Status
Available
Publication
New York, NY : Little, Brown and Co., 2017.
Description
In this stunning bestseller praised as "our era's Handmaid's Tale," a fierce new power has emerged--and only women have it (Washington Post). In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets. From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways. "Captivating, fierce, and unsettling...I was riveted by every page. Alderman's prose is immersive and, well, electric." --New York Times Book Review… (more)
Media reviews
Alderman [...] imagines our present moment — with our history, our wars, our gender politics — complicated by the sudden widespread manifestation of “electrostatic power” in women. Young girls wake up one morning with the ability to generate powerful electric shocks from their bodies,
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having developed specialized muscles — called “skeins” — at their collarbones, which they can flex to deliver anything from mild stings to lethal jolts of electricity. The power varies in its intensity but is almost uniform in its distribution to anyone with two X chromosomes, and women vary in their capacity to control and direct it, but the result is still a vast, systemic upheaval of gender dynamics across the globe. Show Less
Alderman has written our era's "Handmaid's Tale," and, like Margaret Atwood's classic, "The Power" is one of those essential feminist works that terrifies and illuminates, enrages and encourages.
The novel is constructed as a big, brash, page-turning, drug-running, globetrotting thriller, one in which people say things such as: “It’s only you I’ve blimmin come to find, isn’t it?” and “You wanna stand with me? Or you wanna stand against me?” But it’s also endlessly nuanced
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and thought-provoking, combining elegantly efficient prose with beautiful meditations on the metaphysics of power, possibility and change. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member rivkat
Girls, and then women, worldwide start developing the power to administer electric shocks; many of them can make the shocks fatal. My thoughts about this are conflicted. The book feels like a move in a second-wave feminist argument: power is sexy; if most women could easily kill other people and
The frame narrative in which a man amusingly (to his indulgent female betters) reconstructs a forgotten world in which men had power over women doesn’t make sense, because the core story includes realistic details that the frame narrative insists are lost to history. And the ways in which women quickly reverse all our current stereotypes and atrocities to inflict them on men didn’t work for me. The twentieth century is replete with evidence that discrimination, and even genocide, can arise quickly, so I can’t say it wasn’t plausible in some sense, but this version didn’t feel inventive enough to be worth the effort. Women immediately switching to rape as part of warfare, sexually harassing men in the workforce, deciding that they were more intelligent than men, denying men the right to drive, requiring all men to have female guardians (because they’re so dangerous on their own), even ultimately engaging in male genital mutilation so that only electric stimulation could get them hard and orgasm was often painful; men starting to simper and pretend to be dumb to curry favor with women—all this seemed to lack imagination.
More broadly, I have deep reservations about the implicit argument that, if women could easily kill men, the current social category “men” would turn into the current (or even more retrograde) social category “women.” First, there’s the question of ideology: so far, patriarchy has been relatively successful at revaluing male as good and female as bad no matter what—see, e.g., the treatment of doctors (a heavily female profession in Russia, heavily male traditionally in the US). The counterargument can’t lightly be set aside: the book shows a political candidate who loses her temper and nearly shocks her male opponent when he says something nasty to her, and it’s that very display of nearly unchecked power, and willingness to use it, that wins her the election even though people say they disapprove. After 2016 I can’t say for sure that voters would react otherwise, but I also think there’s an existing narrative of female unreliability/emotionality that would work against such a switch. After all, it’s not like Trump actually was stronger than Clinton—he’s an unhealthy coward. I have trouble believing that women would become the class to whom that kind of power was attributed and for whom that kind of willingness to harm was valued in a few years. But even after that, the implicit argument of the book is that systematic oppression grows out of the physical power disparity of men and women, to which I respond: chattel slavery was imposed on people who were often physically more powerful than their enslavers. There were indeed revolts, some of them successful, but slavery also persisted where enslavers were able to keep enslaved people divided, to threaten them with massive retaliation if they exercised their physical power against enslavers, and to hold hostages for good behavior. With a preexisting ideology supporting patriarchy and preexisting divisions among women (not least race-based), I am dubious that the switch the book describes would happen. I presume the thought is, well, that’s why the Cataclysm occurred—there was enough of a backlash to create global war sufficiently destructive to leave almost no intact artifacts or even information behind. But even if that’s the worldbuilding answer, by only featuring characters who accept that the polarities of gender have been reversed, Alderman creates the impression of unity in reaction (even if a lot of the men are mad about the change, they all accept that it has happened).
The characters are also mostly—well, I can also no longer say that cartoon villainy is implausible; 2017’s storyline is proof of that. But that doesn’t mean that it’s fun to read about, or what I go to f/sf to get. Still, I have to admit that even though I’ve tried to unlearn a lot of gendered codes I was discomfited by the supplicating tone in which the man in the frame story wrote his female mentor—and I likely wouldn’t have been as sensitized to the same note written by a young woman to her male mentor.
