The Plants

by Kenneth McKenney

It is the most stupendous summer England has ever known. Long hot days relieved by refreshing showers transform the country into a garden of paradise. In the little village of Brandling, vegetation is growing in lush profusion. Gardens are thriving. But the people of Brandling are not. They are being stalked, strangled, mutiliated by...The Plants!

Genres: Horror, Science Fiction, Fiction, Plants

246 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Jon Von · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure why this book has such a low rating because it’s a charming British oddity. It’s a bit like the eccentric small town folk in an Agatha Christie book transported to a 50s monster movie about killer plants. And I do use killer plants loosely, as they really only kill a couple people in ways that, in retrospect, seem pretty avoidable. They’re really more psychic than anything. It’s about plants becoming self aware and thinking, the humans aren’t properly appreciating us, and turning into ominous sunflowers and threatening hedges. It’s silly, but there’s an interesting sort of 60s listen to the earth vibe that’s given a surprisingly spiritual treatment. And the dialogue is either smartly represented small town vernacular or absurd b-movie nonsense. The heroes immediate jump to “the plants have turned psychic and are turning on us because we don’t appreciate them” awfully quick in a way that’s actually kind of funny. It may all be slight but it has a nice atmosphere, it is kind of spooky at times and the pace is pretty good. The ending is sort of underwhelming hippy dippy stuff but I found a particular sunflower related image striking. So yeah, if that cover grabs you, then by all means give a go. Worth every cent of the two dollars I spent at the local used bookstore.

[Coral · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Plants was terribly boring. The writing was okay enough, but the plot and the characters were so one dimensional, I couldn't give a shit whether or not they were in mortal danger.

[Ami Morrison · Rating 1 out of 5]

Originally posted on the book blog Creature From the Book Lagoon.

Oh man! The premise for this story is right up my alley! Plants are out to get humans. Why are the plants rebelling? Because they are tired of humans destroying the planet! I love that kind of stuff! And just look at that cover! So cool!! I couldn’t wait to read this book.

Starts off pretty slow. The first 6 chapters don’t really do much… Mostly just people saying the weather is weird and a squash growing really large. Ok. That’s cool… We are slowly moving along, building up how something is just not right in this town. Cool, cool. I don’t mind the slow build because I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, the storm to break…

And…

It never really does. Man, this book was way too slow. It never felt like we got anywhere! It felt like the plot just kept moving in the same circles and never really progressing much at all! Again and again the main characters just kept repeating the same info dumps over and over again while sprinkling in a lot of overly preachy social commentary about environmental concerns.

Holy cacti was The Plants boring AF! Wow. Not a high body count, not much crazy carnage at all. The majority of the book the plants just stood there and trembled in warning. And…….. NOTHING! Nothing really happened! Sure, a few people die through the book, but the plant action was super underutilized! Extremely disappointing! 😦

Along with the super slow-goes-nowhere plot, you have the vaguest explanations ever. Like, this whole side story with Dr. Martin. He is doing an experiment on bean sprouts to see if they can remember things. The doctor has them on a tray, with these flashing lights above them. The lights are flashing in a sequence order. He is tracking to see if the bean sprouts can figure out the correct sequence of the lights coming on. Er….. Ok. Some how he figures out that not only are the bean sprouts guessing it correctly, but now they are starting to predict the colors in advance, which leads the good doctor to the conclusion that the bean sprouts can now predict the future and that they are telepathic. Uh….. Do what now?? So the author doesn’t explain how the doctor figured any of this shit out. It was so vague and ultra convoluted that it just left you feeling kind of confused as to what was going on. If you don’t want to explain something, that’s fine, but you can’t just start making insane leaps in logic without some sort of follow up or explaination as to how you got there!

Let’s talk about the dialogue real quick. Yowie wowie! It was so….unnatural. It felt stilted and forced. None of it had any sort of flow to it. It made me cringe and it didn’t help you feel any great connection, empathy, or warmth towards anyone. The tone is just all over the place! One minute we are all panicking, the next minute we are basically sitting down for a beer and a calm chat. Then we are all angry and yelling. Next second we are scared. It just felt so inconsistent and this sort of thing just made it frustrating and no fun at all. All that tension you built up in the first half of the book is just gone by this point.

