A Wrinkle in the Skin

This is the third John Christopher post-apocalypse novel I’ve read. The other two are The Death of Grass and The World in Winter. I don’t think this one has the power of the other two, mainly because the story is rather simple. And ever so slightly predictable.

Massive earthquakes shake the world. The English Channel drains and our main character trudges across it from Guernsey to England, to search for his daughter in Sussex. On the way he encounters various characters; some good, some bad, some deranged. Not to mention the almost obligatory bands of ruthless, murdering marauders. 

It’s a good read. But definitely the lesser of the three.

Except.

For one short passage in which a woman lambasts our 'hero' for failing to understand that while his circumstances have changed – surviving in an earthquake-shattered world – his basic male nature and view of the world hasn’t. In contrast to hers, which has. Drastically.

He, she points out, is a man, getting on with things. She’s a woman and, like all other women in this ruptured new world, has become a chattel, a vessel, property to be claimed and used as men see fit. To be taken advantage of, whether she permits it or not.

It’s a speech of rage and fury that burns up out of the pages with all the ruthless, unsettling intelligence John Christopher could bring to his stories. (See The Death of Grass.) In this age of Ripley and Buffy and other female action heroes, such a speech, such an attitude, might now seem old-fashioned and out-of-date. 

But then I think of Jeffrey Epstein and the poisonous shadow he’s cast over our (modern) world, and I wonder.