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men usually couldn’t, women would act like men and men would act like women; all power corrupts, and all power has branching effects that are fractal/not entirely predictable from the center (like lightning, see?). The frame narrative in which a man amusingly (to his indulgent female betters) reconstructs a forgotten world in which men had power over women doesn’t make sense, because the core story includes realistic details that the frame narrative insists are lost to history. And the ways in which women quickly reverse all our current stereotypes and atrocities to inflict them on men didn’t work for me. The twentieth century is replete with evidence that discrimination, and even genocide, can arise quickly, so I can’t say it wasn’t plausible in some sense, but this version didn’t feel inventive enough to be worth the effort. Women immediately switching to rape as part of warfare, sexually harassing men in the workforce, deciding that they were more intelligent than men, denying men the right to drive, requiring all men to have female guardians (because they’re so dangerous on their own), even ultimately engaging in male genital mutilation so that only electric stimulation could get them hard and orgasm was often painful; men starting to simper and pretend to be dumb to curry favor with women—all this seemed to lack imagination.
More broadly, I have deep reservations about the implicit argument that, if women could easily kill men, the current social category “men” would turn into the current (or even more retrograde) social category “women.” First, there’s the question of ideology: so far, patriarchy has been relatively successful at revaluing male as good and female as bad no matter what—see, e.g., the treatment of doctors (a heavily female profession in Russia, heavily male traditionally in the US). The counterargument can’t lightly be set aside: the book shows a political candidate who loses her temper and nearly shocks her male opponent when he says something nasty to her, and it’s that very display of nearly unchecked power, and willingness to use it, that wins her the election even though people say they disapprove. After 2016 I can’t say for sure that voters would react otherwise, but I also think there’s an existing narrative of female unreliability/emotionality that would work against such a switch. After all, it’s not like Trump actually was stronger than Clinton—he’s an unhealthy coward. I have trouble believing that women would become the class to whom that kind of power was attributed and for whom that kind of willingness to harm was valued in a few years. But even after that, the implicit argument of the book is that systematic oppression grows out of the physical power disparity of men and women, to which I respond: chattel slavery was imposed on people who were often physically more powerful than their enslavers. There were indeed revolts, some of them successful, but slavery also persisted where enslavers were able to keep enslaved people divided, to threaten them with massive retaliation if they exercised their physical power against enslavers, and to hold hostages for good behavior. With a preexisting ideology supporting patriarchy and preexisting divisions among women (not least race-based), I am dubious that the switch the book describes would happen. I presume the thought is, well, that’s why the Cataclysm occurred—there was enough of a backlash to create global war sufficiently destructive to leave almost no intact artifacts or even information behind. But even if that’s the worldbuilding answer, by only featuring characters who accept that the polarities of gender have been reversed, Alderman creates the impression of unity in reaction (even if a lot of the men are mad about the change, they all accept that it has happened).
The characters are also mostly—well, I can also no longer say that cartoon villainy is implausible; 2017’s storyline is proof of that. But that doesn’t mean that it’s fun to read about, or what I go to f/sf to get. Still, I have to admit that even though I’ve tried to unlearn a lot of gendered codes I was discomfited by the supplicating tone in which the man in the frame story wrote his female mentor—and I likely wouldn’t have been as sensitized to the same note written by a young woman to her male mentor.
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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
There has been a lot of hype about this book, which only increased after it won this year’s Baileys Women’s Fiction Prize. For once, it is absolutely justified. In fact, I wonder whether the various plaudits spread across the cover really tell the full story.
I bought it as a bit of a punt while
It seems to cross several different genres, excelling in each of them. While reading it I was considering how I might describe it, and found myself wavering between dystopian literature, science fiction, political observation, satire and straightforward thriller. Well, they will do for a start, though there are also moments of wry humour and quasi-religious bliss.
It also classifies as meta-fiction, with the bulk of the book taking the form of a manuscript of anthropological research into the events that culminated in a devastating, world-eclipsing apocalypse, sandwiched by brief correspondence from the supposed researcher and his editor. Their closing exchanges form the crowning glory of an already marvellous novel.
The story revolves around the discovery that, when finding themselves placed under sudden stress, some girls and young women can generate and apply a devastating electrostatic charge. This becomes known as ‘the power’. Having once unleashed the power, young women find that they are also able to release it in older women. All at once, around the world girls find that they can not only protect themselves from physical assault, but can use their charge as an offensive weapon, too.
Alderman describes masterfully the way in which the phenomenon spreads around the world and how different cultures respond. The story focuses on four characters: Allie, who unleashes the power to enable herself to escape from her abusive adoptive parents; Margot, mayor of a northern city in the USA who is ambitious to progress further up the political ladder, though that aspiration is challenged by the sudden awakening of the power in her elder daughter; Roxy, daughter of an East End villain who yearns to avenge the murder of her ‘gangster’s moll’ mother; and Tunde, a Nigerian student who captures mobile phone footage of some early incidents of the unleashing of the power, and launches a successful career as an international journalist as a consequence. The novel unwinds with interpolated narratives following each of these characters, with a few others thrown in, as the story counts down towards an unspecified event.
I don’t want to say much more about the content for fear of inadvertently offering spoliers. Alderman manages the separate threads very capably, interspersing them with facsimile archeolgical notes and addenda, all of which lend a deep patina of verisimilitude. Any dystopian literature, particularly if there is an essentially feminist theme, will automatically draw comparisons with Margaret Atwood. In this case those worthy plaudits are entirely justified. This is, quite simply, an amazing, imaginative and haunting novel.
