The Power - Naomi Alderman

 

This was a good read and a sobering, thoughtful vision of a future where the tables are turned.

Young women begin finding they have the power, the ability to send electric shocks from their fingertips.  They can awaken this power in older women and men don't have it.  We're taken through years of a new world order where women are the dominant gender, the ones dictating, ordering, the ones in control and discover what type of world evolves.

It took me awhile to understand the perspective of the book as it starts in some present moment, a man discussing his historical novel with his editor/friend and then into that book that looks back thousands of years to the beginning of the power.  I liked the premise and the way the author makes you think not just in our own life timeframe.

Quotes:

"Nothing that either of these men says is really of any great significance, because she could kill them in three moves before they stirred in their comfortably padded chairs.  It doesn't matter that she shouldn't, that she never would.  What matters is that she could, if she wanted.  The power to hurt is a kind of wealth."

Published:  2016  Read: July 2022 Genre: Science Fiction

The Girl Who Smiled Beads - Clemantine Wamariya

 Sub-title: A Story of War and What Comes After

with: Elizabeth Weil

A very sad tale of a young Rwanda woman who at age 6 was caught up in the genocide.  She and her sister moved from one refugee camp to another over several years before getting asylum in the U.S. The author is a recognized speaker and activist who completed college at Yale and appears happy and successful.  The story reveals her true feelings of loss, anger, fear and distrust as a result of her journey.   A powerful read that left me wanting to know more.

Quote: "Taking care of loved ones in my world was not based on affection.  It was based on the fear of losing them."

Published: 2018  Read: August 2021  Genre: Memoir

News of Our Loved Ones - Abigail DeWitt

A story of a French family torn apart during WWII, told from the perspective of the different family members.  It was hard to keep track of the different story lines, especially if you don't read the book all at once.  I thought it ended elegantly and enjoyed reading it.

Published:  2018  Read: 2019  Genre: Fiction

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana - Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Sub-title: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe

This was a good read for the perspective it provided on life in Afghanistan for women during the reign of the Taliban.  I enjoy history and getting an understanding of countries I've never been to and cultures I know little about. 

The writing was rather trite, not even good journalistic style, which is the author's background.

As the title and sub-title explain, a woman (one of the 5 sisters) supports her family as a dressmaker.  She creates an entire business, producing clothes in their home, employing other women in the community while the Taliban's rule forbade them from any freedom.  The woman, about 17 at the time, went on to become an official in Afghanistan's post-Taliban government working on business development. 

Published: 2011  Read: July 2019  Genre: Non-fiction

The New Odyssey - Patrick Kingsley

Sub-title: The story of the twenty-first century refugee crisis

This book is an eye-opener.  The author parallels the journey of one refugee with the facts and evolution of the massive migration of refugees from the Middle East and Africa.  The numbers of people impacted by the wars and repressive regimes is staggering - hundreds of thousands of attempted to leave their countries for a safer existence in European continent.

The book changed my understanding of the Syrian conflict and others in the region and humanized the people just trying to live and raise their families some place safe and secure.  These are not all individuals who are poor and uneducated, instead they are people like you and me who are caught up in societies being destroyed by tyrants and fanatics, paralleling the reign of Hitler in the 1930's.

The response of European nations that are overwhelmed with the numbers of people seeking asylum creates division and cooperation as they try to address the crisis.

A must read.

Published:  2017   Read: April 2017   Genre: Non-fiction

Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

I finally found a used copy of this book in Anchorage.  I havea copy of The Hours at home, its a recent book and movie that's based on this one and wanted to read Woolf’s book first.  

Written in 1925 after the first World War, the book was groundbreaking in its style, a ever-flowing internal conversation of the characters as they go about one day in June in London. 

Mrs. Dalloway is a fiftyish matron who is hosting a party for her social class in the evening.  She and her guests' musings are woven throughout the day, punctuated by the chiming of Big Ben and other city clocks.  Their intertwined pasts unfold from different perspectives revealing how they came to be the persons they are in the present. It is a commentary on the upper class at that time, internal relfection, and the loneliness created by societal expectations that still resonates with truth for today as well. 

