The Lessons: Naomi Alderman

I wanted to really love this book.  I want to cheer for every single female writer who is writing intelligent, creative, substantial books that prove that women only aren’t interested in reading about sex and shoes and shopping.  And I really enjoyed Naomi Alderman’s first book, Disobedience.  So I had every expectation that this would be brilliant.

Any reviews you read of this book will point out the obvious similarities to both Brideshead Revisited and to The Secret History.  Take one lonely and vulnerable young man.  Put him in an exclusive elite university.  Let him attach himself to a wealthy dissolute and his cult.  Observe the resulting catastrophe.

But unfortunately, it doesn’t.  Not least because you can’t stop thinking about Brideshead and The Secret History and making unfavourable comparisons.  The characters are too one dimensional, the dialogue doesn’t ring true, and you can see the plot twists coming a mile away.  Instead of inhaling in horror at the supposedly awful self destructive behaviour, you just think, yawn.  The questions about what has corrupted Mark – his mother? his religion? his wealth? – are too obvious.  And there are too many holes in the story: how does an academic mediocrity with no money or connections end up at Oxford?  Would a devout Catholic really power through husbands in the way that Mark’s mother does?

Sorry Naomi.  I really did want to love this.  I highly recommend Disobedience though.  And I’ll look out for your next book.