I bought it as a bit of a punt while
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on a post-payday spree at the flagship branch of Waterstone’s, succumbing as all too often to the enthusiastic suggestion of one of the engaging and knowledgeable staff who seem to abound there. I have occasionally had my fingers burnt and sworn never to listen to them again … until the next time. Well, the woman who recommended this book definitely deserves any commission she might have received from my purchase.It seems to cross several different genres, excelling in each of them. While reading it I was considering how I might describe it, and found myself wavering between dystopian literature, science fiction, political observation, satire and straightforward thriller. Well, they will do for a start, though there are also moments of wry humour and quasi-religious bliss.
It also classifies as meta-fiction, with the bulk of the book taking the form of a manuscript of anthropological research into the events that culminated in a devastating, world-eclipsing apocalypse, sandwiched by brief correspondence from the supposed researcher and his editor. Their closing exchanges form the crowning glory of an already marvellous novel.
The story revolves around the discovery that, when finding themselves placed under sudden stress, some girls and young women can generate and apply a devastating electrostatic charge. This becomes known as ‘the power’. Having once unleashed the power, young women find that they are also able to release it in older women. All at once, around the world girls find that they can not only protect themselves from physical assault, but can use their charge as an offensive weapon, too.
Alderman describes masterfully the way in which the phenomenon spreads around the world and how different cultures respond. The story focuses on four characters: Allie, who unleashes the power to enable herself to escape from her abusive adoptive parents; Margot, mayor of a northern city in the USA who is ambitious to progress further up the political ladder, though that aspiration is challenged by the sudden awakening of the power in her elder daughter; Roxy, daughter of an East End villain who yearns to avenge the murder of her ‘gangster’s moll’ mother; and Tunde, a Nigerian student who captures mobile phone footage of some early incidents of the unleashing of the power, and launches a successful career as an international journalist as a consequence. The novel unwinds with interpolated narratives following each of these characters, with a few others thrown in, as the story counts down towards an unspecified event.
I don’t want to say much more about the content for fear of inadvertently offering spoliers. Alderman manages the separate threads very capably, interspersing them with facsimile archeolgical notes and addenda, all of which lend a deep patina of verisimilitude. Any dystopian literature, particularly if there is an essentially feminist theme, will automatically draw comparisons with Margaret Atwood. In this case those worthy plaudits are entirely justified. This is, quite simply, an amazing, imaginative and haunting novel.
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LibraryThing member jackdeighton
The Power imagines what it would be like, how interactions between the sexes would be affected, how society would be changed, if women developed the ability to administer electric shocks – in much the same way a manta ray can. The premise is a fantastical one but is given a Science-Fictional
The story of how this power changes the world is told mainly through four points of view: Allie, who becomes the head of a new religion emphasising God’s female nature by transforming herself into Mother Eve; a London gangster’s daughter called Roxy; Margot Cleary, a US city mayor eager for further political advancement and Tunde who, initially by accident, becomes the journalistic chronicler of events.
There is, of course, a backlash to the new reality, both in the political sphere and in the darker (and perhaps not so hidden) recesses of the internet. One conspiracy theorist called UrbanDox believes that Guardian Angel was leaked deliberately just to do men down.
Yet Alderman’s is no simplistic account. Biblical cadences emphasise the mythical nature of the origins of her future society. Her characters are by and large agreeably nuanced, their actions not entirely predictable but still credible. Roxy is wonderfully realised but I wasn’t entirely convinced by Alderman’s US ones, and wondered whether Saudi Arabian women would throw off sexual inhibitions quite so quickly as one does here. But I suppose in the heady throes of a revolution anything might go and Alderman’s tale implicitly argues that human nature is indivisible, characteristics and behaviours shown by any one individual may or may not be shown by others, irrespective of their sex.
Where I have major reservations is with the framing device, a series of letters supposedly sent five thousand years hence between “Neil” and “Naomi” wrapped around the contents of a manuscript whose title page reads The Power: a historical novel by Neil Adam Armon (the anagram is easily deciphered) and which purports to be an imaginative, speculative, account of how the power originated and precipitated what became known as the Cataclysm. These letters stand on their heads widely held beliefs (in our present) about the proclivities and habits of, and attitudes to, men and women. Alderman’s point in a nutshell, but perhaps a little too heavy-handed. Between each section of the book (which count down from the power’s first appearance to the Cataclysm) are illustrations of little understood artefacts from around the time described in the manuscript. The interpolation into the manuscript of seemingly intact “Archival documents relating to the electrostatic power, its origin, dispersal, and the possibility of a cure” also strains credibility. How could they have survived more or less intact, remaining understandable, when the illustrated artefacts did not? Moreover the manuscript itself is too close to present day speech patterns – especially in the character of Roxy – to make the framing device believable. A five thousand year hence Neil Adam Armon would have got so much of our present wrong that he actually gets right. From this point of view it might have been better just to present the story as speculation rather than an imagined history from the future. This is a very purist position, of course, which argues for every detail of the overall book to be true to its own reality as presented to the reader - and very difficult to bring off. And anyway, SF is always about the present, never the future (or in this case the manuscript’s distant past.) I also doubt whether the inhabitants of such a world would in fact call the historical break a cataclysm but all this is mere quibbling. Though its interpretation of human nature, power and how it is implemented is bleak, The Power is engrossing, well written and with a lot to say about relationships between the sexes.
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rationale by positing an area of muscle across the collar bone, called a skein, as a centre for the power and an origin for the mutation in a Second World War chemical agent (Guardian Angel) which protected against gas attacks, which inevitably leaked into the environment. The story of how this power changes the world is told mainly through four points of view: Allie, who becomes the head of a new religion emphasising God’s female nature by transforming herself into Mother Eve; a London gangster’s daughter called Roxy; Margot Cleary, a US city mayor eager for further political advancement and Tunde who, initially by accident, becomes the journalistic chronicler of events.
