Review: The Death of Grass by John Christopher

The Death of grass
John Christopher
(My copy Penguin Modern Classics 2009.)

The end of the world is nigh! In John Christopher’s novel first published in 1956 a virus is wiping out grass and crops across the globe and with them the survival chances of millions of people.

The Death of Grass tells the story of the desperate journey across a rapidly disintegrating Britain made be a small band of survivors led by John Custance to the safety of his brother’s farm in a hidden valley. On the way they must shed the values and habits of civilized people and return to a more primitive way of life where survival at all costs is their primary concern.

The ecological disaster at its heart, as Robert McFarlane points out in his introduction marks this out as a novel that was very much ahead of its time and gives it considerable relevance today in a world haunted by the fear of climate change and swine flu. He also draws attention to the way Christopher subverts the idea of stiff upper lipped British exceptionalism to be found in similar novels by writers such as John Wyndham and which had been a feature of our national mythology throughout the hard years during and after the war through his description of the speed with which society collapses in the face of the oncoming famine.

Despite its forward looking subject matter The Death of Grass is in many respects very much a novel of its time. For example, as might be expected where military service was, thanks to the war, a shared experience for many men all the male characters are adept at things like firing rifles and building camp fires. Those of us lucky enough to have been born in softer times faced with a similar situation, it is reasonable to conclude, might expect to put up only a token struggle before we starved; not a cheerful prospect.

A less palatable aspect of the novel’s vintage is Christopher’s attitude towards his female characters. The bleak new world being ushered in by the virus killing off the planet’s crops would, as the real world of the 1950’s unquestionably was, would be very much a man’s world. Domestic labour aside women, it seems would have little in the way of autonomy and Christopher consistently underwrites his female characters and gives them little to say apart from occasional timorous reminders to their men folk of the civilized values they are losing as they struggle to survive.

Beyond the environmental concerns that, although they weren’t a primary concern for Christopher at the time of writing, have given the novel considerable currency within the green movement, this is a book , published in the year when the Suez crisis blew away the last tattered remnants of Britain’s imperial majesty can be subjected to another and more conservative reading. The virus killing the world’s crops can be seen as a metaphor for the rise of a materialistic younger generation with little time for the stuffy sensibilities of their elders.

However you choose to read it as a prototype environmental thriller, a comment on the social changes sweeping Britain during the fifties or as a darker than average adventure story this is a satisfying, though provoking and at times unsettling novel that richly deserves to be regarded as a modern classic.