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This review does not represent the opinions of the general public. It reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the book.
That said, on to the review!
No one really knows where the triffids came from, but no one really cared at first. The triffids proved too useful energy-wise for anyone to consider the inherent dangers of the plants. People knew about the dangers, but no one thought about it until it was too late. One man suggested that humanity would be in trouble if all men lost their sight, because the triffids were too sentient and intelligent to remain downtrodden and generally benign. When a strange meteor shower results in the blinding of nearly every living person, the threat posed by the triffids becomes all too real. Society collapses and humanity, despite its continual striving to recapture what it once had, inevitably reverts to an earlier stage to survive. Bill Masen, a man who survived the night of the meteor shower, does what he can to help his fellow human beings until he's faced with a terrible choice: let a militant survivors' group take over and split the family he's put together, or abandon the land that has been home to him and his ever since he began working it.
The Day of the Triffids (the movie) is probably more familiar than the book. However, I think the book makes a better story than the movie did. I don't know why the producers decided to work with only the basic premise--well, maybe I do--but they couldn't go wrong by being faithful to the text. The text doesn't have quite the same tension-fraught scenes as the movie--a plane doomed to crash or ships cursed to float at sea forever--but there are still the narrow escapes from the triffids to excite the reader's attention. Special effects and moments of extreme tension aren't needed; just a good story told well, which The Day of the Triffids--the book--is.
The author does a good job of showing the many ways in which a collapsing civilization may go. The substantial thorn of having nearly everyone blind restricts the options people can succumb to, but Wyndham sails smoothly over this problem and adds unique twists to accomodate for this handicap. Darwinism--both natural and social--becomes a prominent theme throughout the text, as it should. Clashing personalities and morals are also unavoidable in the grand scheme of things, but Wyndham handles these easily by using each differing code or belief to spawn a new group of survivors. It works very well overall.
I don't usually watch classic movies and then look for the book it was based upon--not recent movies, anyway--but this was one I really wanted to read. John Wyndham's novel differs rather markedly from the movie based upon his work, but I think the novel is considerably better.
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