The Midwich Cuckoos
- 220
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
“The Midwich Cuckoos” turns a quiet English village into the scene of a deeply unsettling alien intrusion. After one lost day every woman in Midwich is pregnant, and the golden-eyed children who follow grow into a threat. Some readers find too much of it given to men talking things over, and wish the women had more of a voice. Others report that the ending keeps its force even when known in advance.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Midwich Cuckoos is a 1957 science fiction novel written by the English author John Wyndham. It tells the tale of an English village in which the women become pregnant by brood parasitic aliens. The book has been praised by many critics, including the dramatist Dan Rebellato, who called it "a searching novel of moral ambiguities", and the novelist Margaret Atwood, who called the book Wyndham's "chef d'œuvre". The book has been adapted for film, radio, and television.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.5 across 107 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 42% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Classics average of 7.7. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.8 | 9 | 8% |
| Hardcover | 7.4 | 98 | 92% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Midwich Cuckoos?
It has 220 pages — shorter than 91% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Classics — with scores between 7.6 and 7.7, closest to this book.