There is, of course, a backlash to the new reality, both in the political sphere and in the darker (and perhaps not so hidden) recesses of the internet. One conspiracy theorist called UrbanDox believes that Guardian Angel was leaked deliberately just to do men down.
Yet Alderman’s is no simplistic account. Biblical cadences emphasise the mythical nature of the origins of her future society. Her characters are by and large agreeably nuanced, their actions not entirely predictable but still credible. Roxy is wonderfully realised but I wasn’t entirely convinced by Alderman’s US ones, and wondered whether Saudi Arabian women would throw off sexual inhibitions quite so quickly as one does here. But I suppose in the heady throes of a revolution anything might go and Alderman’s tale implicitly argues that human nature is indivisible, characteristics and behaviours shown by any one individual may or may not be shown by others, irrespective of their sex.
Where I have major reservations is with the framing device, a series of letters supposedly sent five thousand years hence between “Neil” and “Naomi” wrapped around the contents of a manuscript whose title page reads The Power: a historical novel by Neil Adam Armon (the anagram is easily deciphered) and which purports to be an imaginative, speculative, account of how the power originated and precipitated what became known as the Cataclysm. These letters stand on their heads widely held beliefs (in our present) about the proclivities and habits of, and attitudes to, men and women. Alderman’s point in a nutshell, but perhaps a little too heavy-handed. Between each section of the book (which count down from the power’s first appearance to the Cataclysm) are illustrations of little understood artefacts from around the time described in the manuscript. The interpolation into the manuscript of seemingly intact “Archival documents relating to the electrostatic power, its origin, dispersal, and the possibility of a cure” also strains credibility. How could they have survived more or less intact, remaining understandable, when the illustrated artefacts did not? Moreover the manuscript itself is too close to present day speech patterns – especially in the character of Roxy – to make the framing device believable. A five thousand year hence Neil Adam Armon would have got so much of our present wrong that he actually gets right. From this point of view it might have been better just to present the story as speculation rather than an imagined history from the future. This is a very purist position, of course, which argues for every detail of the overall book to be true to its own reality as presented to the reader - and very difficult to bring off. And anyway, SF is always about the present, never the future (or in this case the manuscript’s distant past.) I also doubt whether the inhabitants of such a world would in fact call the historical break a cataclysm but all this is mere quibbling. Though its interpretation of human nature, power and how it is implemented is bleak, The Power is engrossing, well written and with a lot to say about relationships between the sexes.
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LibraryThing member beserene
Hooooooooooly crap, y'all. This book is AMAZING. And seriously violent and triggery and, on many levels, a depressing meditation on the fact that humans are garbage. At the same time, however, it is absolutely cathartic; while it may very well trigger those who have had sexual assault and abuse
Let's be clear: this is speculative fiction that looks toward the near future and is drawn straight from today's very real gender dynamics. In the book, teenage girls and women manifest the power to produce electricity in their bodies sufficient to electrocute -- you might imagine that such power turns society on its head, and it is that upheaval that the novel follows. It's also set up a book-within-a-book, with far future citizens looking back at what would be our near future and arguing amongst themselves about what's true in their history. That very set up creates enough distance to make even the more violent scenarios of the internal story fascinating in context.
A friend of mine told me that there are two camps of people who read this book: those who think it should be viewed purely as a meditation on the absolute corruption of power (which, on many levels, it definitely is) and those who finish the book with the phrase "Burn it all down" on their lips. I leave you to decide which camp you are in, but I'm telling you that you need to read this book. The very last line of the very last far-future letter puts the entire novel in perspective -- when you read it, it will hit you. Amazing. Seriously.
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experiences, I would encourage fellow survivors to read it anyway, because the process of the book creates an emotional and experiential arc that, in the end, is both horrifying and deeply, deeply satisfying. Let's be clear: this is speculative fiction that looks toward the near future and is drawn straight from today's very real gender dynamics. In the book, teenage girls and women manifest the power to produce electricity in their bodies sufficient to electrocute -- you might imagine that such power turns society on its head, and it is that upheaval that the novel follows. It's also set up a book-within-a-book, with far future citizens looking back at what would be our near future and arguing amongst themselves about what's true in their history. That very set up creates enough distance to make even the more violent scenarios of the internal story fascinating in context.
A friend of mine told me that there are two camps of people who read this book: those who think it should be viewed purely as a meditation on the absolute corruption of power (which, on many levels, it definitely is) and those who finish the book with the phrase "Burn it all down" on their lips. I leave you to decide which camp you are in, but I'm telling you that you need to read this book. The very last line of the very last far-future letter puts the entire novel in perspective -- when you read it, it will hit you. Amazing. Seriously.