Published: 1925  Read: June 2016  Genre: Fiction, classic

ISBN: 978-0-15-662870-9

A Tidewater Morning - William Styron

I've been in a reading slump lately.  Nothing seems very compelling or read-worthy.  This short book of three stories about the author's youth were well written but didn't leave an impression.  I've been researching for our trip this summer, reading travel guides and maps and planning RV needs.  If anyone has some "you've got to read this" titles to recommend, let me know.

Published:  1993  Read: February 2016  Genre: Fiction (short story)

A Room of One's Own/Three Guineas - Virginia Woolf

I recently had someone inventory all my books which made it easier to see which ones I need to get rid of and which ones I haven't read in so long I can't remember them.

I'd read a fictionalized biography of Woolf earlier this year and though it would be a good idea to read (or re-read, like I said, I can't remember) the author herself, so I pulled this one from the shelf at home.

A Room of One's Own makes the case for a woman of the early 20th century being able to become a writer and be independent if she were to have a fixed income and a room of her own away from the demands of household life in which to write.  Woolf was writing about the educated, upper class women of her time who she saw as shackled by the definitions of a woman's place and restricted from earning an income.  It was originally written as a speech given at a woman's college.

Three Guinea's was written later in 1938 and responds to requests for donations from three separate entities.  In her response, Woolf gives explanation as to why the causes being appealed were related and why her help as a woman would be different from that of the patriarchal expectations of the writer.  It is written almost as a dialogue between herself and the requester and we are invited to eavesdrop.

It was easy to see why this book has endured and its appeal to feminist and pacifist.  Both stories contrast the nature of militaristic (male) society with that of the (peaceful) female one.  Woolf's missteps in only viewing the issue from the point of view of the upper class society to which she belongs but it doesn't entirely distract from her message.

It took some time to read as I found myself pondering if things are that much different these days and if so, is it for the better?


Published:1929 (A Room of One's Own) 1938 (Three Guineas)  Read: November 2015 Genre: Essay

All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr

This bestseller was chosen for the September pick in one of my book clubs.  It's the story of two young people - a blind girl from Paris, Marie-Laure, who is detained in Saint-Malo, Brittany, France near the end of WWII and Werner, a mechanically gifted German boy swept up in the war.

The introduction advises that the walled city of Saint-Malo was bombed almost to oblivion after the Normandy invasion to root out the last of the German army.  Right away, I'm dreading an entire story that's going to end in a city, and presumably it occupants, being destroyed,  But then, we're taken on a hop scotch of time between the two characters building to...the inevitable meeting and tragedy.

I thoroughly dislike the writing style that goes back and forth each chapter between two stories. It's contrived to keep you reading to get to whichever story you prefer.  The author skips around in time too, making us keep track of multiple vignettes that eventually begin to come together the last 50 or so pages.  It's like reading a mystery or a thriller.

The prose *is* lyrical ...but there's an adverb for every verb and an adjective for every noun,  My greatest complaint is that by writing beautifully the author minimizes the horror of the war. It's as if he paints a wash over the reality and defaults to stereotypes of the besieged French and the cruel Germans so he can write a pretty story.  It's just too touching to have a blind girl lose all she loves and too predictable to have a German boy become a mindless solider that does one heroic gesture.

The book jacket has praise from fellow authors, not critics, a warning in my experience.  Too say the least, I didn't like this one.

To complicate things further, there's a sub-plot of a cursed jewel that Marie-Laure's father is given and a German officer is determined to find.  The officer is a caricature of every Nazi soldier.  That's the problem with all the characters, they are too simple, too flat, too predictable.

If you want to read something about living in Europe during a German occupation and the soldier's on both sides, I'd recommend The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.

Published:  2014  Read: August 2015  Genre: fiction