A review by maketeaa
The Power by Naomi Alderman

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

a very interesting commentary on marginalisation and brings into question the reasons we are often given to justify why our social order is the way that it is. alderman demonstrates to us how, often, the political landscape and distribution of power we take as innate in the world often arises almost as an accident, as a sequence of events that eventually creates a perfect breeding ground for public figures to sow their seeds and profit from the tensions between the groups beneath them. i think what really interested me was what felt almost like a racialisation of gender, and how a lot of the narrative reflected patterns of genocide -- in particular the justifications given at the beginning for killing men, to make them pay for their 'previous sins', similar to how genocides often occur as a result of one group who perceives themselves to be oppressed against the other. i think this racialisation and the rhetoric that cropped up to further separate men and women to justify their power gap (and in the case of men, brutalisation) was itself a very smart thing to do, because not only does it say something about how arbitrary the sexist stereotypes we live with are, but also how dangerous racial stereotypes and separation can become. overall, this is a very interesting look at power and the dangers of this power becoming instititionalised, but, most importantly, how this power can be made to seem normal to us through a careful shifting of lenses of our ways of understanding the world -- religion, history, and law.

i guess my only gripe is just a personal taste one: i wish it didnt read so... YA-y sometimes? some of the action scenes just felt a little unnecessary and i would've been way more interested if the focus had been more on the sociological aspects rather than that.