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LibraryThing member atreic
OK, all the criticisms of this are fair. It's rapey and it's dark and it's grim and overwrought, and the metaphors are laid on with a trowel. But I really enjoyed it. From the smart business woman trying to live a lie and hide her power, to the wild women living out in camps and hunting men, it
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packed a big punch with a host of flawed characters I still really cared about. Show Less
LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce
The Power seemed like it was going to be great. The idea is that teenage girls discover that they have the power to control electricity, as in use it as a weapon. They pass the ability on to older women. At first you see women freeing themselves from the oppressive control of men, and I was just
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thrilled. Then it goes all Lord of the Flies and you find women can’t be trusted with this power, they turn out to be not only just as bad as men, but bad in exactly the same way. I have to think that after centuries or millennia of living under the boot of oppression women would have learned a little something about equality. Evidently Naomi Alderman doesn’t, which is surprising. I loved her novel Disobedience. It highlighted hope and inner resource the way The Power doesn’t. Did something happen to her in between writing these two books? I’m going to guess that this dour, pessimistic book is going to end up being the far greater financial success Show Less
LibraryThing member kk1
Despite its title, I found this book to be disempowering and depressing (as a woman).
Women gain powers and use them to control, bully, maim, kill men. Hello dystopia, my old friend.
I found it hard to connect with the characters. The strongest passages were when she was writing about how Tunde felt
Women gain powers and use them to control, bully, maim, kill men. Hello dystopia, my old friend.
I found it hard to connect with the characters. The strongest passages were when she was writing about how Tunde felt
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in his new position as vulnerable, hunted male. It illustrated how women can feel just walking past a group of threatening or more powerful men and how they change their behaviour/posture. Show Less
LibraryThing member mcelhra
When I heard that Naomi Alderman’s mentor is the queen of speculative fiction Margaret Atwood, I knew The Power was a book I had to read. The Power is written as a book within a book. It starts with a letter from an author named Neil Adam Armon (an anagram of Naomi Alderman) to another author
It turns out that power corrupts women just as much as it corrupts men and a female-dominated society isn’t the benevolent matriarchy one might imagine. It’s an interesting thought experiment that Alderman engages in. She does so with nuance and a touch of dark humor. Once I finished, I immediately wanted to read it again because I know I’ll get even more out of it when I know where the story is headed. We read this book for one of my book clubs and there was a lot to talk about – it makes for a great discussion. My book club is all-female – I’d be really interested in what male readers think of it. I’m guessing most would find it pretty eye-opening. Highly recommended.
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named Naomi. Neil has written a historical fiction novel set 5000 years ago (which would make it set in the present day) about what happened when teenage girls suddenly developed the power to shoot powerful volts of electricity out of their hands. The balance of power in the world shifts when women are suddenly able to overpower men whenever they want.It turns out that power corrupts women just as much as it corrupts men and a female-dominated society isn’t the benevolent matriarchy one might imagine. It’s an interesting thought experiment that Alderman engages in. She does so with nuance and a touch of dark humor. Once I finished, I immediately wanted to read it again because I know I’ll get even more out of it when I know where the story is headed. We read this book for one of my book clubs and there was a lot to talk about – it makes for a great discussion. My book club is all-female – I’d be really interested in what male readers think of it. I’m guessing most would find it pretty eye-opening. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
Alderman has come up with an interesting and powerful premise: women around the world are awakened to the fact that they have an electrical charge that gives them physical power over men. It starts first in 15 year old girls. There are several characters followed through this awakening. Allie, an
I found the idea to be powerful, but unfortunately I found the execution weak. What the women do with this new-found power might be partially realistic, but I found it disappointing. There is a lot of violence and not a lot of exploration of the intellectual side of what this physical power could mean. I also thought the characters she chose to create and develop did a disservice to what could have happened.
In short, I wish someone would try again with this premise but different characters, thematic exploration, and outcomes.
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abused foster child, experiences it as a religious movement and becomes "Mother Eve" to her followers. Roxy, daughter of a mob boss, uses her extensive power to continue in her father's footsteps. Tunde is a man who travels the world documenting the events and consequences of the power. Margot is a woman in her 40s in politics and using events to climb to the top. I found the idea to be powerful, but unfortunately I found the execution weak. What the women do with this new-found power might be partially realistic, but I found it disappointing. There is a lot of violence and not a lot of exploration of the intellectual side of what this physical power could mean. I also thought the characters she chose to create and develop did a disservice to what could have happened.
In short, I wish someone would try again with this premise but different characters, thematic exploration, and outcomes.
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LibraryThing member msf59
“Power has her ways. She acts on people, and people act on her.”
In the near future, in a very recognizable world, girls and then women, discover a hidden “power” that gives them the ability to shock and if desired...kill, notably abusive men. Yep, the tables have turned and this makes for
Told in alternating chapters, from different character viewpoints, the novel unfolds, in funny and biting ways. It is not as deep and introspective as The Handmaid's Tale but the author still offers plenty to chew on. I am not going to divulge anymore of the various plot-lines but I was highly entertained and give it a strong recommendation.
*This is also a terrific audiobook, if you want to go that route.
In the near future, in a very recognizable world, girls and then women, discover a hidden “power” that gives them the ability to shock and if desired...kill, notably abusive men. Yep, the tables have turned and this makes for
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a timely read, but power also corrupts, so not all is rosy. Told in alternating chapters, from different character viewpoints, the novel unfolds, in funny and biting ways. It is not as deep and introspective as The Handmaid's Tale but the author still offers plenty to chew on. I am not going to divulge anymore of the various plot-lines but I was highly entertained and give it a strong recommendation.
*This is also a terrific audiobook, if you want to go that route.
