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Anyone read "The Power," by Naomi Alderman?

36 replies

MsAmerica · 03/01/2023 00:07

It's rare that I read contemporary novels, and rarer that I find one I like, but this sounded promising: A future dystopia where women suddenly develop strange powers of channeling electricity through their bodies. The idea is, of course, that women then have no need to fear violence from men.

I ended up disliking this so much. Despite all the praise from reviewers, there was nothing so great about the writing, and although I liked the premise, it just became so dark, so depressing, so violent.

I'm dumping it because I don't even want it in the house.

OP posts:
Helpwhatwouldyoudonext · 03/01/2023 00:11

I seem to remember I felt this a little too, OP.
I saw she has two or three others now, I wondered about them.

GladiatorSandals · 03/01/2023 00:21

Well, dystopian novels are never going to be warm and fuzzy, are they? Naomi Alderman said in interviews it arose from her going to an Orthodox Jewish school where the boys daily said prayers in gratitude for not having been born female, and reading The Handmaid’s Tale. I mean, I didn’t like it enormously myself, but it’s an interesting premise — if men were frightened of women, and not vice versa…

WhatWouldHopperDo · 03/01/2023 00:28

I wasn’t keen. I found it all a bit try hard. Interesting premise but I got bored of it quite quickly.

EBearhug · 03/01/2023 01:13

It started well, but didn't end well, as I remember.

mimbleandlittlemy · 03/01/2023 14:37

Enjoyed the start then it dirged on for far too long and I didn't care about any of the characters. About to be a major series on Amazon Prime - not sure TV will improve it though.

SweeeetPea · 05/01/2023 19:07

I loved the concept but didn’t enjoy reading it at all. I didn’t care about any of the characters. Thought it was just me not liking it!

lilyfire · 05/01/2023 19:09

I enjoyed it to start with but then found it a slog. I didn’t really care about the characters and gave up. Reassuring to see not just me as it did seem to get good reviews.

MadameMayberry · 09/01/2023 21:54

We read it a while back in our book club and we were all very disappointed. Great concept but poorly written

RoyalCorgi · 11/01/2023 14:42

It was a brilliant premise, and I really enjoyed the first few chapters but then it tailed off. I think having a brilliant premise and turning that into an engaging plot are two very different things.

BertieBotts · 11/01/2023 14:45

Agree with everyone else! It was dull and didn't explore anything I thought that it would/wanted it to.

There was a really long section where nothing happened and I skipped ahead because I was reading it for a book club.

WednesdaysPlaits · 11/01/2023 14:45

I really enjoyed the beginning. It then turned into a written for TV/film violence fest.

CatNamedEaster · 11/01/2023 14:51

I read it ages ago so can't remember the detail but what I found interesting was that it (in my head anyway) planted the idea that the reason women are kind and caring and the nuturers isnt because they are biologically programmed to be, but because they don't hold the balance of power. But give them the power and maybe they are just as likely to be violent, sadistic and power-hungry as men are historically - almost like saying the kindness is there through powerlessness/needing to placate/stay safe, rather than being an innate "goodness". I found that premise fascinating and that's stayed with me more than the story itself.

BertieBotts · 11/01/2023 17:22

That is interesting, Easter.

Flerken · 11/01/2023 17:51

I thought it was brilliant. It wasn’t supposed to be, hooray! Women can get their own back on men and not be afraid! It was supposed to be a demonstration of how power corrupts.

The author commented that it was interesting that people called it a dystopian story, as all the things that women do to men in the book were/are currently being done by men to women and no one suggests we are living in a dystopia.

EBearhug · 12/01/2023 00:20

The author commented that it was interesting that people called it a dystopian story, as all the things that women do to men in the book were/are currently being done by men to women and no one suggests we are living in a dystopia.

Margaret Atwood says there's nothing in the Handmaid's Tale which hasn't already happened somewhere in the world, too.

SpringSparrow · 12/01/2023 00:48

I read it for a book group and liked it. It was so shocking to see men living in fear of women whereas that’s a daily reality in the present world. It made me think about how much male violence is accepted and expected, and how shocking it is when the roles are reversed.

BertieBotts · 12/01/2023 08:34

The thing is though that's why I found it a bit weird that in the book it completely destroyed society and took them 4000 years to build it up again. Why would that suddenly happen if these are things that have been done to women? And most of it was in completely different context. They burned the genitals of the men as a kind of punishment for sexual assault, but FGM is/was done for reasons of prudery or cultural narratives about purity of women.

Nobody has ever operated on a man to remove something that makes him stronger and tried to place it in a woman as far as I know.

I don't know, it just felt very random, almost like the author didn't really understand the mechanisms behind male violence and assumed that was random so she made the female violence random too, and then the outcome of that was for society to collapse?

It would have been a more interesting read if the women were violent for reasons that made sense - some were - and to explore what that might lead to rather than just it leading to an apocalypse with no sense of why our how that happened.

Flerken · 12/01/2023 12:27

It’s been a while since I read it, but from memory the societal collapse was driven by a few individuals obtaining exceptional power from the chaos of the general overhaul of society’s rules, the gangster, the politician, and the Eve character particularly having the extra abilities of manipulating others.

So on one level this is what happens when the power balance swings, and on another, this is was obscene power does to people. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that.

maranella · 12/01/2023 12:30

Yes, we read it for my book group a few years ago. We all, bar none, hated it! Like you, we thought the blurb sounded promising and so many rave reviews too, but it was rubbish!

BertieBotts · 12/01/2023 12:37

Yeah, I guess I'm just not very interested in stories about power and who is manipulating who to get it. Somebody in my group said it reminded them of Game of Thrones!

AnneLovesGilbert · 12/01/2023 12:46

It’s been on my bookshelf for years after someone gave it to me. You’ve all made me want to read it!

Flerken · 12/01/2023 15:22

BertieBotts · 12/01/2023 12:37

Yeah, I guess I'm just not very interested in stories about power and who is manipulating who to get it. Somebody in my group said it reminded them of Game of Thrones!

Well, the title couldn’t have been clearer! 😄

TheLastDreamOfTheOak · 12/01/2023 17:10

I didn't like it either. It was an interesting idea but I didn't like any of the characters or the writing really.

BaconAndAvocado · 13/01/2023 19:15

Like many, I thought it was an interesting premise but I found the plot disappointing.
And I found the writing clumsy and, for me, too colloquial.

BaconAndAvocado · 13/01/2023 19:17

Just to add, I much preferred Vox by the same author, which is also a dystopian novel.