The Power by Naomi Alderman

If you liked The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, you will want to read this dystopian novel, which has won a number of awards in the past year, including the Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction.  This book was particularly terrifying and enlightening at the same time.

The most basic premise is that teenage girls everywhere find out that they can produce a deadly electrical shock. There's a strip of muscle across their collarbones that enables them to produce this electrical charge, which they call a skein. As a result, society is turned on its head with boys being told not to go out alone or at certain hours for fear that they will be shocked. The book combines a number of storylines - there is an American girl that runs away, a British daughter of a notorious gang leader, a reporter, politicians - and yet, the overarching premise is what the impact this has on governments, economic systems, societies.

I loved the questions that this raised - what happens when the tables are turned and men have to worry about being raped? Being threatened with violence that is either overt or implied or both?  And the ways that Alderman makes these points ranges from the light (there is a female newscaster that teases her co anchor and all I could think about was how newscasters faux joke on the air while they're interacting) to the descriptions of the chilling and often violent crimes that are committed by gangs of women.

There are also glimpses of other social issues that are impacted by this - theology and religion play a tremendous role in this novel.  The gospels and the religious texts have to be completely reimagined and iconography has to be changed. New leaders have to rise. Sexuality is also a major theme in this novel, with Alderman redefining courtship and the intersection of pain and pleasure. There is also items that are found in an archeologic dig that describes curbing - male genital mutilation. 

This book is a daring new look at a complete and utter change in gender roles by implementing a shift in the power dynamics.  It is so good in its terror. 

Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

This had to have been the most talked about memoir of 2016 so much so that my local library had a wait list as deep as the Mississippi River. JD Vance, the author, is now a venture capitalist in California; however this book is about how he grew up dirt poor in Appalachia to a family that was highly dysfunctional on a good day.  This book generally details how he transcended this dysfunction to attend college and then law school at Yale, while also making forays into why the working white poor in the United States is in such a state of socioeconomic crisis.

Vance's family came from a long line of hill people originally from Kentucky.  They migrated to Ohio to work in the factories that sprang up following World War 2. His grandparents, in spite of the alcoholism that plagued them, had a decent life as a result.  However by the time that Vance was alive industry had left and there was mass poverty. His mother was a neglectful parent with alcohol and substance abuse issues that had a series of new husbands seemingly every year.  Vance's father was largely absent, although he eventually meets him.

I was very much struck by Vance's story but I had a really difficult time with his analysis of why this was happening. In part, this was because I found his academic writing to be mediocre at best. In part it was because I found the story of his life more interesting. That being said, he does pose some really interesting questions the most important of which - how much should the white poor be responsible for their own misfortune? He actually comes out with saying that the white poor are tremendously responsible for their misfortune - albeit in a compassionate tone.  While economic insecurity is a factor, the social decay that seems to come along with it is something that doesn't always need to be a result of that insecurity.He seemed to be particularly frustrated with his people's inability to counteract it - in part because I think that he saw his mother caught in a vicious cycle of abuse, drugs and a revolving door of men. He also told a story about how he worked as a cashier and got tremendously frustrated seeing his neighbors game the system and have cell phones, while he worked and could not afford one.

I respected Mr. Vance tremendously for attempting to take on a subject that everyone knows exists but which no one seems to want to explicitly tackle head on in an honest, straightforward and compassionate manner. Hats off to him for advancing the conversation.

Where'd You Go Bernadette - Maria Semple

I have this quirk - I guess it isn't really a quirk because I know other people like this - where I have to read a book before the movie comes out.  I heard through the grapevine that this book may be made into a movie.  To be fair, it's been a book that I've wanted to read for a while now and the movie prospects moved it to the top of my list.  Maria Semple did however create a winner here.

The main character in this novel is the title character - Bernadette.  She's a Type-A, successful, MacArthur grant winning architect who is married to a successful computer programmer and who suddenly decides she's not going to work anymore (first world problems I tell you!). The story is told from the perspective of Bernadette's daughter. 20 years prior to the events in the novel, Bernadette was living in California working as an architect and was at the cutting edge of "green" design. Her main project was a popular "localvore" project meaning that Bernadette got all of her materials from the area that she lived in. After much conflict with her neighbor, Bernadette gives up and moves to Seattle with her husband, a TED talk genius who loves living in Seattle. Not so much for Bernadette who essentially becomes a hermit, except to emerge to engage in an internet scam and with confict with the local parents, whom she calls gnats.

This book was both screwball and decidedly sweet, in a satirical fashion.  I really think that at the bottom of this novel is the relationship between a mother and her daughter, the daughter being an only child who obviously idolizes her mother. I loved it.  Semple's style is also really interesting. This is not a straight narrative in the traditional sense but is told through a mix of emails, journal entries, letters, police reports and first person narrative as well as school reports. The material is compiled and stitched together by Bee, Bernadette's daughter, who is valiantly trying to figure out what caused her mother to disappear. I loved it.  Just loved it.  Go get this book right now!

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward is becoming a household name in large part because of books like this one. While her previous books were novels, this one is a memoir and it really isn't for people that want a lighthearted beach read. This books deals not only with the stresses of living in poverty in the South but it also deals with suicide, overdoses, shootings and death in general.

Jesmyn Ward grew up on the Mississippi gulf coast, which figures prominently in this book. I really enjoyed how rich and evocative her storytelling style was. It could have gotten really morbid really quickly but instead it was almost lyrical in its matter of factness in its narrative of what it was like to grow up black, poor and female in the Deep South in the modern era. In addition to the seriousness of the deaths that occur, there are also some very familiar coming of age narratives: weed, alcohol, sex and boyfriends, school and family. But there are also some very sobering narratives as well that deal with destitution and delinquency. I found myself particularly drawn in by Ms. Ward's narrative about her own family and her family life. She details the demise of her parents' relationship, her own social isolation at a predominantly white private school and later when she leaves to attend a prestigious university and her brother's descent into the world of drug dealing.

While I don't think it was intended this way, Jesmyn Ward's memoir is a powerful narrative of the sociological, political and psychological impacts of growing up poor and black in the South. A definite must read.