The Day of the Triffids

Published in 195I, I read John Wyndham's The  Day of the Triffids decades ago and  taught Midwich Cuckoo in school, so when it turned up at the library reading group, I thought I probably would not bother, particularly as recent choices have included The Goldfinch and The Improbability of Love, both excellent. . Having seen a rather indifferent film version didn't  make it any more appealing. However, once I began, and got into the story, I found it was compelling.
The Triffids are so well known today it's hard to imagine the impact they must have had on a less sophisticated audience back in the fifties. Visualise a rather evil and badly overgrown perambulating pineapple with a kind of deadly whiplash growing out of the top and you have it.  Wyndham's vivid imagination and clear and explicit prose are refreshing. By contrast, pick up a Sunday paper and discover just how much the language has morphed in the last six decades into something almost unrecognisable, and understandable to only the elite few - shades of Clockwork Orange. The precision of the use of language was a delight,  the range of vocabulary, the variety of characters, and the twists of the plot, almost forgotten since the last time I read this book, probably in the seventies, were just as enjoyable this time round.