MAR - The Power

March review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: The Power by Naomi Alderman, 2017. [sci-fi novel with female protagonist by female author category]

The Power is suuuuuch an incredible story. Just. Wow. It was first brought to my attention by Buffering the Vampire Slayer, whose patrons started a book club to read and discuss this book about (not just) one girl in all the world. The basis of the story is that suddenly, girls all over are changed, have the power to channel electricity through their palms. What will happen? Will women take power and create a utopia? Or will there be a hellish role reversal and women will abuse their power in equally grotesque and inexcusable ways?

The story is told by focusing on a number of different women--and one dude. There is tough, street-savvy Roxy; politician Margot and her distant teenage daughter Jocelyn; orphaned and abused Allie; and smartphone-camera-toting Tunde, who is the external observer and only man who gets a perspective chapter. All these different types of women throughout the story have their own role to play in the coming revolution, which is what this text documents. Speaking of which! The book opens on a letter to a woman named Naomi, from a man who is ostensibly the "author" of this book about the rise of the matriarchy. This positions it in sort of a frame story, which lends itself to an entirely different kind of book. The sections are marked in a countdown, with titles like "Ten years to go" and "Can't be more than seven months left," offering a sense of foreboding with every passing section. The early chapters were positive, hopeful that the tide was turning, hopeful that the changes were for the better.



(Gonna get a little spoiler-y here...) As the book went on, and the tone got darker and darker, the matriarchal authority got more and more tyrannical, I got a little uncomfortable. But, in an important way. Feminism is not the raising of women into a position of power over men, a tipping of the scales in a separate direction. Instead, it is a balancing of the scales. Too much of anything is just that: too much. Checks and balances are important, and speculative fiction books like this highlighting them are just as important, as long as they are read with deliberateness and insight. I loved this book. I loved this book like I loved The Handmaid's Tale and I think it's important to read things that make you think and make you uncomfortable and make you better.