Book review: The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

My first encounter with the work of British author John Wyndham was the BBC’s chilling 1981 adaptation of his classic SF novel, The Day of the Triffids, and although I’ve read several of his novels since, I’d somehow never got round to reading one of his most famous--The Midwich Cuckoos, an omission I recently put right.

The Midwich of the novel is a small, unremarkable English village, but everything changes when it is enveloped by a mysterious force and everyone inside falls unconscious. When the stricken villagers awake, everything appears to be normal, however it is soon revealed all women of child-bearing age have suddenly become pregnant. When the women give birth, the children, or the Children as they become known, are all golden-eyed and develop remarkably quickly. As the Children grow, they show signs of accelerated learning—when one of the Children learns something, they all learn—and appear to have telepathic ability.
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Within the village, unease grows into open hostility. And if this is not dangerous enough, it becomes evident Midwich is not the only place in the world to have experienced this weird phenomenon, and fears grow of a hostile alien invasion…  

Cosy catastrophe is an accusation often directed at John Wyndham’s work, and there are moments in The Midwich Cuckoos when this does not feel unreasonable, as without doubt some elements of the novel have dated. However, there’s a chilly undercurrent to the novel and the brutal force of the ending carries real weight. Wyndham masterfully reflects post-war concerns of invasion, infiltration and fears of the consequences of the growing gap between generations.

The Midwich Cuckoos explores the potential consequences of humanity’s relationship with an intelligent alien species, with the main characters struggling with moral and religious questions—is the very idea of killing the Children permissible, even necessary, to protect our own kind? Wyndham offers no comforting answers and the fact the novel plays out its weighty themes in the softest of settings—a quaint, quiet village—does, in my opinion, give the story even more impact.

I wouldn’t rate The Midwich Cuckoos as my favourite John Wyndham book (that would still be The Chrysalids, with The Day of the Triffids as a close second) but I thoroughly enjoyed it as a thoughtful, suspenseful and unsettling SF novel.