Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 29, 1993 TAG: 9303290025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANNE VALDESPINO KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The very British P.D. James, 72, is a mother, grandmother and a great believer in the power of womanhood. The first woman to serve as a one of 12 governors of the British Broadcasting Corp., she recently was named a baroness and now serves in the House of Lords.
But first and foremost, she's a master of the mystery novel, who has been pictured on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "The Mistress of Murder."
Her latest book, however, "The Children of Men," isn't a cleverly crafted whodunit in which introspective detective Adam Dalgliesh unravels a mind-boggling murder case.
Instead, "Children" is a futuristic vision of a world in which mankind has gone suddenly and starkly sterile after worldwide sperm counts drop to zero. It's filled with themes of motherhood, the nurturing of the last remaining children, and the struggle to survive.
"Suppose in one year every country - not just Western man - but every culture, every race - the human race - would just cease to reproduce," James said. "What sort of world would it be? A world in which there would be a universal bereavement and loss of hope? . . . We would know we were dying out.
"I thought I'd like to write a novel about that, one day I will. And then I thought, why one day? If you want to do it, do it now. So I settled down and did it."
In the fictional world of Britain in 2021, the Omegas, twentysomethings and the last generation, are worshiped while senior citizens are herded off for government-sanctioned mass suicides. Dolls dressed as babies are pampered, christened and wheeled about in carriages by childless women. Pets are the center of legal custody battles.
While the book is different in content from her previous work, the themes are familiar. Dalgliesh is a highly moral, dutiful detective; the subject of duty and responsibility returns again and again in "The Children of Men."
Britain is ruled by an all-powerful warden whose former adviser and cousin, Theo Faron, becomes part of a silent majority, resigned to its fate.
He's roused from apathy by a group of rebels, at first because of his attraction to one of its young female members, Julian, a former student of his at Oxford. But as the novel unfolds, he begins to rediscover convictions of his own and a desire to participate in a society that needs him.
"I think the book is quite interesting about the difference between people who do take action and the people who are content to be spectators. Julian thinks the warden is evil . . . but I'm not sure he is. At least he participates, he keeps the country going and that's more than Theo or anyone else will do."
P.D. James is no spectator to life. She does her part to run her country. Dubbed Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991, her seat in the House of Lords is an honor she takes very seriously.
She points out that it was not bestowed because of her literary talent but because of her public service. (Among other accomplishments, she championed the Children's Act, which gives adopted children the right to learn the identities of their natural parents.)
One of her reasons for serving smacks of a powerful undercurrent of feminism that underscores "The Children of Men." Women, she says, are underrepresented, in positions of authority.
"When I was first governor of the BBC, I was the only woman out of 12; now I'm one of three. It never worried me. I've never found that I can't hold my own in a male world. I never felt inhibited from saying what I wanted to say, and I've never found it necessary to be aggressive to get my views across."
She makes her feminist point quietly, living an exemplary life as a career woman and parent. James is self-educated. But her daughter has a degree in philosophy and she's a midwife; she helped her mother with research for the book.
Compared to digging up forensic details for detective stories, researching "The Children of Men" was a breeze. It came together quickly partly because James drew on her experience as a young woman giving birth under dangerous circumstances.
"I was pregnant with my first child in 1942 during a very difficult time of the war. I do remember having everything in a case for the birth. I thought if the Germans landed, in case we have to evacuate, I shall have what my baby needs. I'll just have to find a shelter somewhere and my baby will be all right."
Luckily, the child was born in a hospital. But shortly afterward, mother and child were separated every 24 hours in a frightening nightly ritual.
"The bad thing about being in Queen Charlotte's Hospital was the [threat of] bombs; thousands were killed in a fortnight [nearby]. At night the beds were moved out of the wards and put in the corridors because it was thought if the hospital were bombed, they would stand up better.
"The babies were taken into the basement. I can remember lying there and listening to this constant bombardment and praying, `God if you get me and my baby out of this alive, I'll never complain again.' "
She kept that promise when she and her baby survived.
When she decided to write, she simply fit it into her schedule, rising at 6:30 every morning and working for two or three hours before heading off to her job. Her first book, "Cover Her Face," took two years to finish but was accepted by the first publisher to whom it was submitted in 1962.
James plans another Dalgliesh detective story next, but it's not surprising that her only other novel outside the mystery genre also deals with motherhood: The 1980 publication "Innocent Blood" was based on a case in which a child was born to a woman sentenced to die.
It doesn't take much to spark her fascination with motherhood. James lights up when she hears that a photographer is pregnant. "Oh!" she exclaims excitedly, "Is it your first?"
by CNB