The Power

I read The Power because friends kept calling it our era's Handmaid's Tale and I wanted to argue, then found I mostly agreed with caveats. Naomi Alderman first published it in the UK in 2016, with the US edition from Little, Brown and Company in 2017. The US hardcover I cite runs 400 pages with ISBN 9780316547611. Teenage girls develop the ability to release electric shocks from a new organ called the skein, and the world reorders around that fact. Told through four viewpoints plus historical framing, it asks what power does to people, not just what men do to women. It thrilled and unsettled me in equal measure. It also frustrated me, which feels intentional.

The premise arrives fast and physical. Girls wake with buzzing collarbones. A foster girl named Allie shocks an abuser and runs. A London gang girl named Roxy shocks attackers and cries. A mayor's daughter named Margot shocks during a press event. A Nigerian boy named Tunde films it all. No slow mystery. Power is visible by page thirty. Alderman skips origin science beyond a hint of chemical weapon and nerve change. That vagueness annoyed some hard SF readers. I accepted because the book is about consequences, not cause. How does the ability spread. Who teaches control. What laws follow. Those questions matter more than molecules. If you need rigorous biology, this is not that book. If you want social thought experiment, stay.

Allie, who becomes Eve, carries the religious thread. Abused in foster care, she hears a voice she calls Mother, renames herself Eve, and builds a convent where girls pray and practice shocks as sacrament. Her chapters mix tenderness and fanaticism. She shelters runaways, feeds them, then preaches that God is female and men must serve. Is she prophet or traumatized teen building safety into dogma. Both, probably. Alderman writes her sermons with beauty that seduces even skeptical readers. I found myself nodding before catching myself. That seduction is the point. New powers need stories to organize. Stories harden fast. Watch how quickly comfort becomes rule.

Roxy, daughter of London crime boss Bernie Monke, gives the book muscle and humor. Big, loyal, foul mouthed, grieving her murdered mother. She can out shock almost anyone and uses it to protect brothers and punish enemies. Her chapters read like gangster film with sparks. A scene where she takes revenge in a warehouse, crying while hurting men who hurt her family, is awful and cathartic. Alderman does not look away from Roxy enjoying power. That enjoyment complicates easy victim narratives. Oppressed people can relish reversal. Relish can corrupt. Roxy knows and continues. I liked her most and worried about her most. That split is good writing. Love the person, fear the path.

Politics and film

Margot, mayor of a US city, shows institutional response. Ambitious, funny, mother of two girls developing power at different speeds. She first hides her own skein to seem safe, then uses it to win debates, then backs training camps for girls. Her aide Daniel, slick and scared, urges control. Her daughter Jocelyn, sweet and struggling with shocks, becomes poster child. Margot's arc from cautious politician to governor who arms girls is thrilling and chilling. A debate scene where she shocks an opponent on live TV and spins it as self defense made me cheer and then feel sick at cheering. Alderman stages power as performance. Who controls footage controls truth. That media savvy feels 2016 prescient and 2026 familiar.

Tunde, the lone major male viewpoint, a rich Nigerian university student turned journalist, provides outside eyes and limits. He films girls in Saudi Arabia, in India, in refugee camps. He is beaten, befriended, desired, dismissed. His chapters show global variation. Some places celebrate. Some execute. Some monetize. Tunde means well and profits from suffering through clicks. Is he ally or exploiter. Both. Alderman uses him to implicate readers who consume trauma as content, which includes me reading his chapters eagerly. That mirror stings. I kept reading anyway. Complicity noted, not resolved. Honest rather than comforting.

The framing device matters more than first appears. Adult novelist Neil Adam Armon writes to friend Naomi, sending manuscript of a historical novel about the Cataclysm that reset world. Naomi replies with patronizing notes. Oh sweetie, did women really run things. Try a male hero next time. That reversal, where our present patriarchy becomes future matriarchy doubting past patriarchy, reframes the whole book as artifact. Who tells history. Who doubts. Some readers find the frame cute. I found it essential. Without it, the book risks reading as revenge fantasy. With it, it reads as warning about any dominance. Power corrupts regardless of chromosomes. The frame insists. Do not miss the letters at start and end. They change meaning of middle.

Violence escalates deliberately and disturbingly. Early shocks stun. Later, girls blind, burn, kill. Mobs of women assault men in streets. Armies of women overthrow governments. Men form counter movements, some peaceful, some terrorist. Alderman does not spare detail, but she rarely lingers on gore for thrill. Harm serves argument. When Roxy tortures, you feel her grief and her choice. When Eve orders purges, you feel faith curdling. That moral clarity without preaching is hard. Readers wanting clear heroes will struggle. There are none by the middle. Only people using new leverage to settle old scores and make new ones. Sit with discomfort. It is the lesson.

What provoked me

The book provoked useful arguments in my reading group that lasted two hours. Does power reveal or create cruelty. Would women really build harems and wars if given shocks. Is Alderman saying gender violence is symmetrical. We split. Some felt the book proves power corrupts all, a truism with electric dressing. Some felt it shows specific revenge after centuries of rape, not generic corruption, and judges too fast. I landed between. Early chapters show justified self defense that thrills. Later chapters show new oppressions that horrify. The speed of turn feels rushed to make point, ten years from spark to Cataclysm, but speed serves fable rather than prediction. Read it as parable, not forecast. Parables exaggerate to clarify. Clarify it does, even if it simplifies.

