The title "The Chalk Giants" refers to the huge carvings, often of human figures or horses, which are to be found on the chalk downlands of England; perhaps the best known are the Long Man of Wilmington in Sussex and the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset. These figures, however, only play a relatively minor part in the book.
Like the same author's "Pavane", "The Chalk Giants" is less a novel in the traditional sense than a series of linked short stories. The stories in "Pavane" are all set in an alternative England in which the Spanish Armada was victorious and the Protestant Reformation was snuffed out in the late sixteenth century, although the book also contains elements of fantasy. The stories in "The Chalk Giants" are all set at the time of, or in the centuries following, a nuclear holocaust. ("The Chalk Giants" also repeats certain motifs from "Pavane"; both books feature a lorry-driver as a central character and another important character named Margaret, and in both a crab symbol takes on great significance).
Post-holocaust fiction was a flourishing sub-genre of science fiction during the Cold War, particularly during the sixties and seventies. (This book was first published in 1974). The basic premise was that civilisation as we know it had been wiped out by some planet-wide disaster, generally a nuclear war or a plague, and that a handful of survivors had to try and rebuild the world from scratch. There were also a number of films on this theme.
The first two stories, "The Sun Over a Low Hill" and "Fragments", deal with the actual holocaust itself. Roberts's interest in the subject is not political; there is no analysis of the events which have led up to the war, and we do not even learn which countries (apart from Britain) are involved. Nor are there any descriptions of nuclear explosions, although we do learn that Birmingham and Glasgow have been destroyed. Rather, Roberts's interest is human, and he concentrates on the lives of a small group of survivors who have taken refuge on the Dorset coast, the first story being told from the point of view of lorry driver Stan Potts and the second being narrated by three of his companions, including Martine, the girl he loves. Like "Pavane", much of the book is set in the chalk downlands of southern Dorset, especially the Isle of Purbeck, not far away from Roberts's home in Salisbury.
Roberts then moves on, not to the immediate aftermath of the holocaust but to the society which develops in the years and centuries which follow as civilisation gradually re-emerges from the ruins. The third story, "Monkey and Pru and Sal" is, in my view, the weakest in the collection and does not make a great deal of sense, but the final four are stronger. "The God House" and "The Beautiful One" are set in a society where civilisation has reached a level on a rough par with that of the Bronze Age or the Iron Age, a period dominated by fertility cults and powerful priest-kings. "Rand, Rat and the Dancing Man" and "Usk the Jokeman" are set at a later, more advanced period, comparable with the Middle Ages, with a race known as the Sealanders having many cultural affinities with the Vikings. The second of these stories ends with the coming of a monotheistic, quasi-Christian faith which competes with the existing polytheistic religions.
The main link between the various stories in "The Chalk Giants" is provided by a series of brief interludes about the character of Stan Potts; it has been suggested that the later chapters represent Potts's imagined vision of a future Britain and that the young women who feature in them are all based upon Martine. These individual stories often reveal the power of the author's imagination and display an urgent, insistent narrative drive; there are also some powerful descriptions of a countryside which has reverted to its natural state after the downfall of modern civilisation. Nevertheless, I felt that the book as a whole does not hang together as well as "Pavane", in which the various stories were given a unity by a brilliantly-imagined alternative world and by an overarching philosophical theme.
