There is no shortage of dystopian novels, but The Children combines one pessimistic vision of a possible world future with the hard-to-put-down thriller/crime element for which James is perhaps best known. The Children, in some ways, makes for an eerily prescient read, since it is set in 2021, a generation after it is written, after which it is written. James imagines a world where humans are no longer able to reproduce; no child has been born since 1995, and no one knows why. In order to “manage” the population that remains, a benign dictator has been installed. The novel's partial narrator (half of the work comprises excerpts from his diary; the remainder is told in the third person) is the dictator's cousin. The reader is drawn in by his descriptions of the architecture of the new state and the realization (as befits most dictators) that if the means justify the ends, then so be it. We are on firm Huxley/Orwell territory here, but The Children proves engrossing for two reasons. First, we see the narrator's crisis of conscience; how changing events force him to reassess his worldview and his understanding of faith. Next, James introduces the device of surprise: the big reveal in the early section of Part Two is a pregnancy. This drives the tense culmination of the novel and the hero's transformation. Overall, the question James provides an answer to is simply, What is our purpose on this planet? 9 and a half out of 10.
By P. D. James