The Power by Naomi Alderman
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
This book had my brain GOING y’all.
DAAAMMMNNNNN…..
it brought up SO many deep thoughts…such a great work of fiction that had so much reality attached in a unique way.
Here is the short summary and also some of the reviews that pulled me into checking it out:
“What would happen if women suddenly possessed a fierce new power?
All over the world women and girls are discovering they have the power. With a flick of the fingers they can inflict terrible pain, and even death. And with this small twist of nature, everything changes drastically.
Ambitious and provocative, visceral and page-turning, award-winning author Naomi Alderman’s THE POWER at once takes us on a journey to an alternate reality and exposes our own world in bold and surprising ways”
“Fierce and unsettling…Through immersive prose and a riveting plot, Alderman explores how power corrupts everyone: those who gain it, and those resisting its loss.”― Radhika Jones, New York Times Book Review
“Richly imagined, ambitious, and propulsively written.”― Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic
“Alderman’s writing is beautiful, and her intelligence seems almost limitless. She also has a pitch-dark sense of humor that she wields perfectly.” ― Michael Schaub, NPR
“Alderman’s tilted dystopia is a smartly layered place of slippery slopes and moral ambiguities, a fitting folktale for strange times.”― Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
“I was riveted by every page. Alderman’s prose is immersive and, well, electric, and I felt a closed circuit humming between the book and me as I read.”― Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times Book Review
“An instant classic of speculative fiction… Smart, readable and joyously achieved.”
― Justine Jordan, Guardian
One of the quotes in the very beginning of the book says to imagine if the world was run by men…what a kinder, gentler, peace filled world it would be.
Right there I was like woah…where ARE we going with this book?
This story shows how power can be evil and destructive, no matter WHO wields it.
How it can possess you, wreck you and destroy you.
Some DO wield it for good and for peace…but the complicated pieces that make the whole puzzle are SUPER intricate and VERY tricky.
To hear how all tables are turned on the gender power dynamic world wide in such a gradual way…men fearing to walk down the street by themselves, men having to have a female guardian at all times while out in public…was crazy and hard to imagine…but yet also easy to imagine.
Once the powerless got a chance at power and the chance to make the oppresssor become the oppressed…there are so many years of suppressed emotion, anger and frustration that just EXPLODE.
I have so much more to say and many more thoughts but I worry if I say TOO much it will give away a lot of the storyline’s twists and turns.
So just go read it.
All those reviews up there are spot on and my personal review is DITTO to all of ‘em.
(Oh and this novel isn’t just for women by the way…you men would like it too)