Very odd read, especially if you are thinking it will be like Susan Cooper's famous children's series [b:Over Sea Under Stone|11312|Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising, Book 1)|Susan Cooper|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166468889s/11312.jpg|742]. This is a blend of horror and sf, really: a creeping apocalypse swallowing the world and (unlike Wyndham's cosier apocalyses) much uncertainty as to whether the protagonist will make it through to the end or will also get swallowed.

It's horror because it's implausible, I think; the speed with which the mechanism of the story gets a grip on all concerned is not science fictional in being worked out meticulously, even if a sheen of superficial workings-out is supplied. Intriguing and unusual, I'm not sure it's very recommendable other than as a curiosity.

It's also very much a product of its time. First published in 1964, it is a book written by "the first woman editor of the [Oxford student magazine:] Cherwell" and yet is as male-focused as any Wyndham. More: there are no female characters worth the name until page 114 of a 238-page book, at which point a single female character is brought in, purely as the focus of love and jealousy for the main protagonist. Compare this to Wyndham (again, but the obvious genre-partner for this title), where Josella Playton in [b:The Day Of The Triffids|530965|The Day of the Triffids|John Wyndham|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175569344s/530965.jpg|188517] is active, independent, autonomous. ( )

The most important short-comings of Susan Cooper's science-fiction novel Mandrake are its slow pace and lack of humour. Otherwise, the premise of the story could have been quite entertaining, and of unexpected interest to readers half a century on.

Published in 1964, Mandrake is a science-fiction novel set in the near future, possibly the last decades of the twentieth century, as for example reference is made to a military installation which was built in 1970. In this future world, Britain has regressed, to a relatively primitive society of serfs bound to the land.

The story explains that the British government in the course of the 1960s realized that the world powers crystallized in four blocks, the US, the Soviet Union, China and Federal Europe, and chose a strategy to withdraw into splendid isolation. This strategy was achieved by sending everyone home: aliens were sent home overseas, and the British were sent home to the towns where their roots lay. Through campaigns such as "Guard Thine Own" all British citizens are encouraged to focus on their own land, and stay where they are. The movement leads to abandoned townships, while historical towns and cities are fortified as in the Middle Ages. Strangers, even passing through are attacked and may be killed. Bound as they are to their homes, travel of any kind soon disappears, as do all communication with the outside world, both international and domestic cease. In fact, citizens become so attached to their homestead that leaving their town becomes lethal; people cannot survive outside the boundaries of their own communities.

This peculiar society developed all within a three-year period, although the government claims a decade long preparation. All power rests with the Ministry of Planning (MOP), a sort of Ministry of Homeland Security, which acts like a sinister organization controlling all. To maintain international security the Ministry has built a laser weapon missile shield,capable of destroying any incoming threat. It prides itself on its achievements, drawing a comparison with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. At the head of the Ministry stands Mandrake, also referred to as the Minister. Mandrake, like Satan, no clear first or family names are given, is a sinister character, and for some time there is the slight suggestion that he might be an alien force, of some kind.

The only people who are not affected by the madness are people without roots, of which there are a few, the most important being Dr. David Queston. Queston is an anthropologist, whose experience in the Amazon leads him to develop a hypothesis about what is going on in Britain. His theory postulates that the Earth possesses intelligence and is aroused by human activity. The angered Earth want to obliterate mankind, and does so through earthquakes and swallowing up people in fissures and collapsing caves.

The Ministry first tries to win Queston to work with them, but as he refuses it confiscates his work and tries to track him down. Staying out of the hands of the ministry, Queston travels all over Britain, witnessing various strange excesses of the cult that hold Britain in its grip. A threat a great as the Ministry's men is the Guild of Women, an organization of women which has sprung up in every town. In Gloucester, Queston sees how a congregation of women of the Guild is destroyed in an earthquake which collapses their underground meeting hall.

Eventually, Queston is captured and brought before Mandrake. Mandrake ridicules his theory, and reveals what is going. Mandrake refers to other scientists work claiming that reality is shaped by ideas which exist in a huge collective subconscious, into which all individuals, particularly mediums can tap. This continuum also explains for ghosts, and other, such supernatural phenomena. Mandrake claims to have found a way to direct this subconscious. However, individual free minds, such as Queston's, disrupt the continuum, and unleash misdirected, chaotic forces such as storms, earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis which threaten Britain. Therefore, Queston must be stopped.

Even now, Queston manages to escape, taking Mandrake as a hostage. They release Mandrake a few miles outside Oxford, believing him to be dying. Eventually, Mandrake is able to track Queston and his companions down near a military installation in Bradwell. As the two powerful men stand face-to-face, the earth's most destructive powers are unleashed, and evil is destroyed.

As the story of Mandrake is packed with ideas, and relatively little action, the book, a mere 250 pages, is a slow read. It is not clear whether the prolonged isolation of Queston is really functional; it puts rather a drag on the story. This feeling is amplified, as the reader, like the main character is kept in the dark about what is going on till the very end of the novel.

Mandrake is, apparently, known as the "love plant" and the potion made from the root may make drowsy, hence Machiavelli's use of it in his play. Mandragola (The Mandrake). The same reference is found in Shakespeare's Othello:

"...Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."

Other references to the plant mandrake are based on the shape of the root in human form. The mandrake is shaped as a man or the virile parts of a man; it is an described as an android appearance which is germinated without the concurrence of women (created from the semen of a hanged man dripping on the earth). Legend has it that when the root is dug up it sighs, howls and screams in such a frightful manner that it kills all who hear it. (Grimm’s Saga No. 84: "Der Alraun" (= "The Mandrake".)

There are two references to this aspect in Shakespeare:

"Shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth."

Romeo and Juliet IV.iii

"Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan"

King Henry VI part II III.ii

Susan Cooper's science-fiction novel Mandrake is rich in references to this latter aspect. The movement to persuade all British citizens to return to their roots, for instance, and the idea that "uprooting" kills. The Guild of Women, an organization of women sprung up in every town is more significant in light of the legend surrounding the Mandrake, more so because women of the Guild are not exactly in league with the Mandrake in the novel, and are also destroyed by the Earth. However, references are mixed with various other elements.

I was even more surprised to find that there are numerous references to the Mandrake in contemporary literature and even computer games including D.H. Lawrence describing the mandrake as a "weed of ill-omen', Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence.

Susan Cooper wrote just one novel for adults. I guess with Mandrake she had her (misunderstood?) go at phallic symbolism and the receptive Mother Earth. After Mandrake she only wrote books for children.

A somewhat hard to read, but original story, which, although it is largely wrong about our future, still contains some elements, which it correctly predicted, and which are not among those achievements of man to be proud of. ( )