Publisher: Viking
I'm going to bash these two together as I know Naomi Alderman needs no intro and I have NO IDEA WHY THE BOOK COVERS HAVE GONE ALL WEIRD...SORRY
The Lessons
This popped up on a Bookbub email and I thought why the hell not and I am so glad I read this book as I bloody well loved it. Especially it had a bit of If We Were Villains and The Secret History about it, two books I thoroughly enjoyed.
The POV as a bloke written by a woman worked perfectly. NA is very adept at adopting voices and personas with skill and confidence. And her writing style in this novel was totally beautiful, no doubt about it.
The story itself is so delicate and natural and I had none of my usual compulsions to try and guess what would happen and how things would work out...which is a big problem of mine and often ruins books for me. The book just flowed and took me with it.
For the characters they are varied and wonderful running from the mundane main man to the total caricatures but all were fab.
And as a final note, this book made me really melancholic for uni...even though my uni experience wasn't half as wild.
The Power
I think I may be one of the only people on the plant that doesn't really like this book.
I was really disappointed to not really like it, especially as I enjoyed the above so much.
I can see what NA was trying to do, I really can, and bravo, it was well executed to an extent. But I felt that the whole Power thing was far too OTT and it just didn't sit with me. It felt a all a bit too try hard.
I for sure get the comment that this book is brining and why it needs to be out there but I just don't think this book was for me.
I did however thoroughly like the fact finding parts and the start and end letters.
Cheers
BG
