The Power by Naomi Alderman
(Little, Brown and Company; First US edition October 10, 2017; published in the UK in 2016)
Friday June 2, 2023
Good morning dear reader,
I will admit upfront that I have not yet read the book, but I just finished watching the Amazon Prime series of nine episodes based on the book. And I am fascinated by the main idea this book plays with: young women developing a power which they can then pass on to older women. (Please note all bolding in excerpts below is mine.)
Kirkus describes this power: “All over the world, teenage girls develop the ability to send an electric charge from the tips of their fingers. It might be a little jolt, as thrilling as it is frightening. It might be powerful enough to leave lightning-bolt traceries on the skin of people the girls touch. It might be deadly. And, soon, the girls learn that they can awaken this new—or dormant?—ability in older women, too.”
I’m also interested that Naomi Alderman was named one of Granta’s 20 best young British novelists — the story has a global perspective, not the typical ethnocentric perspective that is often the case with American authors. Having said that, Alderman depicts many characters based in the States, in addition to characters in other places all over the world.
From the review in the Boston Globe: “Few writers are better suited to tell such a story. Born in London and educated in philosophy and religion at Oxford, Alderman made her literary debut a decade ago with “Disobedience,” a brisk and often very funny novel about a rabbi’s lesbian daughter, who returns to London from New York and sees her community anew. In the course of writing this Orange Prize-winning work Alderman, who was raised Orthodox Jewish, stopped practicing. She is also the author of two other novels. One of them, “The Liars Gospel,’’ posited Jesus as a failed preacher. In 2015, she won a year long mentorship with Margaret Atwood.”
This mentorship is noteworthy — Ron Charles wrote in The Washington Post: “Alderman has written our era's "Handmaid's Tale," and, like Margaret Atwood's classic, "The Power" is one of those essential feminist works that terrifies and illuminates, enrages and encourages.”
I’m fascinated by how Alderman presents the development of this power from a perspective that it was an evolutionary necessity that young women develop it in order to be able to protect themselves. To protect themselves from sexual abuse as shown by Allie who discovers she can fight off her lecherous foster father; and by Romanian women who are kept as sex slaves. To protect themselves from violence as shown by Roxy who is the illegitimate daughter of a Britsh gangster and who revels in her new strength after a lifetime of knowing the cost of weakness. To protect themselves from being kept as second class citizens: women in In India, Saudi Arabia and Moldova are at last able to use their power to claim sovereignty.
Alderman plays with the concept that finally — after women have this power — they feel lighter and safer to walk down the street; to simply exist in this world. It’s as though it wasn’t even in their conscious awareness how they had to hide themselves to protect themselves, how, lurking beneath the surface was always a threat to a woman’s physical, emotional, mental, even spiritual safety. And their new power grants them safety from potential male abusers inherent in patriarchy-dominant cultures.
As the New York Times review states, “The power varies in its intensity but is almost uniform in its distribution to anyone with two X chromosomes, and women vary in their capacity to control and direct it, but the result is still a vast, systemic upheaval of gender dynamics across the globe.”
Just the idea that the shift of the power dynamic creates upheaval across the globe is fascinating, as it shines the light on how deeply the patriarchy’s roots are entrenched all over the planet. Perhaps Alderman’s writing of this book is another drop in the oceanic wave of the rising of the divine feminine — but there is a catch.
As Publisher’s Weekly states, “Alderman tests her female characters by giving them power, and they all abuse it. Readers should not expect easy answers in this dystopian novel, but Alderman succeeds in crafting a stirring and mind-bending vision.”
And as Booklist states, “Alderman wrestles with some heady questions: What happens when the balance of power shifts? Would women be kinder, gentler rulers, or would they be just as ruthless as their male counterparts? That Alderman is able to explore these provocative themes in a novel that is both wildly entertaining and utterly absorbing makes for an instant classic, bound to elicit discussion and admiration in equal measure.”
Amal El-Mohtar’s review in the New York Times is more critical: “…it left me wanting to argue, without quite knowing what the book’s position ultimately was.” But perhaps the strength of this story is not so much about illustrating the old adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but in simply shining more light on the myriad of ways that women are still suppressed and in danger, in our present day and age. As John Freeman writes in the Boston Globe: “One of the hallmarks of great speculative fiction is how keenly it compels us to apply the rules of its universe to our own, forcing a second look at what has been long relegated to the background.”
Also interesting to note in the NPR review, “…you're likely to hear this quotation from the 19th-century British historian Lord Acton: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's a memorable axiom, but one that's been a little bit mangled by time — Acton actually wrote that "Power tends to corrupt."
Perhaps Alderman’s exploration of power in this novel points towards at least one way humanity needs to move forward:
ALL human beings — male and female — need to learn how to use power wisely.
As the revered Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh teaches in his book, The Art of Power:
the one right use of power is to lessen suffering;
to lessen both one’s own suffering, and the suffering of others.
OMG! I had no idea there’s a series! I devoured the book and def thought it could be a show. I’m off to add it to my list. Thanks!
I'll have to look up this fascinating book or watch the Amazon prime show. Thank you for making us aware of it!