Sharon: It might be a good book to start with but it is not at all the typical PD James novel. Her usual genre is murder mystery (and her main sleuth is Adam Dalgliesh, a Scotland Yard homicide detective who grew up a PK and moonlights as a poet. Really!). The Children of Men is not a mystery but a dystopian novel in which, inexplicably, all women become infertile. The last generation (last year) of children born (called the “Omegas”) become a pampered, protected and increasingly demanding lot. The social order collapses as people become increasingly hopeless. Both crown and parliament are replaced by a dictatorial “Warden”. The Church of England survives in a Pagan form. Suicide is rampant and even officially encouraged for the old and weak. Meanwhile the search is on, through compulsory fertility testing, for a fertile woman who could prove to be the hope of survival for the human race. Sex becomes a duty and a chore and most men soon lose interest in it, prompting the authorities to set up a “Ministry of Pornonography” to ensure that couples will be aroused enough to at least try to procreate (it doesn’t work very well). Through her story the author clearly expresses her concerns for an increasingly nihilistic West (Britain in particular).

I am agnostic on the subject of “book-before-movie-or-vice-versa”. I hated reading The Lord of the Rings (sue me!) but loved the movies. In this case I would read the book first becase I expect that James’ pro-life message, very strong in the book, is likely to be watered down by Hollywood