Isn't the whole beauty and, well, Power, of the dystopian format that, below the unrelenting grimness, there shimmer the faint vestiges of hope that things could be different, better? I mean, sure, you could just go with the whole Absoute Power Corrupts Absolutely thing and leave it at that, and while there's some truth to this, I think there's a little more nuance to the story, and that little more nuance is a lot more interesting to consider.
I admired the project but appreciated the actual product only to a 2. Aug 24, Susanne rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , five-star-books , must-read. There are some novels that you feel, from the tips of your fingers, all the way to the bottoms of your toes.
This is one of them. All at once, something happens, something strange, something inexplicable and yet, one by one.. A feeling simply overtakes them and they strike out at everyone who has wronged them. She feels the thing like pins and needles along her arms. Like needle-pricks of light from her spine to her collarbo 5 Completely Rad and Rockin Stars.
What can she do with it you ask? She touches you: a slight touch to the wrist and an electric current flows from her body to yours and her body awakens, she feels wholly alive.
And you? You are in pain and you cannot move. When girls come into their power, it is visible to all, through a skein on their necks. What starts out as girls trying to stop boys from overstepping, from harassing them, becomes something else entirely.
Now known as Mother Eve, she oversees everyone and everything. Roxy is a gal with sass. Her family is unlike most: they are London gangstas. She is the best and brightest and her abilities are unmatched. Tunde is a photographer. Once things go haywire.. Their paths converge at different points in time and after that, well, all hell breaks loose.
At times, I shifted, edgy, uncomfortable, eyes wide - amazed. Then, unexpectedly, the corners of my mouth would haphazardly curve into a smile, in complete bewildered awe. Then I was horrified at myself for my inability to control my own reactions and scared by what was transpiring, I simply shuddered.
There is one scene, that I cannot unsee, one scene, that I admit got to me. And yet, it is sheer brilliance. I cannot help but be astounded. If the dominant roles shifted and girls and women ruled the world, what would happen? Would boys and better yet, men, submit or would they fight back? Kudos to Naomi Alderman for her foresight, her storytelling and her amazing characters. Thank you to my friend Susan for the recommendation! You were right, I'm so glad I read this.
Published on Goodreads, Amazon and Twitter on 8. View all 60 comments. Dec 22, Thomas rated it it was ok Recommended to Thomas by: Laura. Shelves: feminism , dystopia , read-for-dmv-bookclub , science-fiction. I feel so sad giving this book such a low rating because it had so much potential. It follows three female-identifying characters and one male-identifying character who reside in a world where girls and women have the power to produce electricity and hurt, torture, and kill people.
This newfound ability brings about an amalgamation of changes, including political power plays, shifts in male-female relationship dynamics, and the burning question of girls' and women's new place in society.
The Pow I feel so sad giving this book such a low rating because it had so much potential. The Power portrays a host of challenging situations and scenes, including sexual assault and political warfare.
This book had so much unfulfilled potential. I love the premise, because it invites so many nuanced questions and discussions within the realm of feminism. What are the implications of empowering women just so they act more like men? As bell hooks writes , patriarchy has no gender, so what happens when one gender or sex gains power over their oppressors?
What are the psychological benefits and costs of having this power? Unfortunately, these questions are only explored in the most rudimentary of ways in The Power. While violence has a place in this world for sure, the book could have featured so much more. The commentary on gender dynamics, too, mostly took form in pithy one-liners with gender reversals that did not relay much nuance or insight. My second main disappointment with The Power centers on its characters. They all felt one-note, interchangeable, and lacking in any depth that would motivate us to invest in them.
Some of their perspectives felt too long and some felt too short. The pacing and organization of their respective sections made little logical sense.
I wish Alderman had focused more on crafting these characters in a more comprehensive way so that readers could better connect to them. I hate to say this, but I would not recommend this book. While I think Alderman aimed for cultural diversity by including a Nigerian character and Moldova as a setting in The Power , this attempt fell flat, similar to the rest of the book.
