Albert Park College parents slam year 9 English curriculum

Complaints from parents at an inner-city school are piling up about a violent and sexually graphic novel assigned to year 9s.

Toni Collette features in the screen adaption of the novel

Parents at an inner-city school have complained about a violent and sexually graphic novel assigned to students as part of the school’s year 9 English curriculum.

The Power, by Naomi Alderman, which is on Albert Park College’s year 9 book list, features confronting passages in the novel including references to a girl sexually taunting a boy and taking pleasure in hurting him.

The best-selling and critically-acclaimed novel is based in a world where women have the ability to electrocute men, and where men live in fear of them.

The novel has been adapted into an Amazon Prime series starring Toni Collette, which is rated MA15 because of its strong violence, strong sex scenes, strong drug use, and course language.

The Power is a British science fiction drama television series based on Alderman's 2016 novel The Power.

In one highly graphic passage a character refers to a woman as a “f...... stupid little lying b.... c...” and talks about a woman performing a sex act “through her eyeballs”.

The Sunday Herald Sun has been told the school has received multiple complaints about the book.

One mother, whose son attends the school, said her family were “very concerned” with the content of the novel that their son has been reading for year 9 English.

“We feel it is really inappropriate for 14 and 15 year old boys and girls to be reading this especially given the current teachings around respect and consent,” she said.

“I note that The Power is on the booklist for next year and I believe parents of Year 9 students should be made aware of the content of this book.”

Naomi Alderman’s The Power is now a major TV series

The book also features scenes in which female characters partake in incestuous orgies.

The female characters also electrocute men’s scrotums and “back passages” for fun, and laugh at men being tortured during sex.

Many passages in the book are too explicit to be published in the Sunday Herald Sun.

Literary reviewers have described the book as “calculated and hectic” work of feminist literature.

The book’s author, Ms Alderman, has said she aimed to capture how how “the capacity to do violence” gives people an advantage in society.

The book won the 2018 Bailey Women’s Prize for Literature and was named one of the best 10 books of 2017 by The New York Times newspaper.

Albert Park College and the Department of Education were contacted for comment.

Separately, another mother with children at Bialik College in Hawthorn East has also complained about to the contents of a number of books in that school’s library.

One book the library holds, Juliet Takes a Breath, by author Gabby Rivera, includes a passage describing the “lunar power of my p...., my vadge, my taquito, that places where all the magic happens”.