Trouble With Lichen by John Wyndham

I’ve never read any John Wyndham before, though I have seen Little Shop Of Horrors, which I belieeeeeeve is a loose adaptation of his smash hit The Day Of The Triffids, though it might not be, I honestly don’t know…

Right, so, yeah…

I found this cute little vintage paperback edition of Trouble With Lichen in a secondhand bookstore in Canada recently, and (as this happened before my new life stage of not/hardly working) bought it.

I picked it back up home in London and flooooooated through it – as I have most books I’ve read over the last few weeks – over two consecutive days with a couple of hours dedicated reading hours in the middle of the night, rocking and cooing to my infant, teething, baby.

Yes, my often peaceful baby is now sometimes raucous in the night, which is a pretty fair response imo as chunks of bone are pushing their way through his tiny baby gums and he lacks the adult, cognitive, ability to gain an understanding of what’s happening and thus an ability to compartmentalise the pain, or at least politely ask for Baby Calpol in a short sentence, rather than in pitiable moans. Oh, Whamathan!

Most of the time, though, he has a great time. He does seem to love life! He didn’t get that from me! (He got it from his other biological parent.)

I sometimes read aloud to the baby when I’m comforting him at length, and rather than choosing to read books aimed at his age range (most of which tend to have verrrrrrrrry linguistically simple text, sometimes only a sentence or two per page with huge illustrations), it makes a lot more sense for me to read something that is aimed at an adult readership, too, so I don’t fall asleep with him in my arms and in the middle of the night. (That is bad parenting practice, they say! No “co-sleeping”!)

I hit a big barrier with reading this book aloud, though, because I have absolutely no idea how one is expected to pronounce “lichen”, which – as you can maybe guess from its inclusion in the title – is a keyword in this novel.

Rather than it being an adventure type thriller – which was what I was expecting given my vague understanding of Day of the Triffids and my belief that [John] Wyndham was someone who wrote sci-fi slash horror type things – I was surprised to discover Trouble With Lichen is actually far more of a satire, focusing not on the sociocultural repercussions of a scientific breakthrough, but rather on the interpersonal drama between scientists and their oppositional opinions on how, when and where to announce a discovery and whether or not to (slash how to) benefit from it commercially…

The discovery is a compound (produced from a rare Chinese lichen) that arrests the process of aging in the human body. While one of the discoverers wants to market it as a beauty treatment, the other one is merely interested in using it to exponentially extend the lifespan of himself and his immediate family, which he begins doing without their consent or knowledge…

Ultimately, then, Trouble With Lichen becomes a comedy of manners, filled with excerpts from magazines and newspaper articles and political speeches, as the knowledge of the world-changing discovery slowly leaks out…

Crime syndicates become involved in attempts to learn the source of the lichen, and false rumours circulate about its origin being in Irish seaweed, and the rumoured discovery only starts being taken seriously once pensions providers and life insurance companies become aware of the possibility of extended life and realise this may well affect their businesses. From this speculation, the secrets and the ambiguity collapse, even after one of the protagonists has got the wives of senior MPs and British millionaires (the equivalent of billionaires at the time of the novel’s writing) hooked on the product without their knowledge…

It’s a fun novel, sure, but ultimately it is very slight social satire about attitudes towards scientific discovery in the 1960s… and as a literary text it doesn’t do itself any favours through the repeated, patronising, use of phoneticised speech for anyone with a non-southeastern English accent…

It’s a funny idea, and it’s engaging, yes, but the characterisation is pretty shallow, the narrative isn’t super engaging and though it’s an absolutely serviceable novel to be reading half awake at 2 am, sitting down to read it anywhere other than in that setting felt a bit… defunct.

Trouble With Lichen doesn’t require much meaningful attention to enjoy it. And that’s fine!

Sometimes, that’s fine!

“Middlebrow fiction” is probably the best way to describe it, which doesn’t mean it’s shit… it just means it isn’t electrifying, urgent or essential. (As all books in the non-secondhand bookstores seem to be now, innit innit harrumph harrumph!!!)

Also, the novel never explains how one is meant to pronounce the title, which I found unforgivable.

Fine, but unmemorable…