Review: The Power by Naomi Alderman

I don't even know where to start with this book. It doesn't surprise me that it won the Baileys' Women's Prize for Fiction, and I'm also not surprised that I've seen a few reviews by men that hated it. The Power is, at heart, a very female book with a very clear Message, but that in no way detracts from what is also a very compelling story.

Plot summary: All over the world women are discovering they have the power. With a flick of the fingers they can inflict terrible pain - even death. Suddenly, every man on the planet finds they've lost control. The day of the girls has arrived - but where will it end?

So we've got a very basic premise - women can suddenly create sparks from their fingertips, via a skein that has grown alongside their collarbones. A sort-of explanation is provided for why this happened, but that's not really the point of the story. It's more about the societal, militarial, religious and political repercussions of men no longer being the physically dominant race.

What I particularly appreciated about this book is that it follows a different format than it would if the same concept were played out in a sci-fi novel. There's no slow discovery, long-winded explanations or sitting around talking about how weird it all is. We start at the discovery, but then jump forward two years, then four, five, nine and finally ten years, checking in to see how the world has changed in that time. It works so beautifully. The small gaps in time allow the reader to follow developments more objectively and watch as huge consequences unravel.

We follow several different characters throughout the novel:

• Allie, a runaway teen who becomes Mother Eve, the founder of a new maternally-centered religion.
• Roxy, the daughter of a criminal overlord.
• Margot, a female politician aspiring to reach new highs in her career.
• Tunde, a male journalist who is travelling the world and documenting the chaos.

Two further characters are added roughly two thirds of the way through, but that's slightly jarring and I'm not convinced of the need for them. However, on the whole, the changing point of view allows us to watch the consequences in multiple spheres at multiple points across the globe. Whilst I found Margot's perspective the most interesting, Tunde's experiences were incredibly moving at times, as he observed women who had been oppressed for decades finally free themselves and their sisters from their shackles.

"They do not let us drive a car here," she says, "but watch what we can do."
She puts her palm flat on the bonnet. There is a click and it flicks open.
...
There are young women advancing across the centre of the screen, each of them backed by the fire, each of them walking with the lightning. They are going from car to car, setting the motors revving and the engine blocks burning into a molten heat. Some of them can do it without touching the cars; they send their lines of power outfrom their bodies and they are all laughing.
Tunde pans up to look at the people watching from the windows, to see what they are doing. There are men trying to drag their women from the glass. And there are women shrugging off their hands. Not bothering to say a word. Watching and waiting. Palms pressed against the glass. He knows then that this thing is going to take the world and everything will be different and he is so glad that he shouts for joy, whooping with the others among the flames.

I almost cried at these parts. They really affected me and I read in a sort of stupor. The other parts that really made me sick were the reaction of the men to the new state of affairs. It's actually quite well balanced, in that the male gender isn't described to be generally stupid or or evil or even whiny, but the outward reaction of a few is fascinating and sickening. Much like the real world.

The CDC is hiding things from us, Tom says, that's what they're protesting. Have you seen some of that stuff online? Things are being kept from us, resources are being channelled in the wrong direction, there's no funding for self-defence classes or armour for men, and all this money going to those NorthStar girls' training camps, for God's sake - what the hell is that about? And fuck you Kristen, we both know you've got this fucking thing, too, and it's changed you, it's made you hard; you're not even a real woman any more. Four years ago, Kristen, you knew what you were and what you had to offer this network, and what the fuck are you now?

It's not a very subtle book and at times it is very sledge-hammery with the Point it's trying to make. That said, it is indeed a very good Point, and it's not like anybody who picked up a book where one gender develops power abilities really expected a subtle agenda. 

The thing that really brought it home for me, was the fact that The Power is theoretically written many, many years into the future, where nobody can even imagine the world being any different. The concept of men wielding any sort of power is amusing to them, cute, even. Again, not subtle, but it works so, so well, as a lot of the language used echoed familiarily in my head as that usually used about women.

Surely it just makes more sense that it was women who provoked the war. I feel instinctively - and I hope you do too - that a world run by men would be more kind, more gentle, more loving and naturally nuturing. 

Please read this book. It's important. It's enjoyable and accessible, yes, but it makes a very good point about the fragility of the gender identity perpetuated by society and the sledgehammer used to emphasise the point does not detract from the importance.

Read Ellie's review of The Power at Curiosity Killed the Bookworm. 

Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

I don't read contemporary YA. To put this in context, in the last nine years, I have read 963 books for pleasure. Of these, nine were contemporary YA and of those, I actually finished five of them. I even finished The Fault in Our Stars and An Abundance of Katherines, so I'm hardly picky! It's just not my thing. I didn't like teenagers when I was one, so they're hardly likely to have grown on me now that I'm a decade more irritable. The point is, a book of this genre has to be pretty special to make me want to read it, finish it and then actually want to talk about it in a review. I give you - We Were Liars.

A beautiful and distinguished family.

A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

  

Bex made me read this. Well, no, she didn't. But she wrote a post about it when I was bored, and lonely, and near a bookshop, so really she might as well have held a gun to my head, right? 

