Ginny Frost
The Power
by Naomi Alderman fulfills the category “Book About or Set in a Non-Patriarchal
Society” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge.
The Power
begins in our patriarchal world. Then women learn about a hidden power within
them and the tables start to turn.
I’ll be honest. There
will be big spoilers. I can’t review it without telling everything, including
the ending. Don’t read my blog post if you plan to read the book. I’m spilling all.
I didn’t care for
this one. Not because of the writing, pace, or characters. I found the author
did an excellent job of building the conflict through multiple characters. The
pace was perfect. It’s the material that made me stabby.
In the novel,
women discover they have a latent superpower. Through the “sea ape” theory of
evolution (man came from the sea), some environmental pollution, and thousands
of years of repression, women discover they can produce electricity at will.
The ability is similar to an electric eel, in how they use it for defense,
manipulation, and offense. Women can show each other how to harness the
electricity.
The book shows
many ways the women use the power–to punish, to retaliate, to free themselves,
to lord over others. The women whose stories we follow many times abuse their
new power and use it for ill.
Not everyone.
Some women try to find a new place in the world where they don’t have to fear men.
They save themselves and others.
The point of the
novel is Power Corrupts, and almost every character is a victim. They use and
abuse their new power through violence, politics, or simple manipulation. And
it happens fast. Within ten or so years of women learning to use their
electrical ability, the world is victim to nuclear war. All because of the
women’s abuse of power–whether political, religious, or militant.
That bothered me.
I thought it was interesting to see how different women used their power to get
ahead, gain dominion, or even take over. I liked their stories, but it all
moved too fast. But to say that the world could only handle the reversal of
power between men and women for ten years before nuclear destruction?
Maybe, or maybe
not.
I realize men
would not easily give up their seats of power. To have women tear everything
down so quickly is a little insulting. Yes, the electrical power is a weapon. Someone
holding a gun all the time would be scary and nerve-wracking. Yes, many people
would abuse it. But global destruction? I don’t know. I would hope we are
better than that.
The book also had
some seriously tough scenes. Rapes abound in the novel, and I wouldn’t
recommend the novel to anyone who is triggered by the topic. The men are abused
with the women’s new power, but men retaliate as well. It’s a hideous picture
of humanity.
And here’s
another huge spoiler. In the end, it’s revealed the entire story is a novel written
in the future under a matriarchal society. The women in his society have the
electrical power, and his novel is a fictional history of ancient times when
the women first discover their power. So it’s a book by a man telling how women
destroyed the planet. Sigh… Yes, the actual author is a woman, and the
plot twist here is clever, but I was done before I got there.
I give The
Power by Naomi Alderman Four Electric Eels because it’s well-written and interesting.
I just didn’t care for the path the story rode down.