The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

Recovering from eye surgery that has temporarily left him bandaged and effectively blind for several days, Bill Masen is surprised when the usual routine of hospital life, usually so regimented, is broken. Impatient for both his breakfast and for the bandages to be removed, his irritation soon moves to concern - as he concentrates he notices almost no street noise, no bird song, and crying from the rest of the ward floor. When he boldly removes his bandages (relieved to discover his sight has fully returned) and investigates, Bill discovers that he is one of only a handful of sighted people left in London. The night before a spectacular and unprecedented meteor shower attracted the attention of everyone able to watch, and it seems that in the process it blinded the populace.
Before the crisis Bill worked with triffids, tall plants with tongue-like stingers that can kill, and that can walk awkwardly on three 'legs' - his proximity to the plants, whose origin is unknown but who are widely suspected to be Russian, allows him greater insight into their behaviour, and a degree of immunity to their poison. Bill is the first to realise that the triffids are taking advantage of the blindness, killing and devouring humanity at an unprecedented rate.
I was aware on this reading, as I certainly wasn't on my initial reading when I was a teen, of how clearly the era it was written is present in the text. Some of these are inevitable reflections of the era, like the presence of the Cold War and the mysterious blankness of the Soviet Union are so strong as to almost be characters in their own right, and the presentation of women; though this is to some extent addressed by one character, the image of at least some women as parasitic and decorative is uncomfortably present when contrasted with more contemporary fiction.
Other dated aspects could have been avoided has Wyndham been aware that his work would still be popular half a century after its publication, elements like currency references ("I myself had not been one of those addicted to living in an apartment with a rent of some two thousand pounds a year") and the snatches of song that both serve no purpose and anchor the decade, such as: like

I [was] twiddling the stem of my glass and listening to the phonograph in the other pub churning out the currently popular, if rather lugubrious, ditty:
"My love's locked up in a frigidaire,
And my heart's in a deep-freeze pack.
She's gone with a guy, I'd not know where,
But she wrote that she'd never come back.
Now she don't care for me no more,
I'm just a one-man frozen store,
And it ain't nice
To be on ice
With my love locked up in a frigidaire,
And my heart in a deep-freeze pack."

That said, The Day of the Triffids is post-apocalyptic SF classic that has in many respects barely dated in the almost fifty years since it was written. The central character is strong and engaging, the crisis is unique and fascinating, and the plot trajectory is strong and holds up after all this time. This is at least the fifth time I've read The Day of the Triffids, and each reading is fresh and interests me anew. There is romance, suspense, danger, intelligence, contrast and, as is the case in all great novels, I am every time left to ponder how I would fare in such a situation. There's a reason why this was known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and why Wyndham's reputation persists long after his death. - Alex