Books of the Month - three pieces of speculative fiction

I have been bitten by the reading bug lately and this is the second book of the month post in a row featuring three novels. This time all three are speculative fiction (as discussed previously). 

I'm going to review them in the order I read them. The first book was another pick up from TK Maxx. 

The Power - Naomi Alderman

This book was published in 2016 and imagines what would happen if women suddenly developed the power to conduct electricity (the Power), establishing them as the dominant gender. It's framed through being written as a fictionalised history written by a man in a future civilisation, 5,000 years hence. Throughout the books are drawings of archaeological discoveries dating from the time period being written about.

The framing includes advice from an editor that it seems far-fetched that men were ever the dominant sex. There's also a rather patronising suggestion that the fictional author considers publishing it under a female name to avoid it being categorised as women's literature. I wondered if the real author had been on the receiving end of similar sentiments.

The book follows several female characters who either develop the Power of have it awakened in them. All the characters are in some way oppressed, abused or overshadowed by men, and the Power enables them to break free. There is also one male character who is chronicling the impact the Power has on various societies and it's really through his eyes that the shift becomes noticeable, as he finds it increasingly unsafe to be in the presence of women.

I was interested in the development of a women-centred and led religion, evolving rapidly out of Catholicism, which echoed the growth of populist movements in organised religions that sometimes outflank the established ecclesiastical structures. It felt believable to me, because new religious movements can take root and spread very quickly - and would be much more robust if they were linked to a sudden societal change like the emergence of the Power. There is, however, a natural explanation for the sudden emergence of the Power, although details are kept to a minimum. 

There's a bit of gore and violent vignettes, including some sexual violence. There are some loose threads that are left frayed at the end of the book. But overall, there are plenty of points that made me think about gender politics, and the reversal of power dynamics was sometimes amusing, sometimes frightening. The unwillingness of the female editor in 5,000 years time to accept the idea that women aren't just naturally aggressive, for example, made me smile. 

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

I bought this book in a deal at HMV because I had never read it and it appears on most lists of classic books one should read. I knew it was about the wartime firebombing of Dresden. I assumed it would be a straight up war book. I was wrong. 

This is the second Kurt Vonnegut book that I've read. A few years back I read Breakfast of Champions. I didn't like that much, and, truthfully, although I can see why this is considered a classic novel, I didn't like this book much either. I think it's just that I don't get on with Vonnegut's style. 

Having said that there are moments and throwaway lines in this book that are almost instantly memorable. There is a very early comment that foreshadows the destruction to come when the narrator says that Dresden post-war must have "tons of human bone meal in the ground". 

There is another cynically comical comment about a woman who "Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops." With lines like that, I feel I really should have liked the book more!

The main character in the book is called Billy Pilgrim. The plot device is that he has been abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. He now experiences all of time all at once, which is a side-effect of travelling on a flying saucer. So his recollections of the war, being captured, being incarcerated in a converted abattoir (Slaughterhouse Five) that ironically protects him from the firebombing, and being involved in the grim clean up operation in Dresden afterwards, are mixed up with his life after the war, his family, his capture by aliens and subsequent captivity in a zoo amusing Tralfamadorians, and so on. 

I think it was that fantastical aspect that I found difficult. On reflection, it did distract from the absolute horror of what happened in Dresden. The vivid description of pulling bodies from the rubble afterwards ('opening up a corpse mine') and there being too many dead people to deal with other than incinerate them perhaps needed leavening with the alien abduction and Billy's happier post-war experiences. 

It might all be meant to indicate that Billy has gone mad as a result of his wartime experiences. But it's played with a straight bat - although, I guess, madness seems real to the person experiencing it. It may just be that it's Vonnegut's way of processing what he witnessed in Dresden and he needs to make this fantastical to deal with the fact that the worst bits of the story actually happened. 