The characters aren’t much better. I legit don’t know what is going on with half of these characters. Like, what the hell is going on with the main character and his wife? They don’t like each other most of the book, but it’s not adequately explained ( just like everything else in The Plants), and just leaves you really confused about what’s going on.

This was just…. yikes! I was so sad that it turned to to be so…. not fun. D: I had been looking forward to this for a while and was so disappointed… and I’m an extremely lenient reader. I can over look a lot of things… but this… It was… Hard. To. Read. D:

[Warren Chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

1976. This was written by a former geologist turned advertising executive, his first novel. The book is a take on global warming, positing a world in which the plantlife is sentient and tired of humans messing up the planet. They choose a small village in the U.K. to take over, to try to communicate with the residents, and get them to wake up the rest of the world to the problems of industrialization and the disposable nature of consumerism.

The book has some decent characters, but is didactic to a degree that became tiresome quickly. I grabbed it for a buck at a Goodwill Book Store. They had a bunch of 70's/80's obscure horror and science fiction paperbacks that I raided and this was one of them.

[Nigel S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first five chapters are about a squash for f---'s sake. Oh, excuse me, an EVIL squash: "They were beginning to feel its presence like fear." Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha! Duh. I can't believe the scariest plant the raging hack who wrote this could think of was a squash.

More here:
http://www.mrsatanism.com/books/plants.htm

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this years ago and it stayed with me. I was overjoyed to find a copy through Abebooks.com and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm a huge fan of gardening and plants and found it chilling.

[Ralph Pulner · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very fine example of quaint horror. Very British, completely ridiculous, slightly charming? Oh my word; hits you quite on the nose about the state of the environment.

This reminds me of a moment in time, the early eighties. If you were a kid in this early decade you can probably connect in some way. Late afternoon, lazy weekend horror on the TV. Whatever aired on that one channel (56) I wasn't mature enough to really get what's going on but somehow it stuck with me. Plants really captured those moments.

It's something that itches at those memories of movies I remember watching at a young age. I have long since forgotten the name, the plot and the end. There's still an essence of the moments, right? A ghost wandering the halls of our memory.

I would not, not recommend it. Especially if that feeling resonates with you.

[Adrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sleepy Somerset village in the English countryside, but what if that countryside turned... evil. Yes, the green and pleasant land becomes a mean and unpleasant place. The rolling hills could roll you straight... TO HELL! Enter a copse and leave as a corpse!*

But it's not actually that horrific despite the cover and blurb. More 70s eco folk horror. Decent though. If a little sleepy.

* I was proud of this one

[Vfields Don't touch my happy! · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book in a hotel room on a Las Vegas vacation. It was a very 'old school' horror story but it was entertaining. There were some seriously creepy moments too. It was like going to a B-movie on a rainy summer afternoon. Rain, plants, oh my!

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sort of typical British horror novel. It's rather subtle and mild but still has some chilling scenes. I liked it pretty well.

[Cassandra Glissadevil · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0 stars
Fun read. I wouldn't go out of my way for a copy, but if you find it in a bargain book barrel. Dig it!
Good but not essential horror.

[Christopher Miller · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this about 25 years ago, and thought I'd give it a revisit. My only memory of the book is was one time when watching a movie with friends I kept waiting for this scene where some vines growing in seed trays in a lab come to life and attack a guy, then realizing that doesn't happen in the movie, I was thinking of a scene from this book.
As I started off I thought it would be a three-star for sure. It reads like a low-budget 50's radiation scare movie, and I mean that as a good thing. A big squash isn't scary but it could be a decent start to a slow burn.
I did note the weirdly inserted Christian trivia about Brandling, where it takes place. Joseph of Arimathea went there after the crucifixion? From Jerusalem? Is that going to be important? (No.)
Then the explanation and plot start moving along almost exclusively through leaps of intuition of the characters. "A rose bush pricked your neighbor? Obviously, the plant kingdom is psychically united and disapproves of our treatment of the environment on a moral level!" "Why, that was my conclusion as well, I just thought I was going crazy!"
The dialogue is repetitive and unnatural. Characters are always referred to by their first and last name, like 5 or more times per page. The plants' abilities are never really defined. Sometimes they just grow quick, or move a bit, or move a lot, or blast someone across a lawn with a zap of electricity or something. Or communicate with rustling leaves, or telepathy.
The leaps of intuition are relentless. By the time the wise old man character is telling the barroom that there's going to be a "sign" because "he knows there will" I was pretty much done. The overtone goes from hippy to Christian, and the phrase 'alpha and omega' is shoehorned in several times. It's so annoying I won't even keep it for my strange specimens shelf. The plants want a blood sacrifice too, the main character's little girl "knows it."
So some sunflowers eat an old woman (or something, super unclear about that), and everything's just jake after that.
Also, that scene with the bean sprouts erupting out of the seed trays never even happened, must have been a dream I had. I probably fell asleep reading the book back in the day.

