The Power

Only complaint is I could have used more stuff in the future showing the fallout.

Is Naomi Alderman ok?
Does she like women at all?

So if women would possess an ability which would make them physically superior to men, women would become more agressive, more cruel and more violent than the worst type of man? Oh ok.
I like my sci fi but I could not bend my imagination THAT far.

Giving it a 4 for the concept (what happens when women gain the ability to electrocute people, and become the dominant gender?) but unfortunately the characters were boring and hard to engage with and the ending was a bit disappointing.

I might be the only one who knows what I mean by this, but The Power is like that movie The Adjustment Bureau. The premise got my hopes up, but I kept waiting for it to build to something more.

I did really like some of this:
- Role reversal showing how contrived and arbitrary gender stereotyping is. Swapping pronouns makes it difficult to deny sexism present in our society, and moreover makes it difficult to deny that sexism (and, by extension, gender) is a construct.

- I liked how Alderman played with generation. How the power was surfaced in teenage girls, and it took the adults a while to catch on. And how the young women could awaken the power in older women.

- Tunde's perspective of how power differentials blur lines between sensuality and violence. Similarly, Alderman explores objectification with recurring talk show host snippets.


My main qualm is how the timing of the book clashes with Alderman's broader arguments about power differentials. In The Power, matriarchy replaces patriarchy quickly enough that living people remember what life was like before the power surfaced.

Some of the time, we're celebrating women using newfound abilities to protect themselves and other women from men intending harm.
Other times, we're supposed to see how power inevitably corrupts people. We're supposed to see that matriarchy is no more inherently peaceful and compassionate than patriarchy, and that thinking as much is its own kind of sexism.

And sure, okay, fine, to both points. But the two together are confusing. I don't think Alderman wrestled with that enough, and that muddied what she was saying. Power becomes this weirdly static thing that just attaches itself to certain groups at different times. It's not a book you expect to underwhelm you, but unfortunately it fell a bit flat for me.

the ooooonly thing i could have done without was the prologue/epilogue frame

In just under the wire, probably my favorite read of the year. The framing at the beginning and end of the novel may be heavy-handed but I love it and it justifies itself with all the stuff in the middle. The characters are engaging, the world Alderman builds is fascinating, and the storyline pays off—it's not just an interesting idea that fizzles out in the final pages. It never drags. It's definitely dark in places, but it wasn't totally depressing. I would highly recommend this book.

I thought it was a very interesting book. As a man it really makes you see things from a powerless perspective. I think the ending was a little flat but I would definitely read another book in this universe or with this theme.

I'm still not sure what I think of the book. It was thought-provoking and certainly interesting to imagine a world where the power dynamic is in women's favor. As with any good novel, there was a twist at the end, but it left me a little confused.

I knew the basic premise, thought I knew what to expect, but even so this book knocked me over. Surprisingly well developed: Alderman clearly thought the whole thing through. Over and over she tosses in twists that make perfect sense in hindsight, some fun, some very much not, most of them deserving of a pause for the reader to digest, few of them succeeding in that because the tension is so high. It was fun: enjoyable reading, and a memorable worldviewtopsyturvification that keeps me still wondering: what if?

There's a lot to gripe about: the hearing-voices gimmick didn't work for me, and there are rather a lot of eyeroll moments, but none of that mattered. I fell for the characters, fell hard for the story and the what-ifs. Just ramp up your suspension-of-disbelief filter to five or six, accept the wild improbabilities, and move along. Pause and wonder once in a while. Then put yourself to work building a world with fewer power imbalances.

“It doesn't matter that she shouldn't, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.”

Gosh. The moment I finished this last night, my girlfriend (who'd finished it the week before) turned to me and asked me what I thought. I stared at her for a second, muttered “need to process,” and lay flat on my back on the bed, eyes closed, brain buzzing.

I still feel like that. I'm still not sure I can put my thoughts into words, or even if my thoughts have fully formed yet. But I know I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.

This was an uncomfortable analysis of our gendered society and history, and how the power might (literally) change hands with one violent catalyst.

