Thou shalt not covet

It's been quite a few days since I finished reading The Power by Naomi Alderman. Over a week or so, actually. So why did I wait so long to review it?

Apart from being lazy, I actually wanted some time to digest it. I've been very much looking forward to reading this book, but I thought I was in for some juicy dystopian literature with a slight tendency towards young adult (YA) fiction. I certainly wasn't expecting anything heavy. Well, there you go.

The Power imagines a world not too different from ours in its set-up, but girls and women all over the planet are beginning to wake up to a new power they possess: electric currents under their skin, coming through their fingers, manifesting in (literally) shocking capacities. What happens when women suddenly represent the stronger sex? What happens when they take over?

What did I like about it?

I love the fact that the premise behind The Power is so simple, yet so brilliant. So what? Girls can now win fights. But as the plot develops along the usual axis - religion, military, education - it is quickly becoming clear that it's no utopian quick-fix for the patriarchy.

It is also brilliantly dark, building tension throughout. We follow several different characters and their stories, and as we get to know them so the plot unfolds on several lines, to connect towards the end and make for an even darker ending that left me a bit open-mouthed. I think a large part of this is well-crafted present tense: "Mother Eve speaks slowly and carefully. Mother Eve measures her words. Nothing that Mother Eve says is without consequence."

It reads like a prophecy, like absolute certainty, and I do think this contributes to the weight of this book. Yes, timely, yes, #MeToo, all that stuff - but had it been written decades ago, it would feel just as relevant. It is an idea for a new world order, resting on one 'small' change in our society. It's brutal, too, and makes for quite heavy reading at times. Which is probably why the Guardian deemed it 'an instant classic of speculative fiction'. As Becky Chambers once famously said, there's an assumption that "if it's a grown-up story, it has to be dark".

What was I not massively fond of?

I think it's a shame that the author created a framework around the story. The book opens with an exchange of letters between someone called Neil from the Men Writers Association and someone called Naomi... whom we assume is the author, no? So it gets a tad confusing when this turns out to be a fictional exchange, set in the world that is being described in the book (which I totally did not pick up on until the very end).

Also the illustrations: artefacts proving the 'history' of this new world order. I don't think they were needed at all - if anything, these are the reason that some people think of The Power as straight-up YA fiction. It's a shame, because it's an adult picture in a YA frame.

Writers, trust yourselves. This is a great novel. It doesn't need crutches.

Finally, while some characters, I felt, got all the development they could need and more, some of them felt very shallow. In particular, for me, Roxy was one; I could not picture her as anything else than fictional, with her cockney accent and her devil-may-care attitude. That doesn't mean I didn't like her - but while the others sped ahead, I felt she was a bit stranded.

Overall...

Because it's well-written and because it decidedly explores some very dark concepts, of course I was a sucker for this book. Yes, it has some simplistic elements, but in the world of dystopian or speculative fiction, it definitely stands out for me for being firmly rooted in reality and creating a chilling image.

I wanted to say 'deliciously chilling', but you know what? It's scarier than that. It's not delicious. It's bitter as f*ck.


7/10

... And I knew there was no help, no help from you

In my very first post on this blog, I already had my mind set on this book. Remember?

After reading my very first self-help book this year (You Do You by Sarah Knight) in a moment of weakness, I was hoping for nothing short of a total mindset change. I thought the book sounded so good, surely it would boost my confidence, give me permission to live life to the fullest, achieve total zen and all that. ... Not quite.

Marianne Power was already well-read in the self-help universe when she set out on her project of reading 12 self-help books in a year and following them to the fullest, to test whether they would really help her change. Help Me! is the recounting of the year (and a bit), and the result was really quite surprising and not at all what I expected. There is a dark side to all this self-help stuff... and Marianne explores it there and back again.

What did I like about it?

The most loveable aspect of this book is that it's clearly an honest account (to the extent a book can be - sometimes names and timelines need to be changed for the sake of a good story, of course). Marianne doesn't shy away from describing how she felt in any given moment - what she worried about, how things terrified her, what decisions lay behind other decisions. To give you a taster, she goes from skydiving through making 'vision boards' to bashing pillows with baseball bats. Quite the spectrum, wouldn't you agree?

It turns out it takes a certain bravery to do as much digging as she does in our own heads. It can mess with your mind quite a bit - you pick at thoughts and feelings you're very uncomfortable with, and aspects of your personality you didn't even know existed. It's quite a fascinating exploration of how layered people really are and what happens when we force ourselves out of our comfort zones, both physically and mentally.

Marianne's writing feels very familiar to read. While I'm not overly fond of 'yay' and the overuse of exclamation marks (which she admits to, by the way), I do think her enthusiasm at little successes comes out clearly, which works. She succeeds in involving us in the story, which is key for something so personal as this.

There were also sections that really resonated with me. Rejection therapy, for example - the idea of getting rejected on purpose every day to kill our fear of rejection. Also muting the negative mantras in our heads that play all day, every day without us even noticing. Every morning, the minute I swing my feet out of bed, my brain jumps to: what did I have for dinner again? How big is my tummy today? How much do I need to exercise to get rid of this fat? How can I be so fat again?... Maybe that's something to work on.

What was I not massively fond of?

For me, there was a point that I think would have made the perfect ending, and I almost wish Marianne had finished the book there and then. The arc of the story starts upwards, then drops very suddenly, climbing back up slowly in what feels like the recovery and reconciliation. But then we get another low, and another climb, and a few minor ups-and-downs still, which - although they make sense story-wise - I think kill the momentum.

Sometimes, the writing felt a bit too cringeworthy for me. I think that non-fiction can get away without descriptions like "It had been raining that morning and the grey concrete was damp. Clouds sat heavy in the sky". I also know it's very human to get high on revelations, and in those moments to have embarrassingly silly thoughts like "I'd like to be those trees, I thought. I bet nothing bothers them," but I still winced at these moments. These thoughts, to me, felt fluffy like Disney-clouds and after everything Marianne had experienced in that year, I would have thought she'd be more down-to-earth.

Overall...

I was in two minds throughout this reading experience. On the one hand, I knew this is what being human is - constantly having new revelations, thinking we finally figured it out, then being disappointed again and again. We get stupid things into our heads, believe in them then throw them away in search of something new.

On the other, I judged. Hard. And I feel bad about this. I am the type of person who can't help not feeling for someone who spends thousands of pounds on expensive retreats in search of themselves, only to come back not having found anything. When I feel lost and depressed, I exercise, I feel sorry for myself for a short period then shake myself and go at it again. But then, I am not (yet) seriously prone to depression and I am also quite young. So I guess it's easier for me.

One thought that really stuck with me though: "I realized then that you can't love others when you're busy hating yourself. It's just not possible." One to remember for me especially.

It's an interesting read and the outcome is not at all what I expected. I'll tell you one thing though - I will not be buying another self-help book anytime soon.

6/10