{"id":4138,"date":"2025-04-16T10:32:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T14:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=4138"},"modified":"2025-04-17T13:18:33","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T17:18:33","slug":"the-bravest-and-most-horrifying-book-ive-read-in-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2025\/04\/the-bravest-and-most-horrifying-book-ive-read-in-ages\/","title":{"rendered":"The bravest and most horrifying book I\u2019ve read in ages"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before this year, I had no clue The Power<\/em> or Naomi Alderman existed\u2014despite the acclaim the book met when it was published in 2016, and the fact that its apparently been made into an Amazon mini-series starring Toni Collette, who I absolutely love. A colleague in a crit group read a story I was working on, and recommended I read this. She was absolutely right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cover<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When I say this is the bravest and most horrifying book I\u2019ve read in ages, I\u2019m not exaggerating. I actually had to stop about 10 minutes from the end because I was in a Thai restaurant in Orlando and was on the verge of bursting into tears, and didn\u2019t want everyone staring at me. This book is easily better, and darker, than Atwood\u2019s Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> (both a book and artist I hold in hella high regard).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One clarification<\/strong>: when I told my wife that this book was the bravest and most horrifying thing I\u2019d read in years, she totally misunderstood what I found horrifying in the book. She assumed I was upset by the rapes. There are several very graphic and traumatic rapes of men by women in this novel, as well as broader sexual subjugation of men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frankly, none of that really bothered me. I\u2019ve read fictional depictions and non-fictional accounts of the rapes of men and boys that I\u2019ve found more upsetting. Talk to anyone who\u2019s worked for child protective services and you\u2019ll hear an earful. Humans are, on balance, awfully creative when it comes to being awful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What got me about this book is that, evidently and despite it all, there was some small part of me that had continued to really and deeply believe that \u201ceverything would be better if women were in charge.\u201d Alderman meticulously dismembered and violated that foolish, optimistic child that was still hiding inside me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before this year, I had no clue The Power or Naomi Alderman existed\u2014despite the acclaim the book met when it was published in 2016, and the fact that its apparently been made into an Amazon mini-series starring Toni Collette, who I absolutely love. A colleague in a crit group read a story I was working … Continue reading “The bravest and most horrifying book I\u2019ve read in ages”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11,153,14],"tags":[572,883,882,872,1007,887,108],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/a2mi.social\/@dave0\/114348139920851242","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4141,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions\/4141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}