There was some interesting commentary on the American poor, which I will save for another post. And the idea of experiencing time in a concurrent way rather than as causal consecutive moments felt very up to date - covering similar ground to some of the chapters in Existential Physics, which was my Book of the Month back in June. Not bad, considering Vonnegut published this in 1969.

The Boys from Brazil - Ira Levin

The other book in the HMV deal, and the second book by Ira Levin I have read this year. I reviewed The Stepford Wives last month. As with Stepford, I knew the basic premise of this story - Nazis in South America have perfected cloning and are seeking to restore the Third Reich.

What I didn't expect - the same as with Stepford - was to get quite so gripped by the story. The slow reveal of what is going on happens for both the main character, ageing Nazi-hunter Yakov Liebermann, and for the reader. The scene where Liebermann encounters his second teenaged clone was incredibly well done, and I really got a sense of the world slipping sideways for the character as he tried to process what he was seeing. 

Because the book was published in 1976, the science behind cloning has to be explained - even the word 'clone' has to be explained. I suspect this was cutting edge knowledge at the time of publication - but I was intrigued by how even then there was speculation that some governments had already been cloning larger mammals and maybe even humans. I remember the fuss in the late 1990s about Dolly the Sheep who was announced as the first sheep to be successfully cloned. So it was interesting to read characters speculating about it twenty years earlier. 

It's a short book that concludes with a discussion about the morality of killing children that might grow up to be evil. Liebermann and his anti-Nazi allies have to hope that the boys from Brazil defy their genetic heritage. The ultimate ending of the experiment is left ambiguous as to what might happen, which I quite liked for the ending. 

When religion and politics intersect

Political discourse took an interesting swerve over Easter. The Conservatives put out a meme poster on Good Friday that caught my attention.

From a theological point of view, the use of an empty cross to mark the day the gospels report Jesus was crucified, is slightly ironic. From a political point of view, the symbolism is equally as empty. I was left feeling this was posturing along similar lines to the insistence on Union flags being flown from government buildings and being in the background of Zoom interviews. It's a nationalist tangent trying to link in to a cultural heritage of being a 'Christian country'. The Tories were trying this ten years ago (I blogged about it angrily then), and it's making a reappearance.

The linking of politics with religion is often included in lists of 'signs of fascism'. So it wasn't a surprise to see comparisons on Twitter of the Conservative meme with Nazi propaganda.

Previously, there have been British political parties that have tried to co-opt Christianity for their cause. This is one such example:

This poster campaign was some time ago now. The BNP has disappeared, outflanked by UKIP, the Brexit Party and the Conservative Party, which seems to have moved to the right with each passing election.

If overtly aligning with religion is a known tactic of the far right, then what does it say about a government when it starts aligning with religion?

In a way, this intersection of politics and religion feels almost inevitable after the power demonstrated in harnessing the white evangelical vote by the Republican Party in America. (75% of white evangelicals voted for Trump last year; the theological label is practically synonomous with Republicanism now.) The recent Conservative electoral success has been driven by following the right wing American playbook and the government are doubling down on it. So it's only natural that they would eventually come and try to claim religion.

But not to be outdone, Labour leader Keir Starmer decided to do a publicity piece for Easter by visiting a church.

In his (now deleted) video, Keir describes the way the church in question, Jesus House, a large, black majority Pentecostal Church in London, has supported people during the pandemic, including recently hosting a vaccination centre.

This caused a slight problem for Keir, though. Jesus House has a track record of opposing LGBT+ rights and is accused of promoting "conversion therapy" to "cure" gay people of being gay. Conversion therapy is controversial. It's often likened to torture.

As can be imagined, this visit did not play well with Keir's support base. Here's an example.

It's surprising that Keir didn't know there could be controversy attached to this visit. Both Theresa May and Boris Johnson were criticised for visiting Jesus House, for exactly the same reason.

I'd put Keir's mis-step down to religious illiteracy. I get the sense that some politicians see "religion" as some kind of old fashioned benign relict of days past, acting as a stable force for good in society. But not all religion is like that.

