Chocky by John Wyndham

John Wyndham (actually John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris) is a British author who seems to be fairly unknown these days. Although The Day of the Triffids (1951) is fairly well known – in fact, the name ‘triffid’ for a large plant has become part of the English dictionary – many of those who recognise the word triffid rarely know the story from which it came.

It is difficult for many to believe that in the 1950s Wyndham was a British bestseller author, the best-selling SF author of the decade in Australia and the UK, which is why Wyndham’s disappearance from SF now seems so unusual. The Kraken Wakes (1953), The Chrysalids (1955) and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) although all very popular in the 1950’s are all less known today. And those who know of these works are less aware that Wyndham was writing – and getting published – more traditional science fiction before he hit the bestseller’s lists. Many of these stories are collected in his story collections The Seeds of Time, Consider Her Ways and Others, Sleepers of Mars and Wanderers of Time.

For me, Wyndham was one of my first ‘proper’ SF reads. Back in the early 1980’s I devoured every Wyndham I could get my hands on after seeing the 1962 movie version of The Day of the Triffids. (The two, by the way, and as I was about to discover, are very different from each other.)

And even then I seem to have missed Chocky. I understand the story was first published as a short story in 1963 in Amazing Stories, and expanded into a novel published in 1968. I’m not quite sure how I missed it.* It is an odd one, admittedly, though it covers themes Wyndham has examined before.

The story is told from a first-person perspective. In suburban England, David Gore is married to Mary with two children. The eldest, Matthew, is adopted, whereas the youngest, Polly, arrived after it seems having children for the couple was impossible.

Matthew, now 12, seems to be a happy boy, doing OK at school. However he begins to have conversations with an imaginary friend named Chocky. David and Mary are worried but feel that it may be just a phase. Polly, when younger, had an imaginary friend named Piff, but seemed to grow out of it and the parents hope that Matthew will do the same.

As the book continues the parents become increasingly uneasy and unsure what to do next. Whilst not wanting to normalise Matthew’s behaviour, or overreact, they consult psychiatrists who are also baffled. The conversations that Matthew has with Chocky are increasingly sophisticated and conceptually beyond that of a typical teenage boy.

At times this leads to arguments between Matthew and Chocky: when David gets a new car, Chocky laughs at Matthew’s reliance on wheels. There are also questions about why there are two sexes instead the simpler alternative of just one. Matthew’s teachers query some of the questions he asks them – his mathematics, science and geography teachers all notice a difference.

Things continue to get worse and worse, until at the end of the book there is the revelation that things are not what the parents expect.

I must admit that in many ways Chocky felt dated. There was radio and record players but no mention of television. David, as the father, felt to me like a caricature father of the 1930’s. Reading what he said as a narrative he felt like a typical middle-class suburban male of the between-wars era – a shirt and tie, pipe and slippers kind of guy. It doesn’t help that David talks to Matthew like something out of the pre-war era, using the phrase “old man” a lot. Considering that this novel came out in the “Swinging Sixties” it does seem out of its time.

Similarly, Mary is like something out of Woman’s Weekly – the stereotypical homemaker, the suburban housewife determined to bring up her children in the best way possible. Whilst seemingly polite and well-mannered, she is fiercely protective of Matthew and this is shown when the parents agree to meet Roy Landis, an acquaintance from Cambridge now specialising in mental disorders, that she takes an instant dislike to.

I’m not sure whether this stereotyping is deliberate, in that such a setting may be meant to make the reader feel at ease by representing middle-class England at its most typical. It may be that because things are so ‘normal’ that when the changes do happen, they are more shocking, although such events are typically understated – part of the British psyche.

Whilst things appear rather mundane on the surface of the novel, at the same time things are surprisingly perceptive. It is unclear at first whether Chocky is a boy or a girl, and David’s attempts to find out result in unclear responses. Chocky on his world appears to have only one sex, though for Matthew’s convenience it is agreed that they can refer to Chocky as a girl.  In today’s 21^st century, gender-fluid society, this discussion is remarkably prescient.

And talking of sex, there is none here, yet Chocky (the novel) is determinedly adult in its depiction of family life, examining issues of suburban life and bringing up children that are recognisable even today. It may therefore be seen as boring to some – this is not a book about alien invasion, spaceships and galactic battles. If I had read this as a teenager, I’m not sure that I would find the events interesting. As an adult it is a different experience.

So: what is there to recommend in this novel? Well, allowing for its age, it is remarkably readable. It flows very well. And whilst it can be accused of being too middle-class, too parochial, too patricidal – “Little England” territory – there are reasons for this, I think.

There are also elements that are subtly unsettling. Wyndham, as he also does in The Midwich Cuckoos, is examining the idea of the stranger within, that children are a mystery to adults nearly as much as adults are to children. And for parents that realisation can be as scary as anything in an SF novel.

There is also the idea of the world-in-peril, albeit in a subtle, covert manner. Chocky is keen to point out that this isn’t the case, but it is easy to see why David and Mary are perturbed. Their lifestyle is threatened, their child is threatened. Perhaps more unsettling is that the work of the psychiatrists, one of our ways of ensuring that everything is ‘normal’, is remarkably unhelpful on this matter. Things that look normal are out of kilter here.

The book therefore often deals with odd things in a way that is rather mannered. It examines ideas Wyndham has tackled before, but gives them a subtle twist.

All in all, this was an engaging read. Not a Wyndham major work, but still one worth reading if you can accept the dated elements from another time. And it has now made me want to go and re-read some more Wyndham!

*Chocky was made into an ITV television series for children in 1984. Must admit, I don’t remember it, although there were three seasons, beginning with the novel but then going beyond.

Chocky by John Wyndham

First published 1963 (short story), then 1968 (novel)

192 pages

ISBN: 0-7451-0059-7

Review by Mark Yon

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