It was simultaneously uplifting and terrifying. I found myself cheering the women's revolts, even sometimes their righteous violence. Other times, I felt sick, balking at the idea that in a position of almost absolute power, women would become the same kind of cruel, vicious oppressors that men have been throughout history. I struggled, through some of the book, to believe that this would be possible, that women would use the same tools of oppression—patronization, physical abuse, rape—not only to maintain their higher status in the world, but just to show that they could. But I do think it made sense, in this specific set of circumstances, with the abrupt change in women's potential for and access to violence, that society could change this drastically and this quickly.

And that's a very uncomfortable thought. Because I truly cannot say that this fictional world was any better or any worse overall than the world as it is now. It was the same. Except in this world, this fictional world, I would be the one with the power. If I could really have it, would I want this power? Would I want all women to have this power? If it meant we could protect ourselves? If it meant we never had to fear for our lives or our bodies or our freedom, ever again? There's a quote I marked, a quote that feels so hopeful:

“She finds she's doing that more often now, just laughing. There's a sort of constant ease, as if it's high summer all the time inside her.”

This is what it's like to know no one can hurt you. Would you say no to that kind of power? Even if you knew not everyone would use it well? Would you trade in your fear for someone else's?

My answer scares me: I don't know.

—

tw for rape, forced surgery, violence

A remarkable book for its first 2/3. Genuinely. It hits topics and themes and ideas that are fascinating and bold. The book is worth reading for that on its own. The last third, however, jumps the shark a bit as it seems the author rushes to figure out how she's going to end the amazing tale she's woven. Looking back, it makes the book as a whole feel less character- or even idea-driven and reduces it simply to a wild plot. At times, it seems certain descriptions or scenes exist only as a pitch for some studio to make a film from this (which, in the right hands, would be a pretty kick ass film, hopefully with moments of depth and profundity).

And yet, before I could give this book three stars for the lackluster ending, there comes an epilogue just as mysterious and fascinating as the “appendix” to The Handmaid's Tale, from which this book gets great inspiration. That epilogue brings this book back to its place of mythic excellence and does in itself make the last bit of the novel worth getting through.

This is a very thought-provoking book. The phrase “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” came to mind, particularly toward the end of the book. The author's addition of letters at the end of the story adds another layer to the book - who tells the story? who is writing history? when you turn our ‘norms' on their head, don't they sound ridiculous? This would be a good book club book.

A riveting and thought-provoking book. Very well written! It makes the reader think about history, politics, human nature, and how much our assumptions inform the way we think. The concept and plot are quite unique and original.
Having said that, I did find some parts very disturbing to read. To be fair, I suppose that was part of the point, but it did make me want to rush through the last eighth of the book so it would be done.

The Power is powerful. The story repeatedly lulled me into its fictional world of what if, then blasted me with a shocking dose of reality. It's painful and poignant and perfect.

3.5

Ok, really good and dark in parts but so is life.
If you're squimish, there will be moments in this book that will disturb you.
Getting over those however will be necessary to enjoy the rest of this work. It is worth it.
Really makes you think and I won't say more so I don't spoil it. But really, culture... What are we the product of? How long should we hold onto certain beliefs? When are we able to fully address them and evaluate what is helpful and what is holding us back as a species?
Very powerful work and we'll done.

Amazing. Chilling. Challenging.

This book would get five stars for its thought-provoking nature alone, but I also found the story engaging.

This books is very powerful – even more so for getting me to actually think about what power means for the first time (hot take: power is the ability to influence other people). I consider myself someone who has thought a great deal about how the way society constructs gender, and how that construction affects the way people interact with each other, but this book gave me new and deeper levels of understanding how it works.

BUT if you had asked me what I thought while I was reading this book, I would have said the book was meh (and I did say this a couple of times to my boyfriend!). That is to say, STICK WITH IT, even if you're not enjoying the writing/ the characters/ the plot very much – some of it feels very derivative of other dystopian worlds. But, while you're focusing on the details (or I should say, while I was doing that), there's a bigger picture emerging and taking you along for the ride. I've found myself recommending this book to many people in conversation because of that.

Um. I really, really did not like this book.

1) This book was insanely violent, with many explicit and implicit rape scenes, many dismemberments, a lot of hacking apart living bodies. It was really difficult to read. Are we really to believe that if women had more power than men, we would all be complete animals who torture and kill other people (INCLUDING CHILDREN) for FUNSIES??

