[WPF] The Children of Men by P.D. James 4 stars

[Sue]

People seem to either love or hate this book, with nothing in between.

Definitely a slow-burning, atmospheric novel. A dystopia set in the very near future - or at least it was the very near future when the book was published in 2006. It's set in the very early 2020's, dates that are now all past.

There has been some sort of world-wide disaster that has prevented any babies from being conceived since 1995. Desperate measures have been taken around the world, everything from mandatory fertility testing to human sacrifice. Nothing seems to have worked and now 25 years later the population is aging and is facing imminent extinction

The first two thirds of the book is very introspective, the last third picks up the pace and the suspense quite a bit, but this remains a very slow-moving story and social commentary.

[NancyJ]

This sounds interesting. I saw the movie long ago, and I think I liked it. I just read in another book that the average sperm rate has gone down more than 50% since they started measuring it. Most men still have millions competing for one egg, so it's not as urgent as in this book, but it makes me wonder why. (The study didn't include men who were going through infertility testing, so the drop is even more surprising.)