The Power

by Naomi Alderman

eBook, 350 pages

English language

Published Oct. 10, 2017 by Little Brown and Company.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-54765-9

(3 reviews)

What would happen if women suddenly possessed a fierce new power?

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.

7 editions

ralentina reviewed The Power by Naomi Alderman

On masculine power

3 stars

Content warning Medium spoilers!

What would happen if women could overpower men - on a physical, violent level? The premise of this book is such an interesting one, I really wanted to love it. Instead, I find myself writing a mixed-feelings review, trying to shield Alderman from my own criticism.

My edition's cover declares it a mix between a The Hunger Games and Margaret Atwood - but I find that the book falls short in both of these comparisons. Even though it's written as an adventure book, aka a fast-paced plot in which a lot of stuff happens, it is not really a page-turner. It picks up a little towards the end, but generally speaking I did not loose sleep over what would happen. Arguably, that's because Alderman was trying to pack into the book a bit more social commentary than Suzanne Collins does. Yet, to my mind she did not manage to explore her initial hunch as fully and nuancedly as she could have done. Sexism is not just about physical strength, so what would the power to overpower men in a physical fight change? Would we really just have an upside-down world? Sexual violence is major theme of the book, perhaps because that's an example of things that could really just 'flip' (but would they? is it really that simple? isn't there a cultural dimension to rape, developed over millennia, that would be helpful to consider in more depth?). If trigger warnings are ever needed, this book definitely calls for one. Though I can guess what Alderman is trying to do by describing rape scenes rather graphically (i.e. bring home the point that that's already happening, in OUR world, to women), I'm not sure she needed to.

Robert Fromont reviewed The Power by Naomi Alderman

What if women were physically more powerful than men?

4 stars

Naomi Alderman's answer is not a ‘more kind, more gentle, more loving and naturally nurturing’ matriarchy that lets men off lightly. This is a violent, tumultuous tale that sometimes makes uncomfortable reading. But this is not ‘merely’ a list of feminist talking points brutally driven home; Alderman plays a long and subtle game, bedding in the most important and durable perspective changes (at least for this male reader) subtly over the course of the entire novel.

This novel is perhaps a kind of response to the call of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, to which it owes much; from the framing of near-future action within far-future intellectual perspectives, to the presentation of events that appear at first preposterously unrealistic, until one realises that most have actually happened, and in some cases continue to happen, IRL.

It's a gripping, prespective-changing read.

ekes reviewed The Power by Naomi Alderman

Good but

3 stars

Content warning Kind of hard to discuss the 'but' without giving something of the plot of the book away

It's not that the story wasn't good to read, but there's something not so enjoyable about the it. I'd guess it's because it feels like reading a critique of a biological deterministic view of power, or one that only sees power relations through the lens of patriarchy/matriarchy. This leads to a story where the abuse of power by men swaps for exactly the same behaviour in the same structures by women.

Maybe it's the nature of power, but it feels more a perspective of it that only sees it one way which after a while makes it a hard read.

Even under the pretext of the book - women becoming physically stronger than men through having The Power. Would no other structures really change? Would society be so exactly reproduced?

But I guess that was the point of the book.

Subjects

Women--Fiction.
Teenage girls--Fiction.
Muscle strength--Women--Fiction.
Sex role--Fiction.
Social role--Fiction.