opinion that I'd rather see steps in the right direction toward good Christian literature, that to see none at all. P.D. James is a Roman Catholic, and I think that that comes out in the book, and frankly, I still think she was effective at trying to tell a Christian story without going all evangelical preachy with it.
On the movie end, it wasn't as good as the book, but as far as movies go, I thought it stood quite well on its own. They do take a number of liberties and I think it's better to watch it as a different movie to keep yourself from getting distracted by the differences in the two stories.
David,
I’ve been struggling to answer your comment. I feel like I’m always saying something and then “un-saying” it the very next minute. And I don’t like that about myself, so I want to stand on my opinion – just to “practice” being less waffley. But I realize that that’s dumb if I’m wrong. So, first of all, I’m sorry I came on so strong.
I agree with you that anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- that's part of growing up and maturing into skillful adults. But while a thing is still in the "badly" stage, it ought not be in public as if it were "good" already. I think so. But if I use that measure, I’m pretty darn sure I don’t want it meted back at me.
I guess I’ll settle with saying that I didn’t like the book but I’m ill equipped to explain why. Except that I found it annoying. For me, fiction in a source of joy, amusement, refuge, etc. So, I guess “The Children of Men” just didn’t add up. But that’s probably because of a faulty definition in my head.
Also, on the "Christian story" part, I guess she was so un-preacy about it that I mostly missed it. ;-) Most books I read I get into the story without taking the time to step back and look at it. If you've got the time, I'd love to hear what makes it a Christian story.
Jo
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