One of the New York Times’s Ten Best Books of 2017A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2017One of the Washington Post’s Ten Best Books of 2017An NPR Best Book of 2017One of Entertainment Weekly’s Ten Best Books of 2017A Bustle Best Book of 2017A Paste Magazine Best Novel of 2017A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2017Winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for FictionOne of President Obama’s favorite … 2017A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2017Winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
One of President Obama’s favorite reads of 2017
”The Power is our era’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” –Ron Charles, Washington Post
“Novels based on premises like the one at the core of The Power can quickly become little more than thought experiments, but Alderman dodges this trap deftly — her 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
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
An Amazon Best Book of 2017
WINNER OF THE 2017 BAILEYS WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION
What would happen if women suddenly possessed a fierce new power?
In THE POWER, the world is a recognizable place: there’s a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power–they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets.
From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, THE POWER is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways.
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One of the best books I’ve ever read!
This book has been hailed as a companion piece to The Handmaid’s Tale, and while I see what people are thinking when they make that connection, I prefer to think of this in different terms. It’s less about the exploitation of a sex and more about the power shift that occurs when there’s a significant shift in the abilities of women. The book follows several characters who inspire differing degrees of sympathy. It moves along nicely and has a nice twist at the end.
Left me shaken, speechless. Food for thought on gender politics.
Power is a must read for everyone. Especially women and especially for any woman who still believes a world ruled by women would solve our problems. I particularly liked the ending where Naomi suggests the archeologist might consider publishing his book under a woman’s name.
Power is brilliant. And disturbing. Turn about isn’t fair play, it’s revenge.
The teenage girls of the world are devloping powers. The power comes in the form of electricity that they can generate to cause pain or even death to others. The women have a new organ that has developed – called a skein. Soon the power can be given to older women and the balance of the world shifts. The book rotates through 4 main characters – one who becomes “Mother Eve” – claiming to be hearing and doing the work of God. The men become more and more afraid and start to fight back. The tone of the book is one where women are viewed more like objects and now with this new power, they hold the upper hand.
This was a terrible book. I don’t want to spend a lot of time reviewing it, because I could hardly make it through it. The writing isn’t good, the sex in the book is ridiculous and way out of place in telling the story, and it is overall just not that entertaining. I love dystopian future novels – it is my favorite genre – but I could barely make it through. I should have quit reading.
Don’t bother with this book. The idea was a great one – a chance to write about a shift in power between men and women, but it fell flat.
Women are in power. Interesting premise but predictable and preachy.
Terrific, original idea. I wanted to love this book for its attempt to turn gender expectations upside-down. Sadly, the execution got long and meandering.
A flat-out stunner of a book, wholly original, both inspiring and terrifying. Teen girls and women develop the ability to kill with a touch — and changing the world is only the beginning.
Naomi Alderman’s novel, The Power, was riveting. Imagine a world where women suddenly have heightened physical strength. Then, imagine that power keeps building until it upsets society’s balance. An accurate and disturbing portrayal of how power can simultaneously free and imprison us.
One of the top ten books I’ve ever read. As an author, I feel a mixture of awe and admiration–knowing what the author had to go through to create their work–and jealousy (as in: will I ever create something this special.)
This book manages to tackle huge ideas and yet the story and language is so approachable, that it kind of catches you off guard with its depth. It’s only when you get to the last 10-20% of the book that you start to see just how far-reaching the tendrils of this book actually are, subversively commenting on everything from the nature of god to the bias of history (or “herstory” in this book’s case). I was truly blown away by this book.
For those of you who like “The Handmaid’s Tale”, you will love this, although, it’s kind of the anti-Handmaid’s Tale. I didn’t know that Margaret Atwood had mentored this author until I had already started reading the book.
Just a truly amazing book. Everyone should read it.
The premise of this book grabbed me by the scruff and breathed its hot, raw truth between the sharp teeth digging into my nape until the last page was turned. A world where women discover they have a physical power that makes them dangerous—possibly even deadly to men? Hell-fucking-yes, sign me up bitches! Anyone who knows me knows of my love for strong women, and Naomi Alderman gave it to me hard and fast, just the way I like it.
THE POWER is told through several different points of view. Each added shocking dimensions and subtle nuances to the overall plot. Ally, Roxy, Tunde, Margot and a handful of others created an unnerving picture of this new era where women possess a unique electrical power similar to that of an electric eel. Thanks to females’ enhanced physicality, the men in this world are vulnerable to discrimination, fear, and even such horrors as rape and murder—all because of a female organ that grew as a mutation in response to a drug fed to the masses in days past. Quite an eye-opening role reversal that kept the fibers of my skein hopping with seductive sizzle. 😉
The world-building was rich, the characters interesting. The author paints an often-disturbing picture of an alternate world that’s believable enough and close enough to the real one to make this reader’s butt cheeks clench uncomfortably, especially toward the end when entropy begins to take root and fucks everything to hell and back. I felt that the ending wasn’t so much a conclusion as it was a final, bleak snapshot of how this new society might continue, and quite possibly, burn itself out at some point down the road. History has shown that when a single group holds all the power, revolutions spring up and knock out the offending rulers. Eventually, the society returns to some semblance of normalcy until the next asshole shows up to throw off the balance, and the cycle repeats itself with new players and new game pieces for them to hold hostage. Readers aren’t privy to that ending in the pages of this book, but we can clearly see that this society cannot go on forever any more than a society dominated by men who treat women badly can go on forever.
While I loved the idea of women having the upper hand over men, I was also very conscious of how easily that kind of power could run amok and drag everything to shit, as evidenced in the story. I consider myself a humanist (not a feminist, because, to some people, feminism implies female dominance. While I’m all about woman power, I’m not about inequality), and I was not okay with the acts some of the more violent women perpetrated on innocent men. I think Alderman included those scenes to force us to feel the discomfort of reversed subjugation—to remind us of our humanity and how important it is not to let power go to one’s head. I ruminated for days after finishing about the possible implications of a female-dominated society. This book is definitely a thought-provoker.
I listened to THE POWER on Audible. Narrator Adjoa Andoh was absolutely fantastic. I reveled in the range of her voices—not just her tone and pitch, but her accents, her inflections, her timing. All of it was perfect in every way. If you’re trying to decide between text or audio, I vote for audio. Andoh’s narration is totally worth it.
THE POWER is a book everyone should read, especially in times like these when women (and minorities) are fighting harder than ever to put an end to the inequalities they suffer every day.
I was disappointed with the ending, but the story was intriguing and I wanted to see how the characters played out.
I’m a fan of sci-fi and strange tales. This book satisfied that need. When teenage girls start developing a strange power, the world begins to change in many unexpected ways. This was a book I couldn’t stop reading.
I like that is was written like a history of an event . it’s very girl power/feminist in that it shows how it would be if society went from being a patriarchy to matriarchy. points were tongue in cheek and others were a little dark. but i’ll read it again
Timely
chilling
DNF at ~20%.
I realize I may be in the minority disliking this novel, but nonetheless, I was BORED. It was a great feminist dystopia idea, but that’s about it. No great characters, nothing compelling to keep me reading. After I read some reviews warning it slows down as it goes on, I thought “No way, it gets slower? How is that possible?”
And that’s when I knew I had to let it go.