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

This girl is on fire

Recently I've had a bit of a dip in my literary mojo, so to speak. I've managed to pick up two books, one after the other, both of which I had to abandon around halfway through (hence the silence on the blog). One of them was One More Chance by Lucy Ayrton, of which I won a proof copy but I simply couldn't make myself finish it, so much did I suffer; the second one was The Spark in the Machine by Daniel Keown which, in all fairness, was a very good intro to the type of books that I now work with. My only reason for stopping this one is that I don't need to know each acupuncture channel and how they work.

Fortunately, my mojo's back with R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries, which I was already highly anticipating a while back and I was so very right to do so. The New Yorker sang the novel's praises, claiming it was a "rare depiction of belief that doesn’t kill the thing it aspires to by trying too hard" and emphasizing its silences as the novel's most powerful tool - and I couldn't have agreed with this point more.

The Incendiaries is a story about three people, told from mostly one viewpoint, all based at an elite university: Will, our narrator, Phoebe and John Leal. It is hard to pick who's story is the dominating one. The book tells the story of Will's increasing love for Phoebe and Phoebe's increasing draw towards a religious cult, lead by John Leal. It is a powerful mix of love, loss, grief, identity, religion and more than anything, the loss of faith.

What did I like about it?

The first highlight has to be R.O. Kwon's gorgeous prose, which makes this short novel feel like something to be cherished and consumed in small bites, making it last as long as possible. (Conversely, this makes it very hard not to read it in one sitting.) Her metaphors are highly unique while refraining from feeling forced or over the top. She points to John Leal walking across the campus, "His torso riding his hips like a serpent on its coil," and describes the rain, "the lines slanting like marionette strings". Her attention to detail in describing a scene of gathered members of the religious group: "Through a haze of smoke, stars smeared like souls fleeing this fallen earth. The night chill pricked Phoebe's bare arms, as if with pinfeathers, and she felt the rush of flight, lifting up."

The story itself is dark, threatening, painful like something inevitable, and the power of each character's motivation is what really moves it along. Phoebe hopes to replace her guilt and grief for her mother with religion; Will hopes to replace his grief for religion with love. The desperate search isn't described in detail and yet somehow is crystal clear, human in its approach but with a lot left to the reader to think through.

By using abrupt jolts between recent past and the present, Kwon is great at emphasizing the distance and difference between the two - and despite the back-and-forth, the story gradually builds towards its conclusion. We also know from the beginning what we're building towards, and it becomes clear very early on that Will is telling the story from a future point of view. In my opinion, Kwon is showing us the ending so early on so that we can focus on what really matters - how and why the people involved in this tragic ending got there - thereby carving the book beautifully out of a potential 'mystery' or 'thriller' label and firmly planting its feet in literary fiction.

What was I not massively fond of?

I have no negative criticism to share about the book itself.

Regarding the cover though - while I am no designer, as an avid reader and consumer of books, I must declare that I am unhappy with this cover. It is beautiful and I think would work very well for a piece of the above mentioned labels, or women's fiction. But I think that, for this novel, it runs the risk of putting off readers, thinking they're looking at a piece of light fiction, as opposed to the gorgeous, vital piece of literature that they're making the mistake of bypassing.

I just don't feel the relationship between the design and the contents, and I fear it might not do the book justice.

Overall...

Kwon is fantastically talented. This is a stunning debut novel that juggles prose so artfully that I'm actually surprised it didn't make it onto the Booker list (but then again, none of the books I picked from the longlist made it onto the shortlist this year, so more fool them).

It is a complex story, running on so many different layers that my short review really doesn't do it justice. It touches on cultural heritage and family ties; on transforming personalities and the immense power of regret. There are subtle patterns and quietly growing tension - it is simply mastery, and I would urge you to read this book with all my might.

10/10

What's not to love about people?

House keeping: sorry, I've been absent! Sorry I've been absent!

But in the background I was reading through some great books - the most recent of which is Sally Rooney's Normal People.

The first thing people ask if you say you're reading this is 'Oh, have you read Conversations With Friends?' The answer is no, I haven't. In fact, Goodreads reviewers put me off it, overwhelmingly expressing their dislike for the novel. Luckily I only half-listen to comments on social media, and when Normal People was nominated for the Man Booker Prize this year, I was won over.

Things to (apparently) know about Sally: she is the queen of writing down millennials; she is only 27. She is Irish. This latter book of hers has been deemed a future classic.

Normal People, in theory, should be easy to explain. It's an on and off love affair between two people, Connell and Marianne, who meet in school and their lives keep meeting and rebounding off of each other, without really being able to separate fully. But to quote the very book, "So why, despite its factual accuracy, does this feel like a dishonest way of narrating what happened?"...

What did I like about it?

I love to hate the fact that Sally is only 27, because her writing is exquisite and feels so direct as if she sat down and wrote this in one sitting. It flows like liquid: not once did I stop to look up and think 'that doesn't really make sense', nor did I wonder whether any of it was believable. Her style is distinct (not just because she doesn't use the conventional dash to indicate conversation); it's powerful, to the point, almost completely devoid of dawdling or side-lining. She says what she wants to say, and yet it reads like perfect fiction.

She's an expert in using small motions to demonstrate emotional states: "He looks at her, probably knowing what she's doing, and then looks at his own hands, as if reminding himself of his physical stature in the room."

Another thing that nears perfection is her characterisation. Especially Connell and Marianne, but even the supporting characters feel intimately real. The lead characters are complex, intriguing, and most of all subtle: their baggage is revealed slowly, delicately, always lurking in the background but never quite overtly blurted out. And this foreboding, these shadows that only manifest in full form towards the end of the book, make the novel more hurtful to read as one advances. As it improves, it gnaws at our souls, never satisfying us.

The story also runs the risk of turning melodramatic or clichéd, but for the most part Sally keeps a firm foot on the ground. The ups and downs of the girl-boy power play could easily turn boring - the book does span quite a few years - but the variety of these situations, the delicate indications of who is currently winning somehow makes for a fascinating story. Gripping, in fact. There is building tension at all times, and it feels like she's intentionally keeping our hearts just a little broken at any given moment.

What was I not massively fond of?

Very rarely, but there were moments where the inner worlds of the characters got a little too soppy for my liking, such as "He feels ambivalent about this, as if it's disloyal of him, because maybe he's enjoying how she looks or some physical aspect of her closeness. He's not sure what friends are allowed to enjoy about each other," but to be clear, these were rare instances.

Another thing I wondered about is the occasional tendency to show a situation from both viewpoints, one after the other - would it be better if we only got one person's opinion on a given occurrence? Maybe it would have been a bit more of a challenge, but curious as I am, I don't really mind finding out what both Connell and Marianne thought of something.

Overall...

It's hard to sum up this book. It was hard to read in that it was an internally painful experience. It's not a light-hearted story. It's expertly constructed, outstandingly written and seems to have been created with incredibly cool detachment. It's as if Sally is following around her characters with a notepad, observing from a close distance and noting everything down ("pretend I'm not here!"-style).

It's truly astonishing modern literature, and has every right to win this prize.

9/10