I actually really liked this book when I started it, even though there's not much (at first) to set it aside from lots of other YA novels out there. Cadence Sinclair and her family visit their private island every Summer. We jump into the story at about Summer Fourteen and everything is pretty much normal. You meet the characters, get a little background and slope around the beach with them for a while. It's still an interesting story and I got quite into it. More to the point, this book has a teenage relationship and I did not hate it.

But then we jump into Summer Fifteen and it all starts to go a bit wrong. With the plot, I mean. The book is still great. Cadence has had an accident... only she doesn't quite remember what that was. She knows that she has horrendous migraines and is now living the life of an invalid, but everything else about that summer is just gone from her memory.

The rest of the book features Cady during Summer Seventeen as she tries to unravel the mystery of what exactly happened to her and I promise you that it's not what you think. I'm struggling here because a lot of what I want to talk about is very spoilery. There's a twist and I have very mixed feelings about it, but this is definitely a book where the less you know going in, the better the book will be.

Let's see if I can dance on the line of vague yet explanatory. When the twist first begins to unravel, it's great. I texted Bex in capital letters just because I had to talk to someone about what had just been revealed. I loved where it was going as I completely hadn't seen it coming and it was perfect. But then I think it almost went a little too far? It seemed to twist one time too many and then it just seemed a little silly. To give credit to Ms Lockhart, it took me completely by surprise (*cough* although that might be because it makes absolutely zero sense *coughs*) and it would be interesting to reread the book knowing what I do now.

It wasn't enough to ruin the book for me, but the point of this book is the GASP!ending. I know it sounds like I didn't like We Were Liars, when I actually really did, but you're kept in suspense for an entire book and then it doesn't quite pay off. I got on board with a slightly preachy protagonist because she accepts her own flaws. The secondary characters aren't very fleshed out, but she only sees them once a year - maybe they're written that way on purpose. It tries too hard to be arty, but hey, that's fine. Arty is nice. SEE!? I GOT ON BOARD WITH THIS BOOK. And then I was ever-so-slightly let down.

Bex is going to murder me.

Read her review at An Armchair by the Sea here.

Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Take a quick look at the girl on the UK paperback cover of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake on the left. Fairly normal girl, right? In fact, she looks a little like my niece. Why then, could I not stop looking at her as I was reading this? I've never seen a more perfect cover though. It's fairly plain and unoriginal, but that girl with the lemons is perfect. I even imagined her as Rose as I read this. I can practically smell those damn lemons.

Plot summary - On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.  

I really, really liked The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. The way Rose comes to understand her special skill is wonderfully described - it's not just the emotions of the preparer she can taste, but also the source of the ingredients, the welfare of the animal it came from or even the state of the farm the food was grown on. Eventually she takes pains to avoid eating food that isn't solely factory made, but even then she is plagued by recognition of various factories.

I could be half aware of the conversation, cutting up the meat, and the rest of the time I was driving truck routes through the highways of America, truck beds full of yellow onions. When I went to the supermarket with my mother I double-checked all my answers, and by the time I was twelve, I could distinguish an orange slice from California from an orange slice from Florida in under five seconds because California's was rounder-tasting, due to the desert ground and the clear tangy water of far-flung irrigation.

Okay, let's get this out of the way - there are no speech marks. Yes, it's a massive shocker and yes, I was truly horrified at the very thought too. But you know what? You get used to it much, much quicker than you'd expect and I'm usually a stickler for conventional formats. It's never confusing and it's always easy to tell who's speaking. If anything, it actually benefits the story as it reads more like someone looking back and recounting their experiences - when you retell an anecdote to a friend, you don't stand there and patiently narrate it like a story, going 'He said, she said' and doing all the necessary voices, do you?

That sums up the entire novel nicely, actually. Instead of a straight-forward linear narrative, Rose 'speaks' as though she were absent-mindedly talking to a friend - it's mostly in chronological order, but every so often she'll jump back to talk about a related story from her past. I liked her though - she's a very realistic younger sibling and disregarded second child. Her thoughts are believable too, or as much as they can be when discussing a magical power in all but name.

Her parents stand out as deep, well-written characters too, although I found her mother to be a little irritating with her creepy obsessing over Joseph, her other child. I didn't like Rose's Dad much to begin with, but as the story progresses and we find out more about her extended family, he becomes a little more understandable. That particular development was wonderful and completely cemented my love for this book.

I'd have liked a little more explanation, I think. Not about why Rose just miraculously has a gift, because hey, I can roll with that. But about... other stuff. And people. That I'd like to talk about, but can't. I don't need Aimee Bender to draw me a diagram in fingerpaint or anything, but I'd like to know about... things. God, sometimes I'm so helpful I even amaze myself.

It's strange, my Dad was varnishing a piece of wood with lemon oil as I was reading this, and now whenever I think about this book I can smell a woody-lemon aroma. Isn't it odd how your smell memory works?

So yes, I loved The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. It stayed in my head for long after I'd finished - the last line is particularly poignant and still resonates now. I really would recommend reading this - I know I'll be buying everything else Aimee Bender has ever written. Ever. 

Visit Aimee Bender's website here, or find her on Twitter.