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LibraryThing member sturlington
What can I say about this book? I know it will be very divisive--some people will love it, some will hate it. I loved it. It posits what if a power awakens in women, an innate ability to generate electric power, so that they can defend themselves and hurt other people, so that they, in just a few
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years, become more powerful than men? I found this book exciting, challenging, uncomfortable, sometimes horrific, and just thought-provoking on so many levels--our assumptions about gender roles, about power structures, about religion, about history and who writes it. And it's also just a really good story, with lots of characters you care about and back-stabbing and power plays and revolution. Show Less
LibraryThing member Iira
I have mixed feelings about this. I wanted to like it so bad, but at the same time it was so obvious, so unsurprising, so childhish. Women gain a power that makes them physically superior to men, making it possible for them to electrocute them by touch. I mean, come on. It can't only be about who
And also to remind myself that good books are great even though I expect them to be better. I just have to remember how bad the crappy ones are.
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has the physical power. What about intelligence? Apparently not an issue, when it comes to humans. I don't know why I was so disappointed in this, I expected The Power to be something more I guess. I also expected the story to be more than an extended short story, which is what this felt like. Still, I gave this four stars, because 1) it's a dystopia 2) it's by Naomi Alderman and 3) it has a great cover. And also to remind myself that good books are great even though I expect them to be better. I just have to remember how bad the crappy ones are.
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LibraryThing member mrgan
This feels like essential 2017 reading, capturing a moment in our culture that’s precise, but also reflective of human condition through all time. In a fairer world, half of all popular books would read this way.
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
"Gender is a shell game. What is a man? Whatever a woman isn't.
What is a woman? Whatever a man isn't."
This book is set up as a book written by a male historian in the far future when women dominate men and rule the world. The male historian believes that a world ruled by men would be kinder and
Almost simultaneously around the world women developed a "power" that enabled them to debilitate or even kill whoever they aim this power, which is similar to an electric shock, at. At first, many women don't know how to use this power, and many of those that do know how are reluctant to use it, but eventually there are wars etc. as women seize leadership roles. The story is told through the experiences of several characters, including Roxie, the daughter of a British crime family, Allie, an American teenager who reinvents herself as Eve, a faith healer and head of a religious movement that spreads worldwide, Margot, a politician who develops training camps to teach young women to use the power, Jocelyn, Margot's daughter, and a soldier in the women's army, and Tunde, a male Nigerian reporter who travels the world, at great risk to himself, to report on the cataclysm occurring as women begin using their power.
This was an interesting and thought-provoking work. I recommend it.
3 1/2 sta
What is a woman? Whatever a man isn't."
This book is set up as a book written by a male historian in the far future when women dominate men and rule the world. The male historian believes that a world ruled by men would be kinder and
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more nurturing, rather than a world in which aggressive and violent women rule. The book the historian writes is his thesis about how the world came to be ruled by women, and it is this book that we read.Almost simultaneously around the world women developed a "power" that enabled them to debilitate or even kill whoever they aim this power, which is similar to an electric shock, at. At first, many women don't know how to use this power, and many of those that do know how are reluctant to use it, but eventually there are wars etc. as women seize leadership roles. The story is told through the experiences of several characters, including Roxie, the daughter of a British crime family, Allie, an American teenager who reinvents herself as Eve, a faith healer and head of a religious movement that spreads worldwide, Margot, a politician who develops training camps to teach young women to use the power, Jocelyn, Margot's daughter, and a soldier in the women's army, and Tunde, a male Nigerian reporter who travels the world, at great risk to himself, to report on the cataclysm occurring as women begin using their power.
This was an interesting and thought-provoking work. I recommend it.
3 1/2 sta
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LibraryThing member ecataldi
Poignant, powerful, and wonderfully different for a change. For once, women are the power hungry, the dominant, the top of the food chain. Eerily reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale and other dystopian literature, The Power chronicles the female ascent to the top. Worldwide young girls are
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discovering that they have the power to release electrical charges, effectively shocking other people, sometimes to death. They also discover that when they shock older women they have the power to waken the dormant abilities. Soon women all over the world have this power and for once the men know fear. Told through multiple perspectives over a ten year span we see a female mayor aspiring to be governor, a young teenage girl with stronger raw power then anyone has ever seen, Mother Eve a prophet of the power, and a journalist, the lone male voice in this book. Together their panic, amazement, and greed tell the tale of how men became the weaker sex and the movement that changed the course of history forever, Wonderfully fresh and inventive. I loved it! Show Less
LibraryThing member annbury
Is gender nature, or nuture? This book explores the question of how different women really are from men by flipping the power dynamic between the sexes. The switch is literal. The novel is framed as a manuscript written thousands of years in the future, looking back to the time when most women
So much for the premise, what about the story? The action of the novel takes place in the period between the emergence of the power, and the arrival of the Cataclysm, and is traced through the experiences of five principal characters. There is a lot that is good about it as a novel. The characters are vividly drawn and (in the strange context in which they exist) believable enough to get you rooting for them. The prose is crisp and forcefull, and there is a strong element of very dark humor. The plot (and subplots) are compelling. For most of the book, this was enough to keep me reading with great interest and attention. Towards the end, however, as the change moves into the geopolitical realm, the momentum sags. The plot becomes confusing and diffused, major characters are left in limbo, and I had to push myself to finish. This is a very good book, and a good read, but for me it least it doesn't measure up to "The Handmaid's Tale", to which it is frequently compared. Read it for what it is.
