SOURCE: "Barren Earth," in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 5, No. 221, September 25, 1992, p. 55.

In the following review, Hughes praises the first part of James's The Children of Men as "fascinating stuff," but complains that the narrative of the second section "begins to droop."

The Children of Men is P. D. James' first attempt to move outside the detective novel, a literary form that she has done so much to rehabilitate over the past ten years. It's interesting, therefore, that for this most significant of forays she chose another well-defined genre in which to work. The whole point about a dystopia is that it presents us with a nightmare vision of the future in order to warn about disturbing trends in the present. This is where The Children of Men succeeds magnificently. The year is 2021. In a clever reversal of the usual Malthusian armageddon, the population is drastically on the decline...