2) I get that people do crazy shit in the name of religion, and that it can be interesting in a can't-look-away sense, but this book was really heavy-handed on the way power corrupts religiosity, and it didn't GO anywhere.

2a) Plus, right off the bat you've got this: religious foster parents sexually assault/abuse the teenager in their care. I HATE adoption/foster abuse tropes in books.

3) I think Tunde's and Jocelyn's perspectives are supposed to be of people that are "weak"? In that one of them is a man (a reporter), and the other's power didn't come in properly (described in a way similar to being confused about sexual orientation/gender identity, which is a whole other can of worms I'm not gonna get into)? But really almost every character is insanely power-hungry, out for all she can get, out to be in charge of as much as she can. I got tired of reading powerful people abusing their power. Where are the regular people?? The regular women, and regular families, whose daughters now have this "gift" and must be able to use it responsibly to get on with life, because not everything is starting wars and pushing drugs and starting cult religions.

4) Men's rights groups that spread conspiracy theories and bomb women's clinics. UGH.

I don't believe the world is a bad place (though it can always get better). I don't believe people are always going to oppress those with less power (though some will). The Power paints a bleak, hopeless picture in which the only way to solve anything is to literally burn it all down every 5000 years. That's not a solution, and I reject it.

What a TREAT!!! I wasn't sure what to expect from this story or these characters and found myself surprised and affected by both. The “book within a book” portions were a little on the nose, but they are a small part of a much greater statement about gender, family, ambition, and the fact that power, no matter who wields it, always has the potential to corrupt.

Oof. I need to go away and think about this book before I can decide if I liked it. An intriguing concept, somewhat on-the-nose.

The sort of book that makes me wish sci-fi novellas were still a thing, as I think it could've benefited from being shorter.

Bah. Putting this onto the bookshelf for recent mainstream sci-fi books that are topical and ham-fisted and irritate me. i.e. American War, Underground Airlines, to some extent Exit West. Oof.

This one bothered me as much as the others - maybe even more so. It takes the raw anger and challenging discussion from our current renegotiation of gender norms (to quote Howard Dean from this) - that is, #MeToo - and reduces it to a gimmicky, reductive fantasy. The gimmick is that, one morning, women wake up with Sith lightning at their fingertips, and men must fear walking alone at night, etc. This necessarily (!?) leads to a civil war in Moldova, the founding of a new woman-centric version of Christianity, and a sudden and un-subtle reversal of many gender stereotypes: the “bimbo” news host (now a man), the corrupt and lecherous politician (now a woman), the organized crime boss (now a woman) defending the honor of her maligned/assaulted family member (now a man). Yep, the patriarchy gets supplanted by an equally oppressive matriarchy in about 5 years.

The thing that bothered me so much about this was how unbelievable the mutation's fall-out was, how caricatured the characters and their problems felt, and how heavy-handed the message was (power corrupts!). Throughout my reading, I compared it unfavorably to Y: The Last Man, which ALSO explores gender norms via a fantastical mutation (in that case, all Y-chromosome-havers except one suddenly die one day), but does so with a much defter hand. Where Y: The Last Man felt clever and enlightening, this felt ham-fisted and even patronizing. Remember when 1970s feminism was happening, and there were lots of “battles of the sexes”, like that tennis one, etc. Yeah, this book is a literal battle of the sexes. I kept googling “Manichean worldview” to try to articulate why I found this so reductive.

Also, wtffff the “barbaric Moldovan hill people” stuff?!? As a fellow East European hill person, I was like, OH COME ON.

The author, Alderman, name-drops a few titans of gender-aware spec fic in the afterword's first para: Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin (RIP), and Karen Joy Fowler. And how they personally/in personal exchanges helped make the book better etc etc. As a hill person, I must protest again, COME OONNNNNN.

An outstanding listen if you enjoy audiobooks. Adjoa Andoh is stunning with the variety of accents, and her ability to “become” each of the characters. What would happen to our world if woman were physically stronger than men? Read this dystopian present day classic to find out!

Very intriguing topic. Change the power structure so women are more powerful than men and what happens. Following the shift tracking the steps which leads to the flipping of society. Interesting framing it as a look back from 5,000 years in the future.