A thought-provoking classic
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One of John Wyndham's strongest novels. An imaginative basic idea of an exceptionally understated and subtle alien invasion, which in the wrong hands would be a B-movie idea, is handled with brilliant humanity and consistency by one of science-fiction's best ever writers. A classic.
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Gets you thinking
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I really enjoy Wyndham's take on sci-fi. He keeps it understated and by doing so makes things eerily real. The Midwich Cuckoos takes an incredible event (the impregnation, birth and development of apparently alien invaders) and rather than dealing with that mystery looks at how that event is dealt with on a religious level, political, local, national and international level. The story for me concerns responses. What can be done when something beyond our experience occurs.
I also get the impression that Wyndham is looking into our understanding of family. What are the bonds between parents and their children? How much control can and should be exerted over children? The children in the story start off in families, are abandoned, rejected, feared and ultimately destroyed. Family bonds are completely shattered. OK - in the story the children are alien but the story does challenge our accepted understanding of family and how far that can go.
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A Dayout In Midwich
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This science fiction story takes place in a quiet, sleepy, very English village. For 24 hours the village is isolated, no one can enter if they try they immediately become unconscious. After 24 hours everything returns to normal... for a while at least. That period is referred to as the "Dayout". Life continues as normal until the women, all the women, discover they have a condition that for most of them is incomprehensible.
The story moves along quite gently, much at the pace of Midwich itself I would imagine, with much debate and philosophising on evolution, invasion, survival and general differences between male and female opinion and emotion. But inexorably the pace increases as the situation becomes intolerable. Leading finally to a shocking but inevitable conclusion.
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Book was nothing compared to Triffids
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I thought this was an ok book. The language itself can be slightly hard to understand & appreciate but when you get a grasp of the plot you get a glimpse of the intelligence. Not my favourite Wyndham book but otherwise good compared to other authors.
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An unsettling, eerie read
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This was a very eerie, disturbing read. I guess that most people are now familiar with the concept of the story. The novel deals with a whole lot of complicated issues - the division of people, attitudes and morals in a small town is easily reflective in modern society. This novel deals with so many different issues, it can make you mental trying to distinguish them all but here's a few: the mass fear taht can arise when humans are faced with something they don't understand and doesn't readily fit into their morals, attitudes and what they have been taught; the inability to see the opportunities of welcoming and trying to understand those things; it shows how division in attitude, morals, religion and custom can divide a town leading to mass hysteria and violence.
It also complicates all the above issues with this one: What do you do if your child, a product of your own body, something you care for, look after, guide and love turns out to have ideas, concepts and methods that are almost the exact opposite of what you have tried to instil in them? What if they turn out to be manipulative, destructive, controlling and in the end downright evil? How far would you go to keep your faith in that child, continue to defend it and love it knowing that it was capable of committing hideously evil deeds? How do you deal with a child taht knows you are under its control and that you are terrified of it? This book was brilliant and should be read - it's fairly short so there's no danger of it becoming too overboard or tedious adn I guarantee taht the children will freak you out!!!
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