The Power

I finished this last night, and I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it. The writing is incredible, the storyline compelling, the framing device and illustrations clever, but I'm not quite sure what I was meant to take from the book. Women can be just as terrible as men given the opportunity?Power corrupts? The MRAs are right? I don't know how much that matters, but this is clearly a book that wants to Say Something - it's literary sci-fi in the mode of Margaret Atwood, who mentored the author. That influence clearly shows through, for good and bad (mostly good, I think) in the worldbuilding and the use of a framing device to provide context to the story. A glaring omission is the failure to engage with any other axes of oppression besides sex - while the leads are a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds, it doesn't really seem to inform how they react/act, and there are some asides that seem to nod at trans and/or NB people, but that's not dealt with at length except maybe with Jos and her boyfriend, but I wasn't sure what was happening there, whether it was a kink thing or something else. The story and the world will stick with me a long time, and the writing is excellent, full of allusions and odd touches of humor, alongside some of the most disturbing scenes I've read in a long time. (Serious content warning for sexual assault and violence throughout, by the way.) I wonder how I'll feel about this one in a year or two, but right now, it's one of the most intriguing books I've read recently.

Loved this book. For me, it puts a magnifying glass on the grotesque behaviours that men have and still do, inflict on women, simply because of gender, this warped idea that one is stronger than the other. As a man this book is a huge insight into the reality of the power struggle, along with being a great page turner and great thriller.

I sat and stared at my Kindle for several minutes after finishing this book. The Power belongs on the same shelf as The Handmaid's Tale and American War. It's just amazing. The book begins in our world - but then takes a twist sideways. Teenage girls start manifesting an electrical power. They can zap people, with varying degrees of strength. It can be a pleasing, arousing tingle, or a warning jolt, or a breath-stealing, heart-stopping (literally) bolt. They soon discover that older women can also manifest the ability, but it has to be kick-started by a jolt from someone who already has it. (Even later in the book it's revealed that there's actually a muscle - they call it the skein - that controls the electricity, and women have, in the last twenty years or so, evolved to have that muscle.)

The book revolves between the points of view of a few different women and one man. The man is a journalist reporting on the emergence of the new power, while the women are prominent figures in the new world order that is emerging. Allie - Eve - becomes the leader of a new religion, Roxy is the daughter of a crime syndicate boss, and Margot is a mayor climbing the political ranks. Margot's daughter also gets a few chapters.

It's been pointed out that perhaps men are afraid of women having equal rights because they can't picture a world in which powerful women don't treat men the way powerful men have always treated women. They can only imagine men and women interacting as oppressors and oppressed, not as equals. Whereas feminism wants a world where we are truly equals. The Power imagines a world where women do become the oppressors, and men are forced into the feminine role. This is enforced by the framework the novel is told in - the novel itself is bracketed by letters between the “author,” presenting his historical novel, and a woman supposedly editing his work. Through the letters, you discover the novel is a slightly embellished history of their world, with about five thousand years between the events of the novel and the time of the letters. In the tone of the letters, you see the stereotypes switched - the man is apologetic and unsure while the woman is authoritative, patronizing, and a little bit sexist. “Oh, you silly boy, imagining a world where men were dominant! What a naughty idea! Don't you think men as soldiers is preposterous? Men are homemakers, women are the aggressive ones!” I think, if feminism achieves its goals through legislation, we will find true equality. If something like this were to happen - a drastic change, giving women a physical way to dominate suddenly, the outcome might indeed be more like the novel. Enough women have been traumatized that they'll want - need - to avenge themselves, and violent upheaval will result.

By the last third of the novel, we see powerful women and societies acting just the same as powerful men always have - I'd like to think we'd have learned from the men's mistakes, but humans are only human. Perhaps this is more realistic.

The book is NOT for the faint of heart. There are graphic rape, abuse, and violence scenes. They're not gratuitous - they serve the author's point - but they are still disturbing, as those scenes should be.

I'll be thinking about this book for a while. It's excellent, and I highly recommend it, if you can handle the dark themes.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

Thought-provoking, with some memorable characters, but the allegory was as subtle as a sledgehammer, and became a bit tiresome. I feel like Alderman had the chance to make this more ambiguous and elegant, but bowed to the urge to send A Message, as well as wanting to tie the plot up a bit too neatly.

