The Death of Grass is as visceral as it is vivid. John Christopher weaves a spectacular but scientifically grim tale of a pandemic and how it pushes humanity to the brink of its its very existence in a war for survival. The fact I am writing this during the Covid-19 pandemic makes it all the more poignant (one for the future generations).

The tale of John Custance and his battle for survival reflects on all of us. What makes the novel all the more relevant is that it leaves us on a cliffhanger, what's the future of humanity? ( )

This book was written in 1956, over 60 years ago. There's a lot about this book that hasn't aged well (the casual racism and misogyny), but there's a lot that seems every bit as relevant today (the plant-killing virus that can't be controlled). It's got a rather simplistic view of the rapid decay of society, but I don't think that it's horribly inaccurate (although I really have to question the idea of England mercy-killing it's own people with atomic bombs). The purpose of stories like this is to make you question how you'd behave in a similar situation, hopefully with a sympathetic protagonist. Well, I DID question how I'd behave, and it differed quite a bit from John Cunstance. I did not find him to be a very likable character, and I was not impressed by how quickly he would initiate or condone violence.
Speaking of violence - there's quite a bit more cold-blooded killing in this book than I'm used to seeing in books from this time period. There's even some references to rape and infidelity - topics I'd always assumed were, if not taboo, at least considered Not Dignified.
If you're going to read this book - just a quick warning that it starts off DREADFULLY slow until about the 30% point, and then it keeps moving along rather briskly for the rest of the book.
Finally - I've got to point out that the book has a glossary at the back that I didn't notice until I'd finished the book. It has quite a variety of terms that the reader may or may not know, and they give an interesting insight into 1950's readers. Terms that today would not need to be explained ("aftermath","ammo","hybrid","millennium"), but also some words that I'd never seen before and had looked up the definition while reading the text ("concupiscence" (lust and sexual desire), "phlegm" (meaning calm nature, not nasal mucus), "prodrome" (preliminary book or treatise))
Overall, I'd like to give this book a better rating, but the slow start and the not-aged-well parts are going to keep this from getting any higher than a 3 star. ( )

The Death of Grass is essentially a story about the collapse of human civilization. Since the agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago, humanity has been dependent on grass. Wheat, rice, barley, maize - all members of the Gramineae family - grasses. Even meat is grass, with grass being essential for raising pasture animals.

No matter the form is has or the processing it was subjected to before being finally consumed, grass constitutes more than half of world human calorie intake. John Christopher highlights humanity's dependence and voracious appetite for grass by providing a glimpse into a world without grass, and as you might expect - it ain't pretty. As global famine threatens, the thin veil of civilization is quickly stripped away as the world is consumed by hunger, war, and anarchy.

And all it took was a viral pathogen that targets Gramineae, humanity's primary source of calories.

Even though this story was written in 1956, it remains as relevant and thought-provoking as it was back then. Perhaps even more so today than it had been six decades ago. Despite human ingenuity, something as mundane as grass is as much of a mortal weak point for our civilization as it was thousands of years ago. Gramineae is both our food supply's backbone and our civilization's single point of failure, and the book manages to bring this point across this in a grim, bleak way: Humanity is nothing without grass. And if the grass goes, human civilization will follow. ( )

Still powerful. Very nicely written and structured. The characters are not strongly drawn but that is a strength in some ways as it is easier to believe that (almost) any of them could be any of us. Just after reading I visited several iron age forts in Shropshire and was touched by the ebb and flow of people, peoples, and under that the land itself (ancient and complicated geology in Shropshire). ( )

It is the 1950s, and a devastating virus is sweeping Asia. It attacks grass, and grass feeds the world. Wheat is grass. And cows, sheep, etc all live on grass. At first people in Britain watch in horror as it strikes at the wheat supplies in those far-off lands. But the Chung-Li virus could never come as far as England, not without science coming to the rescue. And even if it did, surely British society would cope. Civilization would find a way to ration food and the hold things together until a fix was found, and surely that wouldn’t take too long.

But Europe and Britain do not remain unaffected for long, and in London John begins to wonder if he should take his family across the country and try to make it to his brother’s farm. It is isolated, and the valley has only one entrance, it can be defended.

But what effect will this virus have on people. How long will civilisation hold up under this threat?

This was written in the 1950s, and it really is a book of its time. It was hard to ignore the sexism, classism, and racism. Straight away, once the old order was stripped away, the men took charge. Not even a hint that any of the women might prove useful. And every time a woman showed up she was classified as weak and in need of defence. For the most part they were nothing but wives, an aside to their menfolk. Women and children were constantly referenced as being the same, in need of leadership, protection, and telling what to do.

Likewise the racism was blatantly obvious.

Right from the start the ‘Asiatics’ were referred to as not as civilised as the English. And in such a manner that you could read nothing but racism into it. There was also a mention to the Mediterranean-types, the Latins as being of a temperament that wouldn’t respond well to such disaster.

It is hard to look past those, but at the same time the reader can’t assume that those are the attitudes and beliefs of the author, instead they are the attitudes of the characters, and I am sure that there are plenty who hold similar views today, let alone back in the 1950s.

Books like this one always make me think that I must have a very positive view of humanity. I don’t think that people would revert back to such barbarity so quickly. At least, not all of society. But perhaps I am misguided. I mean, I have never lived through such panic or through a collapsing society. Christopher would have lived through world wars. Maybe he is more accurate than I would like to believe.

Apart from my possibly naive view of people, and the racism etc I have to say that I quite enjoyed this book. It is really well written, a gripping book that doesn’t bother to waste time with anything. It dives straight in to the story and the disaster, but at the same time it doesn’t feel rushed at all. ( )