Bailey's Book Prize book two

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Next out of my Bailey's Prize box came The Power by Naomi Alderman and I didn't have such a great relationship with this book. Part of the problem was probably the 'book hangover' Do Not Say We Have Nothing left me with.  After falling in love with a book so completely the book that comes after it always suffers I find.

The ideas behind The Power all made me think that the book was going to be for me.  All of a sudden girls (and women) get a new power that makes them the dominant gender and the way the world is run gets turned on its head. Sort of.

The premise of the book is that here is a devastating event and all history before this new power is lost, the book presents as a piece of academic research charting what happens in the run up to this event and the resetting of history. It is told from four alternating points of view, three female and one male and eventually all four characters interact.

To say more will spoil the book and I found bits of it very clever, I didn't have a problem with the way the narrator changed so frequently but I never felt like I was a part of the story. This could have been intentional as the start and end do remind you that this isn't supposed to be novel but is a piece of 'academic research' although I confess I did lose sight of  this while I reading.

I also didn't have a problem with the authors idea of how history (and people) would unfurl after such an event. There were also some killer lines, especially the very final one! I didn't like the author writing herself into the book but that is just a personal peeve. I've been thinking about this book for several days and I can't quite explain why this book didn't hit the spot for me.

To be fair I can't say that in the end I really disliked this book, a few days after finishing it I am still turning over the ideas presented and I loved the ideas at the heart of it...but...I also can't say I liked it hugely. It didn't feel particularly new to me and even reading the ending of the main part of narration twice I am not 100% certain quite what happened.  My overriding feeling is that this would have made a great short story.

Oh dear - I really don't like writing about books that don't quite hit the mark for me but I did promise to write about all of the Bailey's Book prize books honestly. On to book three...

Nothing new

Dystopian / post-apocalyptic fiction for teenagers

Looking around the shelves in libraries and bookshops the shelves in the teen areas are full of dystopian fantasy novels - many published (or republished) on the back of the successful Hunger Games series.

I've heard a few people say that this is a depressing trend for books but I don't think it is anything new.  I remember in the late 1980s and 1990s that many of the teen novels I picked up all had an end of the world/ rebuilding after a disaster theme.  Brother in the Land, Children of the Dust and also Z for Zachariah which was talked about in the Guardian recently - although for a different reason.

I've been tidying and cataloguing all of our books recently and I discovered one of these books so decided to re-read it.  I loved this book as a younger reader (although I do think that I originally chose it because I thought it was going to be about aquatic seals!) and as I was reading it last week pages were falling out on me to reinforce this point.

I was surprised how much I remembered from 20 or so years ago, and even now I found it had a slightly scary edge. I was also struck by how plausible the actions were even nearly 50 years after first publication - after a disaster there won't be working computers and mobile phones and so the lack of them in the book didn't jar!

What did surprise me was the lack of explanation in the book, for a children's book there are lots of loose ends and they did frustrate me slightly but I think that this because I am now an adult and want more depth.  The book is well written and as I was reading it I could visualise everything.

I do remember that as a teenager I looked for more books by this author and I did get a bit of a shock as the next Mary Wesley book I read was the Chamomile Lawn - quite a different book!

Dystopian Australian Fiction

A Small Free Kiss in the Dark by Glenda Millard

A while ago a friend in publishing sent me an advance copy of a new teen novel to read. To my shame the book slipped down my to-be-read pile and it wasn't until I got a small twitter nudge that I dug the book back out.

I read it from cover to cover on a train journey to London a few weeks ago and it has really stayed with me since I finished it.

I've read quite a bit of Australian kid lit, not trying to be trite but "some of my favourite authors are from Australia" and books from the antipodes can sneak their way to the top of the pile just due to this quirk.

A Small Free Kiss in the Dark was different from the start as it is all about a destructive war, about what we never find out, and the whole idea of bombings, barricades and military fighting in Sydney really stuck out.

I was quickly swept up into the story and read through the book quickly - although I can't recall a lot of the fine details now. It did move me hugely and the twists were unusual and the story a strange mixture of simplistic children's book and hard hitting war novel. It is the unusual premise of a book set in an area that I've visited but in a world that I can't associate with that location that has stayed with me.

On finishing the book I was instantly reminded of the unsettled feelings I experienced as a teenager on reading Louise Lawrence's Children of the Dust or Robert Swindell's Brother in the Land.  These books were about living in the aftermath of nuclear war (a still real prospect during my childhood) and it was the fear that, although unlikely, the happenings in the books *could* come true that haunted me.
A Small Free Kiss in the Dark has that same foreboding - as we are in a time when terrorism or economic crises could cause society to disintegrate quickly and entirely - and that it what has made this book stick in my memory.

As dystopian books are all the rage at the moment this book might do well, but I found it very unsettling as it was too realistic, unlike many of the Hunger Games'esque books that are all the rage.