Keir may have thought he could go along for the photo opportunity and praise the way Jesus House is hosting a Covid vaccination centre, and that would be it. But 'pick and choose' is a difficult game to play with religion because fundamentalism is a complete package. A politician can try to separate out religiously-motivated activity they agree with and activity they don't, but an unequivocal endorsement of a church implies endorsement across the breadth of the espoused creed.

For the fundamentalist evangelical church in question, supporting people during the pandemic and their opposition to marriage equality are both motivated by their belief system. There is no way of differentiating between the two in terms of where they come from. From their perspective, the wellspring is the same - trying to 'be true to the Bible'.

In his subsequent apology, Keir says he didn't know about Jesus House's opposition to LGBT+ rights, and that it was a "mistake". He took down the video on Easter Monday.

I predict there are going to be more attempts to use Christianity as a political weapon. The Conservatives have been cynically smarter in just co-opting Christian symbolism without the burden of having to endorse any activities motivated by a belief system. It's a fundamentally empty appeal to a sense of "Christian" without having to pick their way through the specifics of a creed.

They did it again on Easter Sunday.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

I'm a late adopter when it comes to books and this one has been around a while. This was Cathy's 'Secret Santa' book at book group. She read it in one sitting and then suggested I read it. I found out later that was because she wanted to discuss the ending with me.

The story is about a nine year-old boy called Bruno who moves from Berlin in 1943 when his father is promoted to Commandant at a concentration camp. He hates it there as he is lonely and there is nothing to do. But then he befriends a boy called Shmuel who is living on the other side of the fence, inside the camp.

The tension builds towards the end and I had a vague sense that something bad was going to happen - as presumably Bruno will realise what is going on and what is going to happen to Shmuel. However, the ending wasn't quite what I expected and it stayed with me vividly for a couple of days.

What is clever about the book is that for almost all of it you know more than the main protagonist. There are several moments where Bruno just doesn't get what is going on - for example when he tries to explain to Shmuel that he should have caught a less crowded train to the camp, because the one Bruno travelled on had plenty of room.

Another interesting element is that, with the exception of one young soldier, the Commandant and his family are portrayed as ordinary people doing what they think is right and good and proper. Bruno's mother drinks a bit too much; his father is authoritarian; his sister, Gretel, just accepts the existence of the camp as how things are - but none of them are bad people, even as they participate to a greater or lesser extent in the Holocaust.

It's to John Boyne's credit that as an author he didn't wimp out at the end. Having made you care about the characters, the power of the story would have been considerably less if he had given it a happy ending.

I gave this book five stars, so it will join the list. It's not one I will read again in a hurry, mainly because it's so memorable. In many ways, reading it reminded me of when I saw Schindler's List - the shock and horror of what happened in the Holocaust confronted me anew. Again, John Boyne, did well to take something so well-known and yet make me as a reader feel horrified all over again.

[Addendum, updated 2026 - this book has been heavily criticised by Holocaust memorial organisations. Almost all children were murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival at Auschwitz so Bruno would not have met Shmuel. The story also focuses on the impact on Bruno's family, which it's claimed moves the reader's sympathy to the perpetrators of the Holocaust. I have left my review above as it was when first posted in 2013, but wanted to include a note about the criticism.]

Two completely unrelated factoids

I saw these in this week's issue of The Week.

Factoid 1
Women who have their breasts surgically enhanced are three times more likely to commit suicide than other women.

Which leads me to ask: is having surgery a contributory factor to suicide, or are women who are depressed/stressed/emotionally imbalanced drawn to extreme methods of reinvention, e.g cosmetic surgery? Or is is just that having a breast enlargement is an indicator that you're stuck in a lifestyle that it's hard to exit from (e.g. the porn industry) and so the "only way out" is suicide?

Factoid 2
In 1935, 7.5% of Germans were members of the Nazi party; among teachers that figure was nearly one-third.

Which begs the question: are teachers more likely to become Nazis, or are Nazis more likely to become teachers? And is there a discernible difference?