[R.L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

English review below the Greek one...

Εντάξει, 4 αστέρια θα μου πείτε; Το βιβλίο μάλλον παραπέμπει σε καλτίλα, τρασίλα, υλικό για Β movie, αλλά είχε την πλάκα του κατά κάποιο τρόπο. Αντανακλά τις οικολογικές και πνευματικές ανησυχίες της εποχής που γράφτηκε, οι χαρακτήρες και η πλοκή στερούνται το βάθος ή την αληθοφάνεια που θα είχε ένα πιο σύγχρονο ή ποιοτικό βιβλίο και για να είμαι ειλικρινής το βιβλίο ήταν αρκετά γελοίο για να σταθεί σε σοβαρή κριτική. Ωστόσο το κεφάλαια είναι μικρά και διαβάζεται γρήγορα κι αν έχεις ανάγκη για μια παλιομοδίτικη διασκέδαση, είναι απολαυστικό μέσα στην ηλιθιότητά του!


The Plants was first published on 1976 I think and somehow it feels a bit vintage or cult-ish or material for a B movie, featuring small chapters and a bit superficial characters and a plot which to be honest is kind of ridiculous. It lacks the more indepth character development of modern novels or much analysis on the events described, but it's very fast-paced and pretty cool if you are on a mood for a bit of old-fashioned stupidity: )

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good ear for dialogue. And not much else.

[Scott Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure what I expected but to me this reads like a cross between the film “The Happening,” by M Night Shyamalan and one of the stories in “Dr Terrors House of Horrors”

Not a bad book at all

[Andy Bridg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming, campy botanical horror. Absolutely exactly what you expect is what you get. Thoroughly enjoyed as a plant enthusiast lol

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book about murderous plants, this sure was uneventful. Very repetitive and boring. Read the Ruins for a good plant horror novel or Harvest Home for rural village horror.

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fast-moving read that took me in an unexpected direction. Well-written too. I recommend this one, but don't bother if you want a gory apocalypse tale. This is far more British.

[Finn Williamson · Rating 3 out of 5]

good start, boring finish

[Kayla Whitter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally posted at apaperarrow.com.

TW: Violence, death, fat phobia

I picked up The Plants at a thrift store recently for a quarter. It looked like a fun, short vintage thriller so I decided to pick it up and take it for a spin. The description compared it to Jaws and The Birds, but you know, about plants. Yes, those live, green, leafy things.

In a small British town, a man lacking a green thumb grows an eleven foot squash overnight. The town is shocked and confused. Meanwhile, the local newscaster, his little girl, and the town "kook" think there's something more to the mysterious vegetable. As a scientist does research into the phenomena, the town's on edge as one of its own is found dead in the street. Weird things are certainly happening in the small town of Brandling, and the townsfolk are ready to find out what it is that's going on.

First thing's first - this book is definitely a product of its time. There's a lot of fat shaming, and other little things that are reminiscent of the time. (Which is also some of the things that bothered me most about Jaws.) Outside of some problematic ideas, the book actually wasn't so terrible. It was corny, that's for sure. But the theme is actually pretty smart - it's about climate change, which is obviously an important topic today. But this novel was written over 30 years ago. So I enjoyed the relevant theme from an older novel in line with the classics. I'm actually really surprised this novel isn't a well-known one. I could've seen it in line with some of the bigger 80s horror novels and films.

"Don't you see? A lack of respect for the world we live in in the end indicates a lack of respect for ourselves." - The Plants, Kenneth McKenney

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The plot was really great, though the story wasn't executed perfectly. The writing isn't the best, by any means, but the point gets across. Plus it's super short, so it's a quick and easy read.

[Xssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

for a 1970 book, very modern with its warning to be nice to mother nature or else. an ok read. read it a long time ago.

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Killer plants take over. Entertaining.