Maybe so, but I would argue that not caring for a single particular novel, regardless of that novel, can’t make one dead to good literature. If someone doesn’t like one of my favorite novels—All the King’s Men, Gatsby, or Moby Dick, for example—they still might be open to novels.

The problem with Day of the Triffids is that it’s pedestrian in form and content; at the front of the chapter that beings “frustration,” one finds a paragraph so unremarkable that it could be from any novel:

The first thing was an ache in my head. The next was a glare when I opened my eyes. At the first blink it was as dazzling as a klieg light, but when I started again and edged the lids up more cautiously it turned out to be only an ordinary window…

Apparently every person in literature has a headache and can’t stand bright lights when they wake up, and this is rendered with no unusual detail that might make it stand out. There was a glare that was not just bright, but like a _really_ bright klieg light: and so what?

If this were an unrepresentative sample, one could call me unfair; but I don’t think it is, and little of the novel is sufficiently, well, novel, or aesthetically interesting, to be worthwhile.

Anyhow, I obviously beg to differ with your perspective, but I do appreciate the comment.

I’m tempted to launch into a long defence of it, but to be honest, reading above… I think I see what the problem is.

Triffids is an exceptionally English book, one of the most English of the postwar period. You discuss the lack of social emphasis and characterisation while this book is actually quite important for the social discussion in it. There is a lot of intensive discussion of class roles in post war British society that I can fully understand being a bit impenetrable to an American, particularly the relationship between Coker and first the university group, and then the mansion. Also, there is a heavy dose of British geography (this story makes a lot, lot more sense if you have a mental map of London to work from) that adds itself on top of the Englishness of the class system.

While discussing later version of this work, it’s probably worth mentioning the recent movie “28 Days Later” which is well documented for being a film version of this book, only with Zombies replacing Triffids… Or for a more direct comparison it should be framed against the literary works of someone like Kingsley Amis…

The stuffyness that seems to be pushing you away from this story was a major aspect of British post war society.

I can’t help but feel sad that so much of this novel went over your head.