The Power

This post contains affiliate links. This means when you follow a link and make a purchase, I make a small commission at no additional cost to you, the customer.

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