Review by leesoko - The Power

leesoko 's review for:

The Power by Naomi Alderman

5.0

dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I sincerely liked this book.
I think about it still.
Unlike other books with heavy themes and topics, I am also still thinking about the characters, which seem to be burned into my memory.
And the story itself...

There were so many things in here that disturbed me—

ranging from oh-if-that-happened-to-a-woman-no-one-would-be-surprised to what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-with-these-children to Darrel-how-can-you-be-such-a-piece-of-shit-in-this-world

—that still replay in my memory. I almost physically felt

Roxy's pain of being betrayed, losing her skein (twice) and herself in the process, of Tunde understanding that he doesn't understand the world anymore, of Allie realizing that she's still just a child, of Margot dealing with sexism in politics in this shaken atmosphere, of Jos and being an outsider in a world of abnormality, of the queen of Bessapara and corruption, so much corruption.

I really only understood where (or rather when) the story took place, when I read the emails at the end (and the ones at the beginning, again) and felt dumbstruck to imagine a world, where the gender roles have always been (at least it seems this way) and probably will always be switched from ours. (Not to mention the fact that the "emancipation" of women took only a few years to induce a day zero and the end of all civilization.)

This book is such a great version of a "What if" that many people might have had in their mind for a long time (I most definitely had), without giving an objective answer on the necessity or inevitability of this redistribution of... the power.

Content Warnings