I appreciate Alderman for trying with this concept, at the very least. View all 12 comments. Feb 01, Justin Tate rated it it was ok. Love the premise. Novels that explore power dynamics are often fascinating. This is like a globalized Lord of the Flies, with women instead of children.
I've heard it described as a feminist novel, although I think part of the cleverness is the impossible-to-answer question of whether it's a feminist novel or not. On one hand it exposes the failures of men over history by turning the tables, but on the other - with women in charge, there's just as many wars, lies, oppression, murder and rape as Love the premise.
On one hand it exposes the failures of men over history by turning the tables, but on the other - with women in charge, there's just as many wars, lies, oppression, murder and rape as there's been with men in power.
To me, the clear theme is that power inevitably corrupts regardless of who has it. With that interpretation, I only see it as a feminist novel by the way it shows the drastic need for gender equality, or power neutrality. I couldn't find any evidence to suggest it effectively advocates for women receiving supernatural powers.
Except there is that novel-within-a-novel layer written by a "man" to further the debate. Now, all the positive aspects aside, I found the actual reading experience nightmarishly painful.
The cast is made up entirely of disagreeable characters, which is fine, but I couldn't even love to hate them. There were also too many stories to tell. To truly deliver a global experience, we are thrust into melodrama on seemingly every continent. I wish we could have stayed still long enough to at least appreciate one aspect of an otherwise brilliant message.
Worst of all, the writing came across as embarrassingly immature. Every character loves the "F" word and spouts it constantly.
Much of the action is essentially written as "ZAP! Oh well. View all 6 comments. A power that gradually awa 3. A power that gradually awakens and spreads out like tendrils or the branches of a tree, to girls and women around the world. How will this transfer of power change society, politics, religion and the relationship between the sexes? Will the world become a calmer, gentler, more reasoned place or will it stay as complicated, violent, messy and unequal as it is now?
Alderman tells her story mainly through the experiences of four characters. Allie, a child abuse victim, Roxy the daughter of an London crime family, Tunde, a Nigerian photo journalist and American politician Margot. The novel veers from snappy, contemporary drama to the style of a biblical fable. From dystopian thriller to a quirky novel of ideas. From CNN, Facebook, extreme political podcasts etc to drawings and artefacts from another age. As interesting and thought provoking as the ideas are and they really are!
I was never really drawn into the story or felt close to any of the characters. A narrative device explains some of the above, but ultimately I never felt fully engaged. However, on the plus side, the Power is well imagined, very original and will certainly make you think.
View all 83 comments. I think Alderman tried to juggle too many things at once; it all jumbled together in a convoluted mess that in the end, didn't help but drown and pull the reader into an underwhelming sense of dissatisfaction and frustration.
The whole book was constantly building up towards something, but what that something is- we'll never know. View all 5 comments. Across the globe, young girls are waking up with unimaginable, unexplained power.
The implications of this shift to the power structure of the world are numerous. Governments, the media, society itself begins changing rapidly as women begin to exercise this power more and more. No longer are women afraid to walk the streets alone, but men must now be looking over their shoulder and preparing instead. As power shifts from men to women, it begs the big questions: What if women were in power? How would this affect our world and what would it look like if women were thrust into running the world?
The Power is told from alternating POVs between numerous young girls coming into their new found skills, and a young man who captures some of the first glimpses of women the world over exercising this change in gender dynamics. The shape of power is always the same: it is infinite, it is complex, it is forever branching.
Well, I put a lot of hype into this book in my head and so maybe my disappointment is my own fault. Regardless of how much I built this novel up, it really let me down. The Power was such a unique take on a old tale that I felt like it was bound to knock me off my chair, ask important questions and challenge my view of the world. What started out incredibly strong, interesting and full of unique vision ultimately fell flat and completely missed the mark for me personally.
What it is not, is men hating or wanting women to treat men the way men have treated women — which is oppression. The Power really jumbled that message for me. I also found it unrealistic that Islamic women, after an entire history of oppression begin ripping off their traditional garb and mobbing in the streets.
