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A review by i_read_big_boucs
The Power by Naomi Alderman
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I don't know how to describe this. Wow. Left me with such a shock and many questions, I'll be thinking about it for a while.
Thoughts:
- Is it weird that this book was very oddly empowering? I was simultaneously shocked in horror by the violence of the things that happened, but I guess I had never experienced myself as a woman as potentially "running the world" or the kind of person one has to fear. Is this why men like all the boom boom military movies? Because they're always the one doing the killing and not the permanent victims in all media? It was really interesting to really experience in my gut the way the female characters were just not afraid anymore. I felt safe, I felt powerful. It made me realize how much I take for granted unconsciously that I am vulnerable to harm in many situations, and that this is just such a default I experience it as the human condition. This was a powerful emotional experience.
- as a feminist, there was this permanent anxiety in me that this book would be used in an anti-feminist way to say "Look! this is what the feminists want!" because we spend so much energy saying we don't want female domination but equality. So there was something that felt incredibly taboo but also exciting and morally complex about running with the opposite narrative, while the cleverness of the gender-flipped details is such that it serves a feminist point as well.
- something I haven't really settled my mind on is the dimension of masochistic sexual excitement experience by Tunde. In some ways, I found the inclusion of how domination becomes eroticised accurate to heterosexism and the way women under patriarchy come to experience things. But it was also extremely disturbing and existed really throughout the whole book. Does it represent the way men write women in flipped? Is it also a way of embracing this moral complexity? Oof.
Thoughts:
- Is it weird that this book was very oddly empowering? I was simultaneously shocked in horror by the violence of the things that happened, but I guess I had never experienced myself as a woman as potentially "running the world" or the kind of person one has to fear. Is this why men like all the boom boom military movies? Because they're always the one doing the killing and not the permanent victims in all media? It was really interesting to really experience in my gut the way the female characters were just not afraid anymore. I felt safe, I felt powerful. It made me realize how much I take for granted unconsciously that I am vulnerable to harm in many situations, and that this is just such a default I experience it as the human condition. This was a powerful emotional experience.
- as a feminist, there was this permanent anxiety in me that this book would be used in an anti-feminist way to say "Look! this is what the feminists want!" because we spend so much energy saying we don't want female domination but equality. So there was something that felt incredibly taboo but also exciting and morally complex about running with the opposite narrative, while the cleverness of the gender-flipped details is such that it serves a feminist point as well.
- something I haven't really settled my mind on is the dimension of masochistic sexual excitement experience by Tunde. In some ways, I found the inclusion of how domination becomes eroticised accurate to heterosexism and the way women under patriarchy come to experience things. But it was also extremely disturbing and existed really throughout the whole book. Does it represent the way men write women in flipped? Is it also a way of embracing this moral complexity? Oof.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Suicide, Child abuse, and Murder