The Strangers by Naomi Alderman: Grief, strange creatures, and a world that keeps moving

Naomi Alderman’s The Strangers is an unusual and deeply thoughtful blend of memoir and speculative fiction that uses the arrival of a mysterious new species to explore grief, human nature, and the unsettling realization that the world keeps going even when your own world has changed forever.

A few months after the death of her mother, novelist Naomi Alderman installs a wildlife camera in the garden of her parents’ home. What it captures is something no one has seen before: a strange, badger-sized animal with a flat face and a long, trunk-like nose. Soon these creatures, called mimmoths, are appearing everywhere. They spread across the United Kingdom and then around the world, seemingly without explanation. They don’t behave like ordinary animals. They won’t take food from humans, they can’t be captured, and they seem to possess an intelligence and purpose of their own.

The mimmoths are the strangers of the title, but the more I read, the more I wondered whether the real strangeness of the novel lies elsewhere. Alderman places these extraordinary creatures against something much more ordinary: grief. Her mother has died, but the rest of the world hasn’t stopped to acknowledge it. People still go to work. Governments continue to operate. News cycles move on to the next story, and other people’s lives continue to unfold. Even as the mimmoths spread and the world seems to be changing in ways no one understands, Naomi’s own life continues with all the mundane obligations and interruptions that existed before her mother’s death.

That contrast is one of the most effective things about the novel. We often think of grief as an experience that consumes everything, and internally, it can feel that way. But externally, almost nothing changes. The cashier still expects payment. People still send emails, and traffic still moves. The sun still comes up. The fact that someone you love has died doesn’t make the rest of the world stop.

Alderman captures that reality through exposition, and this is one of the things I particularly appreciated about The Strangers. Writers are often admonished to “show, don’t tell,” and for good reason. Fiction is usually more powerful when readers are allowed to experience a character’s emotions and circumstances rather than being told what they are. But exposition has its place, and Alderman demonstrates how effective it can be when used deliberately. Her explanations and observations become part of the novel’s meditation on grief and the strange disconnect between what is happening inside one person’s life and what is happening everywhere else.

The speculative element makes that disconnect even more pronounced. The mimmoths initially had me wondering whether they were some kind of alien lifeform preparing to take over the Earth. At other points, I wondered whether they might be Mother Nature’s answer to the devastation humans have inflicted on the planet. Alderman never makes their presence feel like a straightforward science-fiction puzzle that exists merely to be solved. Instead, their mystery allows the novel to ask larger questions about humanity’s relationship with the natural world and our tendency to assume that everything that exists must somehow belong to us or serve a purpose we understand.

The more the mimmoths spread, the more complicated their presence becomes. Conspiracy theories emerge. Governments and other centers of power become involved. Naomi herself begins to wonder whether she has some particular connection to the creatures or whether she is experiencing what becomes known as “mimmoth psychosis.” And through all of this, her grief remains at the center of the story.

I found the decision to have Alderman play herself particularly interesting. Without the mimmoths, this could almost be autobiography. The speculative intrusion creates a layer of distance between author and experience that I found compelling. I don’t know whether Alderman feels the same way, but I know that I personally find it easier to write about traumatic experiences when I can approach them from a distance. There is something about transforming an experience, even slightly, that makes it possible to examine it without having to stand directly inside it.

That may be part of what makes the mimmoths so effective. They give Alderman a way to turn a deeply personal experience into something strange enough to examine from the outside. Grief is already surreal, after all. The world can feel fundamentally altered when someone you love disappears from it, even though everyone else seems to be carrying on exactly as before. Adding a mysterious new species to that reality somehow makes the emotional truth more visible rather than less.

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It is also what makes The Strangers such an interesting companion to Alderman’s previous novel, The Power. I loved The Power, and readers who come to this book expecting another novel in that vein may be surprised. These books don’t feel like they are trying to accomplish the same thing, and The Strangers is considerably more personal and reflective. But I don’t think an author should be expected to be—or write—only one type of thing.

In fact, I enjoyed both books for very different reasons. The Power fascinated me with its examination of power and gender; The Strangers drew me in with its quieter exploration of grief, reality, nature, and the peculiar experience of watching the world continue when your own life has been fundamentally altered.

I suspect The Strangers will be one of those books that divides readers. Some will find its blending of memoir and speculative fiction beautiful and affecting. Others may find the mimmoths distracting from the more personal story. I can understand both reactions. The structure is unusual, and it asks readers to accept a premise that never settles comfortably into a single genre.

I also think there is another reason some readers may dislike this book, and I don’t think it is entirely fair to the novel. Readers who loved The Power may come to The Strangers expecting another book like it. When they don’t get one, they may conclude that Alderman has somehow fallen short. I’ve seen reactions along those lines on GoodReads, and I understand the disappointment, but I don’t think a book should be judged primarily by whether it resembles another book by the same author.

There is a difference between saying, “This isn’t the kind of book I wanted Alderman to write,” and saying, “This book fails at what it is trying to do.” If Alderman had set out to write another The Power, then yes, she failed. The Strangers is not another The Power. But I don’t think that was her intention. I think she was attempting something completely different, and I think she succeeds remarkably well at the thing she actually set out to do.

That distinction matters to me as a reader. Authors should be allowed to explore different ideas, forms, tones, and genres without every new book being measured against their previous success. I loved The Power, but I don’t need The Strangers to be The Power again in order to appreciate it. In fact, I think expecting Alderman to repeat herself would have made for a much less interesting book.

For me, the unusual combination of memoir and speculative fiction is part of what makes The Strangers work. The mimmoths don’t simply invade Alderman’s memoir; they change the way we look at it. They turn grief into something slightly uncanny and make us question whether the world has actually become stranger or whether grief has simply changed the way Naomi sees the world around her.

Perhaps that is the real question at the heart of The Strangers: What happens when something enormous and inexplicable enters your life, but everyone else keeps going as though nothing has changed? Sometimes the world really is changing. Sometimes it is our perception of the world that has changed. And sometimes, perhaps, there isn’t a meaningful difference between the two.

Have you read a novel that used speculative fiction to explore something deeply personal? Did the speculative elements deepen the emotional story for you, or would you have preferred a more straightforward memoir? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The Strangers will be released September 22, 2026. An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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