Shari Lopatin

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The Power makes a strong societal and political statement meant for girls and women. The ending will chill you into your bone marrow and even make you question a woman’s role in ancient human life.

Book: The Power

Author: Naomi Alderman

Publisher: Little Brown and Company

Published: Oct. 10, 2017

Link to Purchase: https://bookshop.org/a/80019/9780316547604

Stars: 4/5

Rarely do I find a new, recently published book that poses such a deep philosophical question, that I find myself pondering it two weeks after finishing.

I won’t lie: about halfway through Naomi Alderman’s The Power, I started wondering about the hype surrounding it. The book was good, and I was enjoying the story, but did it really deserve to be listed as one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and one of former President Obama’s favorite reads?

And then, I got to the end—the final part. And OH. MY. GOD. Yes it does!

The Power turns girl power on its head and really makes us #bossbabes ask ourselves: what would we do if we suddenly became more powerful than men? What if we really could run the world?

Are we as innocent as we believe?

The Story

The plotline is simple, so I’m taking this straight from the back cover of the book.

“All over the world, women and girls are discovering they have the power. With a flick of the fingers, they can inflict terrible pain and even death. And with this small twist of nature, everything changes drastically … The Power takes us on a journey to an alternate reality and exposes our own world in bold and surprising ways.”

My Take

Here’s the thing about The Power: its strength is not in character development or even astonishing plot twists (though, there are some of those). In fact, I sometimes felt detached from the characters, which is the main reason I scored this book with four stars, rather than five.

Instead, The Power makes a strong societal and political statement meant for girls and women. The ending will chill you into your bone marrow and even make you question a woman’s role in ancient human life.

More than anything, the book strikes me as a near-metaphor for #MeToo, with young women igniting “the power” in older women. However, although the story begins with messages of empowerment, it soon turns darker and poses deeper questions about human nature. At times, it’s hard to read.

Margaret Atwood called The Power “electrifying.” I’d have to say, I agree with her.