Thou shalt not covet

It's been quite a few days since I finished reading The Power by Naomi Alderman. Over a week or so, actually. So why did I wait so long to review it?

Apart from being lazy, I actually wanted some time to digest it. I've been very much looking forward to reading this book, but I thought I was in for some juicy dystopian literature with a slight tendency towards young adult (YA) fiction. I certainly wasn't expecting anything heavy. Well, there you go.

The Power imagines a world not too different from ours in its set-up, but girls and women all over the planet are beginning to wake up to a new power they possess: electric currents under their skin, coming through their fingers, manifesting in (literally) shocking capacities. What happens when women suddenly represent the stronger sex? What happens when they take over?

What did I like about it?

I love the fact that the premise behind The Power is so simple, yet so brilliant. So what? Girls can now win fights. But as the plot develops along the usual axis - religion, military, education - it is quickly becoming clear that it's no utopian quick-fix for the patriarchy.

It is also brilliantly dark, building tension throughout. We follow several different characters and their stories, and as we get to know them so the plot unfolds on several lines, to connect towards the end and make for an even darker ending that left me a bit open-mouthed. I think a large part of this is well-crafted present tense: "Mother Eve speaks slowly and carefully. Mother Eve measures her words. Nothing that Mother Eve says is without consequence."

It reads like a prophecy, like absolute certainty, and I do think this contributes to the weight of this book. Yes, timely, yes, #MeToo, all that stuff - but had it been written decades ago, it would feel just as relevant. It is an idea for a new world order, resting on one 'small' change in our society. It's brutal, too, and makes for quite heavy reading at times. Which is probably why the Guardian deemed it 'an instant classic of speculative fiction'. As Becky Chambers once famously said, there's an assumption that "if it's a grown-up story, it has to be dark".

What was I not massively fond of?

I think it's a shame that the author created a framework around the story. The book opens with an exchange of letters between someone called Neil from the Men Writers Association and someone called Naomi... whom we assume is the author, no? So it gets a tad confusing when this turns out to be a fictional exchange, set in the world that is being described in the book (which I totally did not pick up on until the very end).

Also the illustrations: artefacts proving the 'history' of this new world order. I don't think they were needed at all - if anything, these are the reason that some people think of The Power as straight-up YA fiction. It's a shame, because it's an adult picture in a YA frame.

Writers, trust yourselves. This is a great novel. It doesn't need crutches.

Finally, while some characters, I felt, got all the development they could need and more, some of them felt very shallow. In particular, for me, Roxy was one; I could not picture her as anything else than fictional, with her cockney accent and her devil-may-care attitude. That doesn't mean I didn't like her - but while the others sped ahead, I felt she was a bit stranded.

Overall...

Because it's well-written and because it decidedly explores some very dark concepts, of course I was a sucker for this book. Yes, it has some simplistic elements, but in the world of dystopian or speculative fiction, it definitely stands out for me for being firmly rooted in reality and creating a chilling image.

I wanted to say 'deliciously chilling', but you know what? It's scarier than that. It's not delicious. It's bitter as f*ck.


7/10