Tag Archives: writer: naomi alderman

The Future, by Naomi Alderman

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Will, her late husband, sat in the wooden chair facing the lake view, watching her. He said: Tough decision?

I’m a fan of Alderman’s previous novels (The Power, Disobedience and a Doctor Who book, Borrowed Time), so was looking forward to this, a story of tech zillionnaires, apocalypse and survival. To be honest I was a little disappointed; I’m not especially interested in the cults of personality around Musk, Zuckerberg, etc, and a large part of the story evolves around equivalent characters and their entourages. There’s also an AI that is just smart enough to carry the plot forward, and a rather silly dénouement. But there are also some vivid character moments and strong descriptions of setting. So it’s entertaining, if not quite up to Alderman’s previous work. You can get it here.

Definite Bechdel pass, as two of the main characters are women in an on-off relationship with each other.

This was the very first book that I finished this year! So this is my first review to have the ‘bookblog 2024’ tag.

Disobedience, by Naomi Alderman

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

And there are those who say: chaotic. This interpretation seems to allow the words, which are all that we have of the beginning, their voice. Tohu vavohu. Higgledy-piggledy. Upside down. Inside out. Hither and thither. The Creator wanted to show us the first contraction of all-that-is. All modes of expression were open to Him, every human sense. He chose words—tohu vavohu. Tumble-jumble.

I’ve read two other books by Naomi Alderman, a Doctor Who story and a novel where all women have the power to strike down their enemies, and enjoyed them both. Disobedience is not sf; it’s a closely observed story of a Jewish woman returning to London from New York after her rabbi father’s death, and becoming simultaneously enmeshed in and rejected by the dynamics of the Jewish community in which she grew up, where the new rabbi is her cousin who has meanwhile married the girl she loved as a teenager. The dynamics of grief and disruption of a conservative community are very well described; the Hendon synagogue isn’t quite the Satmar sect of Unorthodox, but that actually means it is recognisably closer to the Irish Catholicism that I experienced growing up. Recommended. You can get it here.

This was the top unread book by a woman on my shelves. Next on that pile is Madam Secretary, by Madeleine Albright.

The Power, by Naomi Alderman

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Tunde is twenty-one, just out of that period of his life where everything seemed the wrong size, too long or too short, pointing in the wrong direction, unwieldy. Enuma is four years younger but more of a woman than he is a man, demure but not ignorant. Not too shy, either, not in the way she walks or the quick smile that darts across her face when she understands a joke a moment before everyone else. She’s visiting Lagos from Ibadan; she’s the cousin of a friend of a boy Tunde knows from his photojournalism class at college. There’s been a gang of them hanging out together over the summer. Tunde spotted her the first day she arrived; her secret smile and her jokes that he didn’t at first realize were jokes. And the curve of her hip, and the way she fills her T-shirts, yes. It’s been quite a thing to arrange to be alone together with Enuma. Tunde’s nothing if not determined.

I spotted Naomi Alderman when she wrote a particularly good Doctor Who book a few years ago; here she has taken The Handmaid’s Tale and #MeToo and turned them around, to create a world in the very near future where women have developed the ability to strike down their enemies with bolts of electricity. It’s well imagined, with the intersection of new media, religion, politics, and culture well integrated. She lost me a bit with a section in Moldova late in the book which doesn’t really bear much resemblance to the Moldovan landscape in real life. but otherwise I really enjoyed the tight writing and the challenge of a world like ours but with one fundamental change. Worth getting.

This was the last book I read in 2017! Thank you all for following.

March Books 15) Borrowed Time, by Naomi A. Alderman

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This is a particularly good Eleventh Doctor book, read very effectively by Meera Syal (who does a very effective Scottish accent). The setting is a London bank, just before the economic crash of 2008, where key staffers are being tempted to use time-travel bracelets to multi-task; the bracelets of course come at a much higher cost than is immediately apparent. There is a particularly effective passage early on where Amy becomes addicted to the giddy possibilities of personal time-looping, and some brilliant description. After a not brilliant start in 2010, the Eleventh Doctor books are doing very well now. I shall look out for more by Alderman – I confess I had not really heard of her before compiling my list the other week but that’s clearly my loss.