Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Death of Grass

I kind of hated the abruptness of the ending but the rest of the book was a surprisingly enjoyable read. It was incredibly dark and not for the faint hearted, but it was a good eco-catastrophic / apocalyptic novel.

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uselessreader's review against another edition

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adventurous dark

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Misogyny. So much of it. I am disgusted. The women and girls in this book are really just treated as non-people.

When a woman and her young daughter are gang-raped they are supposed to “just get over it”, “not make a big deal out of it”; after this maybe 12-year-old girl is raped her father ceases to see her as a child and starts referring to her as a woman; another man murders his wife for cheating on him and the other men agree that he literally had a right to, because it was his wife (!); afterwards this same 60-something-year-old man chooses that he is going to marry this teen, he talks to her like a dog and rapes her and everyone acts like it’s only normal; …

There is just so much casual and open and undiscussed misogyny in here, it is disgusting and I did not care for it one bit. It’s interwoven throughout the entire book, getting progressively worse at the end.

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kingabista's review against another edition

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tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

1.0

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skittledog's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

A similar apocalyptic vibe to other 1950s UK books I've read (e.g. John Wyndham), but with a more realistic/hard-science apocalypse that is due to a grass plague emerging in, er, China. Plays with similar themes of personal responsibility vs global morality, and the loss of humanity which may or may not be acceptable for survival. Some of the underpinning themes are a bit less well thought through, though - the author wants to make points about xenophobia and sexism, I feel, but didn't quite actually get round to making them because his own viewpoint was clearly still a little mired in them itself. But an interesting read, and a very small personal version of what surviving the first few days/weeks of societal collapse might actually look like.

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