Still, I think this is compelling, and perhaps the moments when I went, “That is just too preposterous” are the point - maybe the broad strokes about violence, corrupting power, and gender stereotypes are meant to provoke that reaction, then make you reflect “wait . . . I suppose the reverse really is/has been true - maybe this story is precisely accurate, and our society is preposterous.”

Astonishing, fascinating concept. And oh the bittersweet irony of the second half of the book!

I think this book is going to percolate with me for a while. Parts of it were very difficult to read, and reading it during the current spate of sexual harassment/assault allegations has felt...uncannily timely. The underlying premise of the book is interesting, but I found the structure of the sections unnecessary. I also found the prologue/epilogue a little too heavy-handed. Overall a good read in a genre I don't usually attempt.

This book is banana pants! I loved it. Imagine a world where women suddenly have the power – literally and metaphorically. A world where men are subjugated and oppressed, with limited access and rights. Does this world sound familiar at all to you?

Alderman does an incredible job of exploring the role of electrical power and skeins while also showing how power – regardless of who possesses it – can have terrifying and negative consequences.

I really thought I was going to like this a lot more than I did. The first 100 pages or so flew by with an almost intoxicating pace. (apart from the very clumsy front end of the very clumsy bookends of the novel). Thought this was going to be a 4 or 5 star read.

It is not a new or novel idea but there is nothing wrong with that. There is a lot to like in the book but it is too muddled in may of its themes and looses too much momentum in the middle and never quite recovers. Shame really.

Maybe if these ideas are new to you then perhaps it would have more impact. However, I do think that Naomi has a much better book in there waiting to come out.

I felt the main premise of this novel was an interesting and a promising germ of an idea. However, disappointing the execution of the idea in this novel was poorly executed. The mere reversal of rape, war and terror inflicted by men on women, replicated in a dystopian future by women who have gained superior power over men by their literal electric power seemed a rather oversimplification of the complexity of power structures and human behaviour. The characters lacked any substance and I struggled to be invested in any of the main protagonists plot lines. The ending was very anticlimactic and dull. I ended the book unsure of the authors intention in creating this novel as it lacked clarity and purpose, sometimes it seemed to veer towards a feminist vein but overall the novels intent remained very unclear. Unfortunately for me this novel pales in comparison to the mighty texts that epitomise the dystopian genre such as the handmaids tale and brave new world.

So, The Power isn't the book I was expecting if I'm honest. I was expecting to follow a girl and her story as she discovered her new abilities. I thought it'd have more emphasis on the story telling aspect? The book feels like its more politically charged than that.

I have to admit that the book is of a good quality. The writing style definitely had more of a reserved style that I associate with academics. I felt the writing was right for the book, as it is supposed to be a documentation of a historical event. The writing tried to balance a traditional fictional style with this more reserved style, as we get insights into characters thoughts. I really felt these styles did not mesh well.

I wasn't emotionally attached to any of the characters. I think this was partially due to the writing style, the perspective almost felt removed from the plot with no emotional connection to the person being observed.

In the end, this just wasn't the book for me. I think this could easily be a good read if you go into it knowing what you'll be reading.

This intriguing dystopian fiction of inverted gender dynamics is the 2017's winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Women suddenly develop the power to produce and discharge electricity and suddenly they are the gender in power. The oppressed become the oppressors. Shocking fictional tales of treatment of men become the more shocking when you remember that the exact thing happens to some women in our world today. The story is told from several perspectives and spans 10 years - from the discovery of the new powers to the inevitable culmination that such a shocking disruption of culture can bring. What the book is trying to do (and achieves) is stronger than the actual story. I want to like it more than I actually do, as I was intrigued by the characters yet never fully warmed up to them.

1.5 A fantasy I could indulge in but philosophically unimaginative, positing only that power corrupts. A simple reversal without consideration of history of oppression, blanketing humanity with the empathic capacity of a child wanting to be king of the hill.

An interesting and well written book, with terrific ideas, that turns on it's head, all our comfortable preconceptions of gender stereotypes, and then completely kicks them to bits.

OK, that's the basics; did I enjoy it - I'm not sure, and I'm not sure why. I don't want to go into detail about the story as I don't do spoilers. Perhaps the book was a bit too deliberately trying to make us think, about the horrors of our current society by invoking a total inversion of our attitudes to everything.

Is it worth a read? Oh yes!

3.5 stars. Entertaining and interesting idea. I was a little underwhelmed by the ending.

Wow. This book will make you see the world very differently and question why things are the way they are for women. A heady read.