The Power

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What would happen if, one day, women developed the ability to emit electricity from their fingertips? How would politics and society change as a result of women gaining a power over men? What happens when the powerful find themselves suddenly powerless, and women become the physically dominant gender? These questions rest at the center of The Power by Naomi Alderman. Spoiler alert- the answer isn’t the utopia we’d all like to believe would occur. The novel can be purchased here from Bookshop.org.

The Power is written in a “book within a book” format. It’s framed as a historical novel written by Neil Adam Armon (an anagram of Naomi Alderman’s own name) which he’s sent to a friend to read and review. Having been written 5,000 years after an event called the Cataclysm, it chronicles what happens in the ten years before the Cataclysm that led to the event and society being rebuilt as a matriarchy after the dust settled.

One day, women and post-pubescent girls across the globe develop the ability to electrically shock others with a simple touch, to the extent of being able to electrocute a person if desired. What starts out as a rare ability soon develops into nearly all women having the power. With women now having a power, things soon transition into having most of the power, and the changes that comes with it. Men are no longer the gender to be most feared. Some men aren’t willing to relinquish power and some women feel like comeuppance is in order.

The Power’s concept I found fascinating when it was first suggested to me. Rather than a story about a world without men or a world where humanity was always a matriarchal society, it depicts how modern society would react to a change from patriarchy to matriarchy. It’s also a novel that becomes more difficult to read as things escalate. When the women’s power first becomes known, changes are minimal, and familiar to many female readers. Boys and men are advised not to travel alone or at night. They learn to become much more aware of their surroundings. Things most women today take as common sense. As things progress, tensions escalate and some go overboard now that they have power. As one very poignant line in the book states:

It doesn’t matter that she shouldn’t, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted.

Alderman depicts, in a stark lighting, why a woman-run world would not and could not be the utopia others might argue it would be, and does so realistically. Men wouldn’t willingly give up power, especially in less developed parts of the world. Women who have suffered all their lives at men’s hands, likewise, wouldn’t gain superiority over them and not attempt to get revenge. Men made women suffer, and now women will make men suffer. It shows that it isn’t sex that makes the powerful do terrible things, it’s the power itself. Alderman weaves a descriptive, even at times horrifying, narrative showing this transition, and the extremes both sides will go to for their agenda.

The aspect of this work I liked most was the way the story unfolds. It begins ten years before the Cataclysm, when the power is first discovered, and each section of the book brings the reader closer and closer to the day the Cataclysm takes place and reveals how this world-ending event came to be. The progression of these events is told from multiple perspectives throughout the book:

• Allie- A troubled teen who discovers her power and, following a confrontation with her abusive foster father, runs away to convent. She becomes a religious figure known as Mother Eve, whose significance becomes amplified in the world post-Cataclysm
• Roxy- One of the first women to discover her power. She attempts to use it to save her mother, unsuccessfully and strives to get revenge. She crosses paths with Mother Eve while trying to grow her power. She’s shown to be the physically strongest wielder of the power, wile Mother Eve is the most skilled at using it.
• Margot- An American politician who was often overlooked by her male colleagues. She advocates for girls to be trained on using their powers. Men fear the training camps she establishes are precursors to creating a militarized force of female soldiers. Her daughter, Jocelyn, develops the power early and struggles to control it.
• Tunde- The only male POV character in the novel-within-a-novel. He is the first person to capture a video of the women’s newfound power. This leads to him becoming a freelance journalist and traversing the globe to report on uprisings as women in male-dominated countries begin uprisings.

These characters’ stories all converge in Moldova just before the Cataclysm. Explaining why and how each character ends up there would spoil significant elements of the individual stories and the narrative as a whole. My favorite thing about these characters is that no one character is the “hero”. Every character exists in the grey area and while some began with good intentions, those get warped.

The Cataclysm isn’t shown, nor its immediate aftermath. The novel ends with Neil, the fictitious writer 5,000 years post-Cataclysm, and Naomi corresponding back and forth about his novel. This is the only glimpse we get of the world after the Cataclysm, and the questions that are brought up sound somewhat familiar.

How much stock should be put in history books about what happened centuries ago? How much information was lost because of personal biases? To what extent should biology define us? Lastly, is the power structure we occupy and the society we live in “natural”? Are we capable of better? Do we simply choose not to be better?

Rating: 4.5 stars

In A Dark, Dark Wood

“In a dark, dark wood, there was a dark, dark house. And in the dark, dark house, there was a dark, dark room.” This theme is common among most horror and thriller stories going back generations. We are told from an early age that the woods and dark places are scary and that we should avoid them. A remote house in the middle of dense woods is the setting for In A Dark, Dark Wood. In A Dark, Dark Wood is a 2015 thriller/mystery novel written by Ruth Ware. It quickly became a New York Times bestseller and was named one of the best books of the year by NPR.

Source: Simon & Schuster

The premise of the book is this: a reclusive writer names Leonora, Nora to her friends, is invited to a hen do, or as its known in the US a bachelorette party, by her friend Clare. Given that she hasn’t seen Clare in ten years, she’s shocked and a little confused that she’s been invited. She somewhat reluctantly agrees to attend. The event is being held at a remote house in the woods owned by a relative of one of the bridesmaids.  As the weekend progresses, it soon becomes clear that not everything is as it seems and the group may not be alone in the woods. Someone may not make it out of the woods alive.

The story is very much told in two parts. There are the events of the bachelorette party and the events that take place after. Someone dies and the “after” storyline depicts the police trying to determine what exactly happened, along with the narrator. The transition back and forth can be a little jarring, but it prevents the reader from learning too much information at any one time.

The writing is pretty good with Ware doing a noteworthy job building suspense as time goes on. The book isn’t badly written, the plot makes sense, and the reveal doesn’t come out of nowhere. If anything, the opposite is true. My criticism comes from two fronts. Predictability and a reliance on convenience.

First, predictability. I was able to accurately guess who the killer was early on. Most of the characters are archetypes that serve a single purpose. It’s clear, once the characters are gathered together, who the killer is and who the "fake-out" murderer is. The character that’s set-up to seem like the killer is painted early on as a nervous wreck, so it becomes clear that person isn’t the killer, due to how obvious it seems. The only thing that I didn’t predict was a detail about Nora’s backstory that is only terribly important as it relates to the killer’s motive. Nora’s backstory is focused on a little too much and, in the end, it exists to make the motive seem more legitimate. There’s nothing wrong with a story being predictable, I was just hoping for more.

The plot relies a lot on convenience. Lenora is in a car accident after the murder, which means she doesn’t remember what happened. The unreliable narrator angle is why the dual storylines work, but the decision to have an unreliable narrator, and the reason why she’s unreliable, is still incredibly convenient. The way the victim ends up at the house is based entirely on convenience. The murder was planned, but how it happened cycles back to one or two very specific events that could've gone differently, preventing the murder altogether. Patterns of behavior are ignored until they suddenly become relevant when the plot needs them to. I understand the need for convenience and red herrings, but there comes a point where the story is too reliant on coincidence.

I read this book on the beach and I liked it, but I wasn’t thrilled by it. It didn’t blow my mind like many others have. I suppose my biggest gripe with it is that there was potential for a compelling story, but it never manifested. The setting in the middle of the woods never gets taken full advantage of. I picked up the book expecting a supernatural thriller or even just a creepy thriller. I didn’t get that. Instead, it was a fairly by-the-numbers murder mystery without that much actual mystery.

Overall rating: 2.5 stars