As more and more girls come into this power, society completely collapses into a sea of gratuitous violence and still, a lot of sexism. Past the larger, more theological issues I had with this book I also found that it really dragged for me after about the first quarter.
The set up and the premise were incredibly interesting, I was originally semi-invested in some of the characters and how their stories would develop. However, as time went on I found a lot of the POVs to be redundant and best and a snore-fest at worst. There was too much time spent developing the violence and getting back at men, and not enough time developing the characters and their place within the overall story.
Gender is a shell game. What is a man? What is a woman? Whatever a man is not. How does this even relate to the story? A lot of this read like it was trying incredibly hard to be deep and philosophical and it totally missed the mark for me. In the end, this book was not for me. It was a total failure or loss because the premise was absolutely unique and very interesting. I continued to read on in hopes that things would improve but I was ultimately let down. View all 11 comments. Jul 15, monica kim rated it it was amazing Shelves: books-i-loved , favorites.
Or do more peaceful societies tend to allow men to rise up to the top because they place less value on the capacity for violence? This book doesn't just flip gender roles. It delves into complicated discussions around systemic oppression, power, rape culture, gender, and religion.
The book is an unflinching dystopian yet also a mirror of our world today. It for "Are patriarchies peaceful because men are peaceful? It forces you to ask hard questions about your beliefs. It's also a ridiculously gripping story that had me sucked in and invested in every character. I am still reeling from it and am going to need some time to sit with it to get out my full thoughts together.
Major TW for rape and assault. View 2 comments. Need to think about this one a bit before I review it as my minds a little blown and all over the place. In a very good way. Which is the greater power; love, hate, survival, revenge? As terrifying as men, whi Need to think about this one a bit before I review it as my minds a little blown and all over the place.
As terrifying as men, which is the point I know and it's very well done. Jul 30, Sandra rated it it was amazing Shelves: current-lit-uk. The Power by Naomi Alderman.
What would you do if you were young and started developing a strange power that was beyond your control? This is what is happening to teenage girls all over the world. They find they have a prominent skein across their collar bone that can discharge an electrical current that can causes intense pain and even death to others.
As they learn to control this strange phenomenon they find they can wake this dormant power in older women. We follow a number of people A The Power by Naomi Alderman. Allie running from foster carers in America, voices in her head showing her the way forward.
Roxy in England, seeing her mum murdered, taking her revenge and going on the run. Margo a politician trying to help young girls control their changing bodies, setting up North Star training camps. Tunde a young man who sees the opportunity to chronicle the changing world, travelling, experiencing, filming, his outlet the media or his own social network. The women protest, riot, hit back at the male governments, police force and army. They are the strong ones The world shifts and changes.
I loved the challenging thought provoking feel of the book and the religious quotes God is She! The plot of the book is a book within a book. A male author is writing a book to try and show how the world was hundreds of years ago, his editor says he books is good but can he expect people to really believe that men once ran the world, caused wars and were warriors? The ending was subtle and funny View all 28 comments. Mar 29, Elle ellexamines rated it it was ok Shelves: yreleases , zreads , sff-scifi-dystopias , 2-star.
One morning, women all over the world begin developing a power: electricity, running through their fingers. The ensuing cataclysm, framed by documentation from the future, comes from four characters. As nations are conquered by w One morning, women all over the world begin developing a power: electricity, running through their fingers.
As nations are conquered by women, things fall further and further apart. This book primarily works as a subtle reverse of gendered power dynamics. His experience in the introduction to the book is an excellent metaphor for subtler forms of sexual violence and turns your expectations for the situation on their head very quickly. This at first was really interesting to me. Over time, I realized it was all this book had to offer.
The characters here generally left me colder. Tunde was the only narrator in this book I actually consistently liked , though Roxy grew on me a lot by the end. What bugged me about the characterization in general, though, was how much the characterization seemed to serve as a vehicle for the plot. Roxy is a solid narrator, but I never felt like I understood her.
Unfortunately that was not working for me, either. Past the halfway point, I struggled to stay invested in the narrative. Something about the storytelling here feels far more focused on the brutality of the moment, the violence inflicted, then on the human element behind it. This specifically began to bother me in terms of sexual violence.
