book review: the power
Image: The Power by Naomi Alderman
In The Power the world is a recognisable place: there's a rich Nigerian kid who lounges around the family pool; a foster girl whose religious parents hide their true nature; a local American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But something vital has changed, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power - they can cause agonising pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world changes utterly.
This extraordinary novel by Naomi Alderman, a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and Granta Best of British writer, is not only a gripping story of how the world would change if power was in the hands of women but also exposes, with breath-taking daring, our contemporary world.
‘The shape of power is always the same: it is infinite, it is complex, it is forever branching ... Its directions are unpredictable; it obeys its own laws ... However complex you think it is, it is more complex than that.’ - The Power
Ever read a book that you thought was utterly genius - subtle and clever and brilliant and beautifully written - and then go on Goodreads and become absolutely irate reading the one and two star reviews?
Generally, I love Goodreads. I love the fact that anyone - not just literary critics - can have their say about the books that they like, or didn’t like. I always read three star reviews - for some reason, I think they reveal more about the book than the reviews by people who loved or hated it. Three star reviews are often measured and thoughtful and acknowledge both the strengths and weaknesses of the text without the emotional response that comes with love or hate.
(Often. Not always.)
I’ll check out the one and two star reviews, too, just to see what those people are saying. But in the instance of The Power, I really, really wish I hadn’t.
I skimmed through them (because I swiftly got very cross), and the bad reviews could mostly be broken down into three main categories:
People who didn’t realise they were reading a dystopia, and then proceeded to get sad about it;
People (ahem) who responded with: ‘bUt wHAt iF A mAn WroTE a BOoK lIke ThIS aBouT MeN’ (I cannot. roll. my eyes. far enough); and
People who responded with: ‘But women wouldn’t do that!
Urgh.
The first cohort, I understand. When I googled this book, it came up with the genres of ‘speculative fiction’ (the umbrella under which dystopia sits) and ‘science fiction’ (which I think is a massive mis-genre in this case). But guys. Look at that cover. I mean, look at it. Doesn’t it, y’know, remind you of something?
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Oh, that’s right. It looks like the books considered the three main classics of modern dystopia. (And not just the ones posted above; red, white, and black are used repeatedly on covers for these books, through time and across countries. It’s almost like it was deliberate!) It’s also reminiscent of propaganda posters (especially European posters) from WWII. (Also no accident if you happen to think about it for more than five seconds.)
And people thought this novel was going to have a happy ending?
One of the reasons I think The Power is so brilliant is that it actively engages with its own genre. The novel starts off in a world like ours, which is (if not an actual dystopia) suitably dystopic (a dystopian impulse, if you will, to corrupt and completely misuse Bloch’s concept of the utopian impulse). There is a moment in the text where it seems as if the new individual power granted to young girls will balance societal power relations (taking the novel into a pseudo-utopia territory), but that moment is fleeting; the novel tips, and engages actively with the essential questions: whose utopia? whose dystopia? and goes on to examine - as the title might suggest - power, within a world that has very much become a ‘bad place’. It explores who has power, how much of it, who doesn’t, what it’s based on, how it’s enshrined, how it’s enforced, and what happens when you don’t like it. And what Alderman does - with, in my opinion, staggering skill - is engage with the facets of this. Power isn’t simple. It never has been; it never will be. She gives women the power, and examines what it does to them, and what they do with it, and how that affects others (especially people who don’t have it, or who have less of it) - and it’s all an active critique of our own world, which is, of course, patriarchal. Alderman isn’t advocating misandry, by any means: her point is that power changes people (people. not men. not women. humans) and that all people are shaped by power - by what kinds of power they have access to, and how much of it, and what they can do with it, and by who is enacting power upon them. This happens from the moment we are born, and it’s utterly inescapable; these forces work on us constantly, whether we’re aware of them or not.
And this is ridiculously complex, and far, far above my pay grade (and intelligence). But simplifying it - or ignoring its complexity - is doing this novel a disservice. Getting sad about a dystopia being a dystopia - and leaving a low-star review for it - says more about a person than it does about the book. Saying ‘But what about MEN?’ or ‘I don’t believe women would act this way!’ is missing the entire point of the novel. (And Alderman isn’t exactly subtle about that, guys. Like, at all. There are multiple reminders. Multiple. Like, on the first and last page. I mean … come on.) Do you think it’s an accident that you might look at the title and think of the famous quote ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’? (Attributed to Lord Acton in 1887, though his phrase was a re-work of earlier similar sentiments.)
I think the only thing missing for me in this novel was an acknowledgement of how girls’ and women’s new power in the novel intersected with race and culture. Though the novel was, in a way, global, I don’t remember there being anything about how the power affected the status of women of colour or Indigenous women within Western contexts (although I might have overlooked something).
As a dystopia, this novel is brilliant, and it does exactly what good dystopias should do: it holds a mirror up to our society and goes oh goodness, there’s something very wrong here. Like Margaret Atwood (who mentored Alderman), Alderman carries her one, revolutionary (personal) event to a logical, frightening (societal) conclusion, cleverly weaving foreshadowing the ending through the entire text (I really did not see it coming, and it was brilliant. The last line of the epilogue was just like … ooooof).
In conclusion, read this novel. But read it knowing it’s a dystopia, that it’s complex and complicated, and that it’s sitting within a tradition of feminist dystopias. Read it knowing that dystopia literally means ‘bad place’, and you’re not going to come away crying happy tears and feeling hopeful about the human race. Read it, and think about the power structures of our world, and how they affect you, and think about the power you hold, and why you have it, and how it affects other people. Read it and think about our world’s history, and the societies we’ve created, and what they were based upon, and what might have happened if, thousands of years ago, something like ‘the power’ had happened to tip the balance.
(And then also read The Parable of the Sower and The Handmaid’s Tale and The Maddadam Trilogy and Who Fears Death and Brave New World and Shades of Grey. I like dystopias.)
Strengths:
A captivating, simple premise carried out to its logical conclusion;
A sophisticated structure which actively engages with its genre;
Flowing, engaging style with multiple POVs;
Flawed, raw, and real characters;
A jaw-dropping, heart-wrenching, and yet somehow satisfying ending.
One sentence summary:
An impressively nuanced critique of our world, delivered through an un-put-downable, heart-racing, and complex story.