Bibliotherapy
Dec. 21st, 2016 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI recently signed up for a Bibliotherapy session at The School of Life. This involved me completing a very in-depth and fascinating questionnaire all about my reading habits and relationship to books, then attending an hour-long session which comprised further discussion of my reading experience and preferences. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, and would definitely recommend it.
The result was a 'prescription' of six suggested books to broaden my reading and introduce me to potential new authors to try.
I have now finished two of the recommended volumes to date, and very much enjoyed both of them:
The Power by Naomi Alderman tells of a world where fifteen-year-old girls discover they can electrocute people at will, using a strange gland under their collarbones. New girl babies begin to be born with the power, and the teenagers can pass it along to older women. So, before long, it's a global phenomenon, which seriously alters the power dynamic between men and women.
I identified several flaws in the writing. There was an awful lot of exposition, telling the reader of events rather than showing them (though I've never been an advocate of the idea that everything in a book should be shown and not told, so this didn't bother me that much). The chronology was complex and the switching between tenses felt rather muddled in places, similarly with the point of view at times. I felt that some of the characters bordered on cliche, and the swearing (though realistic) got a bit much for me by the end.
However, all that aside, I was completely gripped by the story throughout, and found it difficult to put the book down - one of the marks of a good book for me is that it nearly makes me miss my stop on the train, and this did that. The narrative was powerfully written and very compelling. I thought the predictions of what would happen in these circumstances were very credible - particularly in relation to the use of the internet. There were initially four main protagonists, and the chapters alternated between their stories - all were deeply flawed and yet sympathetic to varying degrees, showing a masterful level of depth. I also found some of the perspectives very interesting - the two teenage girls were less compelling, at least to start with, as their origins were very familiar from other stories like this. However, the female politician and the male journalist certainly kept me interested, and I liked the way their stories developed very much.
There's a framing structure to the book, in which it's presented as a speculative historical text, written several thousand years after the events described, in a world where women have dominated for centuries. That, and the calculated reversal of mistreatment between the genders, made a none-too-subtle, but still effective point about societal inequality. The one thing I would say about the gender representation, though, is that it was very black and white - very much men vs women, without really any acknowledgement of other gender identities.
As a thriller, it was very successful, as a prediction of an impossible future equally so. As a feminist statement, it perhaps wielded a bit of a sledgehammer, but the strength of its message is probably at least partially the point. A very good read, with some interesting things to say.
Next up was Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel - a graphic novel and memoir about her childhood and particularly her relationship with her father. It used the graphic format very well to heighten the emotional impact through a combination of quite simplistic pictures and generally very sophisticated text. It's multiple literary references appealed to me, and were used very cleverly to make observations about the characters. It's a desperately sad story of a daughter's resentment towards her father, coupled with her desire to find connection with him, even after his death. A lot of the revelations are stated very matter-of-factly, which might have made the narrative feel remote. On the contrary, though, to me, this made it all the more impactful. The author's analysis of herself and her father is very self-aware, and she criticises herself as much as she does him. It's a brutally honest depiction of a dysfunctional family, and very powerful for it.
I probably picked to start with the two books from my 'prescription' that are closest to the kind of thing I normally read. I've actually been meaning to try some of Naomi Alderman's fiction, since she wrote Zombies Run!, which I love. So, I'm very much looking forward to branching out with the other books on the list, to find something a bit more challenging, but hopefully just as good!
The result was a 'prescription' of six suggested books to broaden my reading and introduce me to potential new authors to try.
I have now finished two of the recommended volumes to date, and very much enjoyed both of them:
The Power by Naomi Alderman tells of a world where fifteen-year-old girls discover they can electrocute people at will, using a strange gland under their collarbones. New girl babies begin to be born with the power, and the teenagers can pass it along to older women. So, before long, it's a global phenomenon, which seriously alters the power dynamic between men and women.
I identified several flaws in the writing. There was an awful lot of exposition, telling the reader of events rather than showing them (though I've never been an advocate of the idea that everything in a book should be shown and not told, so this didn't bother me that much). The chronology was complex and the switching between tenses felt rather muddled in places, similarly with the point of view at times. I felt that some of the characters bordered on cliche, and the swearing (though realistic) got a bit much for me by the end.
However, all that aside, I was completely gripped by the story throughout, and found it difficult to put the book down - one of the marks of a good book for me is that it nearly makes me miss my stop on the train, and this did that. The narrative was powerfully written and very compelling. I thought the predictions of what would happen in these circumstances were very credible - particularly in relation to the use of the internet. There were initially four main protagonists, and the chapters alternated between their stories - all were deeply flawed and yet sympathetic to varying degrees, showing a masterful level of depth. I also found some of the perspectives very interesting - the two teenage girls were less compelling, at least to start with, as their origins were very familiar from other stories like this. However, the female politician and the male journalist certainly kept me interested, and I liked the way their stories developed very much.
There's a framing structure to the book, in which it's presented as a speculative historical text, written several thousand years after the events described, in a world where women have dominated for centuries. That, and the calculated reversal of mistreatment between the genders, made a none-too-subtle, but still effective point about societal inequality. The one thing I would say about the gender representation, though, is that it was very black and white - very much men vs women, without really any acknowledgement of other gender identities.
As a thriller, it was very successful, as a prediction of an impossible future equally so. As a feminist statement, it perhaps wielded a bit of a sledgehammer, but the strength of its message is probably at least partially the point. A very good read, with some interesting things to say.
Next up was Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel - a graphic novel and memoir about her childhood and particularly her relationship with her father. It used the graphic format very well to heighten the emotional impact through a combination of quite simplistic pictures and generally very sophisticated text. It's multiple literary references appealed to me, and were used very cleverly to make observations about the characters. It's a desperately sad story of a daughter's resentment towards her father, coupled with her desire to find connection with him, even after his death. A lot of the revelations are stated very matter-of-factly, which might have made the narrative feel remote. On the contrary, though, to me, this made it all the more impactful. The author's analysis of herself and her father is very self-aware, and she criticises herself as much as she does him. It's a brutally honest depiction of a dysfunctional family, and very powerful for it.
I probably picked to start with the two books from my 'prescription' that are closest to the kind of thing I normally read. I've actually been meaning to try some of Naomi Alderman's fiction, since she wrote Zombies Run!, which I love. So, I'm very much looking forward to branching out with the other books on the list, to find something a bit more challenging, but hopefully just as good!
