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.
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