There are at least four graphic rape or attempted rape scenes in this novel excluding the many instances of sexual harassment or threatened assault. The second one made me wince a bit more. The third struck me as genuinely gratuitous. By the fourth, which is also simultaneously a murder scene, I was really really struggling to not put the book away.
I would like to think, on a meta level, that the author is commenting on this tendency. However, my feelings on the actual plot device—profoundly negative—do not change when the victims are men. The author also seems to have not taken into account essentially any of the nuances of gender discrimination based on culture, or based on intersections with race , sexuality, or gender identity.
The fact that the societies we see break down are almost entirely non-European, while America and Britain both stay intact, began needling at me a lot as the brutality increased. I would enjoy seeing the takes of Middle Eastern or African reviewers on this.
The thing that worked for me the most about this book was actually, weirdly enough, the framing device. I only wish the rest of the book had worked so well. TW: rape graphic , sexual harassment, abuse. View all 3 comments. Sep 06, Blaine rated it it was amazing Shelves: hardcover , kathy-owns , , audible , favorite-books. It doesn't matter that she shouldn't, that she never would. We live in a world where the pendulum of power is tilted toward men, frozen in place by millennia of governments and traditions backed up ultimately and usually, but not always, implicitly by brute, physical strength.
But what if, almost overnight, women get a source of power that makes them physically stronger than men? The Power is essentially a thou It doesn't matter that she shouldn't, that she never would. The Power is essentially a thought experiment that asks what would happen next? Would women be content to simply move the pendulum of power to a state of gender equality? Would they insist on moving the pendulum as far to their side as it had once been toward men?
Or, suddenly able to make up for those millennia of oppression, would women grab that pendulum and move it as far to their side as humanly possible?
And in doing so, by hypothesizing about what might happen in such a future, this book exposes powerfully how unfairly, and sometimes brutally, women are actually treated around the world right now. Both are works of literary and science fiction that have been and should be studied critically.
But I personally found The Power to be a more satisfying read. An absolute must read. Updating to add: I read this book two years ago, and I still think about it at least once a week. Jan 21, Heidi The Reader rated it it was amazing Shelves: netgalley , fiction , fantasy-and-sci-fi , feminism. In The Power , young women have developed the ability to control electricity. It shifts the balance of power between the sexes and the world begins to come apart at the seams.
It is told from the point of view of a few women and a man. They each have different stories and experiences that Naomi Alderman blends together to create a powerful statement about how we live. This is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read, but also, most brilliant. It made me think about all of the internal biases In The Power , young women have developed the ability to control electricity.
It made me think about all of the internal biases I have when it comes to gender, cultural expectations and roles. Who was it who said: "Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The monumental societal shift starts out small enough. A man named Tunde captures a moment between a young woman and a man who was hitting on her at the grocery store: "Tunde is recording when she turns around.
There she is, bringing her hand to his arm when he smiles and thinks she is performing mock-fury for his amusement. If you pause the video for a moment at this point, you can see the charge jump. Those who have been abused are more likely to become abusers. And there are many, many abused women in the world.
Their first thought after disease is a new weapon, something these kids are bringing into school, but as the first week trickles into the second they know that's not it. Entire governments crumble to powerful women. Women who have been locked up their entire lives roam the streets, free. Soon enough, they're locking up and abusing the men, because they can.
Religions change. Sexual predilections change. New politicians are elected. New soldiers are trained. Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to fiction, science fiction lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download. Great book, The Power pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone. Their chemistry is undeniable, but Abigail is hesitant to see her in person.
She was in an accident that left her a monster, a wendigo. They want nothing more than to be together, but they belong to different worlds, different lives, and different food groups. Good-bye, dorky math nerd; hello, friend magnet! But her first day at Saguaro Prep starts off weird to the tenth power. But magic can have dangerous side effects, and as her social life grows exponentially worse, Megan begins to wonder if wishing was ever a purrfect idea. See more ideas about Spiritual awakening, Spirituality and Twin flames.
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