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suddenly acquired the power to generate powerful electric shocks -- "the power" of the title. Fairly rapidly, this shook societies to the core, leading to a Cataclysm, and eventually to the female dominated society in which the manuscript is written. The story comes down hard on the side of nature -- human nature -- dominating behavior, rather than any innate differences between the sexes. So much for the premise, what about the story? The action of the novel takes place in the period between the emergence of the power, and the arrival of the Cataclysm, and is traced through the experiences of five principal characters. There is a lot that is good about it as a novel. The characters are vividly drawn and (in the strange context in which they exist) believable enough to get you rooting for them. The prose is crisp and forcefull, and there is a strong element of very dark humor. The plot (and subplots) are compelling. For most of the book, this was enough to keep me reading with great interest and attention. Towards the end, however, as the change moves into the geopolitical realm, the momentum sags. The plot becomes confusing and diffused, major characters are left in limbo, and I had to push myself to finish. This is a very good book, and a good read, but for me it least it doesn't measure up to "The Handmaid's Tale", to which it is frequently compared. Read it for what it is.
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LibraryThing member gypsysmom
At first I was dubious about whether I would like this book but as I read I was drawn into the tale being told. This book won the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction and since one of the shortlisted books was the magnificent Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien it was up against some stiff
The premise of this book is that a substance released during World War II has been bioaccumulating in humans (and other inhabitants of the earth). This substance has triggered a genetic change in females that allows them to deliver a shock with their hands. It is first discovered by girls who pass along their discovery to others so that eventually almost all women born since World War II have the ability. Now women have the ability to disable or even kill attackers. One of the first to use her power to kill is Allie and the man she kills is her foster father who has been sexually abusing her. Allie realizes she must get away. After some time she reaches a convent on the east coast in which the nuns give her and other girls shelter. Allie hears a voice in her head which counsels her how to handle herself. She founds a new religious cult, in which she is called Mother Eve, and soon has the attention of the US government and other entities. Just as in the old saying that power corrupts some women use their ability to treat men just as badly as women were treated by men. Allie is dismayed by the way the power has corrupted many women and searches for a way to turn things around but it's not easy.
My library didn't categorize this book as science fiction but that's the genre I would put it in. It certainly portrays a dystopian world that is based on possibilities known at this time.
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competitition. Although Naomi Alderman is British this book does have a Canadian connection since she was mentored by Margaret Atwood and this book is dedicated to Atwood and her husband.The premise of this book is that a substance released during World War II has been bioaccumulating in humans (and other inhabitants of the earth). This substance has triggered a genetic change in females that allows them to deliver a shock with their hands. It is first discovered by girls who pass along their discovery to others so that eventually almost all women born since World War II have the ability. Now women have the ability to disable or even kill attackers. One of the first to use her power to kill is Allie and the man she kills is her foster father who has been sexually abusing her. Allie realizes she must get away. After some time she reaches a convent on the east coast in which the nuns give her and other girls shelter. Allie hears a voice in her head which counsels her how to handle herself. She founds a new religious cult, in which she is called Mother Eve, and soon has the attention of the US government and other entities. Just as in the old saying that power corrupts some women use their ability to treat men just as badly as women were treated by men. Allie is dismayed by the way the power has corrupted many women and searches for a way to turn things around but it's not easy.
My library didn't categorize this book as science fiction but that's the genre I would put it in. It certainly portrays a dystopian world that is based on possibilities known at this time.
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LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
I'm still not sure about the framing device, writing it as if it was a historic novel, the artefacts were interesting, particularly when they invoked the "bitten fruit motif" which made me think and then head-slap. It's a story of women getting power, a control of electricity that is caused by a
I'm not entirely sure how things got from the framing story from the current pieces but it pulled me in and kept me reading and I really did enjoy the ride and could see how it really did reflect reality.
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chemical that accumulates and causes a mutation that means that women have the ability, like electric eels, to generate and to shock and, surprise, surprise they use it and abuse it. The Framing story is about a male writer submitting this to a published about the distant past and while it adds to the story I'm not sure it adds enough to justify it being there. I loved the sketches and artefacts (particularly the Bitten Fruit Motif stuff, which did make me giggle). This story follows some of the pivotal women in the change and sees how they cope with the change and with the new world they're facing.I'm not entirely sure how things got from the framing story from the current pieces but it pulled me in and kept me reading and I really did enjoy the ride and could see how it really did reflect reality.
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LibraryThing member iansales
This was the first of three books I took with me to Finland to read during the trip, and during whatever downtime I might have during Worldcon75. I pretty much finished the novel before the first day of the con was done. Which I suppose is a testament to its readability. I had high hopes for The
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Power. At one point, it seemed a serious contender for the Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist this year, and while the Shadow Clarke Jury ended up split on the book, and it never even got a look in with the actual jury, it did sound interesting enough to be worth a punt. But, oh dear. The central premise is brilliant: young girls develop the ability to generate electricity like electric eels, and the scaffolding to back it up is well-built (Alderman namechecks Peter Watts in her acknowledgements). But this is then used in service to a feeble cross between a transatantlic thriller and a BBC euro-thriller plot. There are three main narratives: a young woman in the East End of London, who witnesses her mother’s brutal murder, and ends up taking over her father’s gangster empire; the ex-athlete trophy wife of the Moldovan president, who desposes him and turns her country into women’s state; and an American orphan, who proves have the strongest power of all, and who starts up a religion with herself in the Christ role. The entire book is framed as a novelisation of “historical events” written a millennia or so later in a world in which women are the dominant gender. It’s not very subtle. I enjoyed the book, but I found it disappointing as the three narratives were such obvious ways of treating the concept, and made it all feel more like a techno-thriller than a commentary on its premise. I gave the book away after I’d finished. I hope the person I gave it to is more impressed than I was. Show Less
LibraryThing member alanteder
The premise and the world building here were intriguing and well-imagined. The energy was somewhat dispersed though by too many protagonists (4 story lines) not all of which were compelling. The story came together best with the Tunde and Roxy linkup but that isn't until the late sections. The With the bookended notes from two writers about the book itself that one of them is writing, and then within that book there is an additional time leap were the events are being observed as a "cataclysm" from thousands of years in the future. By those devices you are regularly reminded the events are not quite "real." . It weakens/lessens the impact.
Note
This is not a YA book due to scenes of brutal sexual violence.
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double-layered meta-framing also drags it down somewhat i.e. mild Note
This is not a YA book due to scenes of brutal sexual violence.
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LibraryThing member tandah
Think this would have been a great short story; possibly two short stories - but as a novel, felt the concept was stretched out across choppy, choppy chapters with really limited plot holding it together - I think the structure may appeal more to sci-fi fans.
LibraryThing member harmen
Not particularly subtle, but fun enough. Could have been a lit less bloody.
LibraryThing member rglossne
Young women all over the world discover that they have electrical power that can be used to shock and kill running through their bodies. What happens when women develop the power to take over the world? Will they use that power for good, or evil? Will the world become a peaceful place, or more
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violent than we can imagine? This speculative novel tells its story through the eyes of a daughter of a London crime family, a young woman who claims the title of Eve, a young male reporter, and an American politician and her daughter. This is a page-turning, thought-provoking read. Show Less
LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
Setting aside the frame, this is the story of the rise of a genetic shift in what is generically termed “power” here as young women develop a “skein” across their shoulders that gives them access to varying amounts of electromagnetic pulses, from pinpricks to lightening bolts. The young
The writing here is full of pace and happenstance. The characters are thinly drawn, but no more so than one might expect in a heavily plot-driven novel. Chance seems to play a part in how the characters eventually cross paths. But it also might be an unexplained further element, a voice that speaks to more than one of the characters, possibly generated by the skein itself, which seems to guide at least some of the action.
It’s very “readable,” as a number of blurb writers on the copy I had noted. But I wonder whether there is much more here than an initial conceit played out under a number of different conditions, one for each of the principal characters. Once you entertain the idea that the world might be substantially different if women had some physical attribute that conferred on them significantly greater “power” than even the strongest man, is there any more to it? Yes, the world would be different. In this case, it goes all Hobbesian, and becomes nasty, brutish, and short, the war of all against all. I suppose that’s one possibility. If you’ve read the setup on the cover flap of the novel, you pretty much have all you need.
For me, the frame, which casts this as an “historical” novel set some five thousands years in the past, was unnecessary. I thought it subtracted more than it added. However, I suppose such a frame is a trope in this kind of speculative fiction, so this is a minor quibble.
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women are able to “wake” this latent power in older women. Soon nearly all women have the power. And the story explores the immediate consequences of that development following five separate individual’s fates. At points their paths cross for better or worse. And, as might have been guessed from the outset, the world is never the same again.The writing here is full of pace and happenstance. The characters are thinly drawn, but no more so than one might expect in a heavily plot-driven novel. Chance seems to play a part in how the characters eventually cross paths. But it also might be an unexplained further element, a voice that speaks to more than one of the characters, possibly generated by the skein itself, which seems to guide at least some of the action.
It’s very “readable,” as a number of blurb writers on the copy I had noted. But I wonder whether there is much more here than an initial conceit played out under a number of different conditions, one for each of the principal characters. Once you entertain the idea that the world might be substantially different if women had some physical attribute that conferred on them significantly greater “power” than even the strongest man, is there any more to it? Yes, the world would be different. In this case, it goes all Hobbesian, and becomes nasty, brutish, and short, the war of all against all. I suppose that’s one possibility. If you’ve read the setup on the cover flap of the novel, you pretty much have all you need.
For me, the frame, which casts this as an “historical” novel set some five thousands years in the past, was unnecessary. I thought it subtracted more than it added. However, I suppose such a frame is a trope in this kind of speculative fiction, so this is a minor quibble.
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LibraryThing member brakketh
Visceral in places and quite hard to read.
Awards
Women's Prize for Fiction (Longlist — 2017)
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2018)
RUSA CODES Reading List (Shortlist — Science Fiction — 2018)
Orwell Prize (Longlist — 2017)
Otherwise Award (Long list — 2017)
Books Are My Bag Readers Award (Shortlist — 2017)
Foyles Book of the Year (Winner — Fiction — 2017)
Booklist Editor's Choice: Adult Books (Fiction — 2017)
NPR: Books We Love (2017)
Boston Globe Best Book (Fiction — 2017)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Fiction & Poetry — 2017)
The New York Times Best Books of the Year (Fiction — 2017)
The Observer Book of the Year (Fiction — 2016)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2017)
Language
Original publication date
2016-10-27
ISBN
9780316547611
Local notes
fiction