Pacing also wobbles. Four viewpoints plus letters plus time jumps plus a ten year countdown demand attention. Middle sections repeat beatings and rallies. I skimmed two Tunde dispatches that listed countries without new insight. At 400 pages in the US hardcover, it could have been 350. Trimming travelogue would help. The final war chapters rush after slow buildup, with key deaths in paragraphs. That rush may be intentional, history as blur, but it left me numb rather than moved at the exact moment I should feel most. Forgive and focus on Margot and Roxy final choices. Those land because they are personal after global noise.

Language about sex and gender needs care. The book uses a binary frame, girls gain skeins, boys mostly do not, with one trans boy plotline handled briefly. Nonbinary and intersex experiences get little space. 2016 conversations differed from now, but even then gaps showed. If you need expansive gender thought, supplement with other books. Alderman gestures at complexity through Jocelyn's confusion and a boy who wishes for power, but gestures stay gestures. Name the limit while valuing what is present. A thought experiment can open and still exclude. Both true. Discuss.

Who it is for

Read it if you like speculative thought experiments with political teeth, multiple viewpoints, and uncomfortable endings. It is standalone, though Alderman later wrote The Future with thematic links. Content includes sexual assault, rape revenge, murder, torture, war, language. Assault scenes are described without graphic lingering but are central to motive. Take care if those topics harm. Suitable for adults and older teens ready to debate rather than just thrill, with support for heavy chapters.

Facts to cite are a little tricky across editions. First published in the UK in 2016 by Viking with ISBN 9780241015728. The US edition cited here came October 10, 2017 from Little, Brown and Company, 400 pages, ISBN 9780316547611. Author Naomi Alderman, born 1974, won the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction for it. No series. Tags that fit are science fiction, dystopia, feminism, power, politics.

I closed it buzzing, checking my own collarbone half joking, then sober. The last line about power and storytelling stayed. Who tells the Cataclysm shapes next Cataclysm. Alderman, mentored by Margaret Atwood, learned that lesson well. Books do not just imagine worlds. They train readers to accept or resist. This one trains resistance to all simple reversals. Do not cheer when victims become masters and repeat mastery. Cheer when someone refuses the script. Look for those refusals in margins. They are few. They matter most. Keep them in mind longer than shocks.

Small refusals

What I hunted on reread was refusals, moments when characters do not use power though they could. Tunde refusing to sell a video that would endanger a girl. Margot refusing to shock her daughter when frustrated. Roxy refusing to kill a brother who betrayed. Those scenes are brief against pages of strikes, but they carry the book's hope. Power does not have to be used maximally. Restraint is also choice. Alderman buries these choices because history buries them too. Textbooks list wars, not times someone walked away. The 400 page Little, Brown hardcover with ISBN 9780316547611 lists wars to show pattern, but refusals hide in paragraphs. Read slowly for them. Mark margins when someone stops. Those marks map another history where Cataclysm might not come. We need that map now, when everyday news lists shocks without listing stays. Practice noticing stays in life. Who did not escalate today. Thank them. History may not, but you can.

Jocelyn, Margot's daughter, deserves a paragraph because she embodies awkward power. She cannot control shocks well, hurts by accident, apologizes excessively. In a book of confident women electrifying, her clumsiness feels human. She does not want to be symbol. She wants to pass exams and be liked. That ordinariness resists both victim and avenger narratives. Most people with new powers would be Jocelyn, messy and scared, not Eve or Roxy. Remembering that majority matters for policy. Laws written for extremes crush middles. Margot legislating with Jocelyn in mind writes better laws than when legislating for cameras. When you debate the book, center Jocelyn, not queens. What would help a teen who shocks when nervous. Training, not troops. Care, not camps. That reframing turns parable toward practice. Useful for school debates about safety that default to control. Ask what Jocelyn needs. Start there.

Talking after

If you discuss this book, start with personal rather than political. When did you enjoy a reversal scene and then feel uneasy. Name the page. Most readers cheer early when Allie shocks an abuser. Almost all feel queasy later when mobs blind. That shift from cheer to quease is the book working. Do not skip past it to thesis. Stay in feeling. Why did justice thrill then sicken. What changed, scale or target or your own distance. Those questions teach more than terms like patriarchy or matriarchy. Feel first, label after. Alderman, who wrote for games and radio, knows interaction beats lecture. Let bodies react before minds sort. Then sort together. My group argued for two hours and left without consensus but with better questions. Who gets to use new tools. Who decides misuse. How fast do we move from protection to punishment. Bring those questions to next news cycle. The book will be there, buzzing faintly, when headlines spark. Answer slower than characters did. That delay is the only moral the novel fully endorses. Pause before shock. Then choose. Then live with choosing.

A final practical note for book groups. Assign viewpoints before meeting. One person tracks Allie, one Roxy, one Margot, one Tunde. Each brings three moments when their character could have chosen differently. Compare lists. You will find different turning points, which proves Alderman's point about history depending on teller. My group found nine distinct forks. None agreed on which mattered most. That disagreement is productive. It shows Cataclysm was not inevitable but accumulated. If nine small refusals could have rerouted, then present choices matter too. End meetings by naming one present refusal you will practice. Not shocking when provoked. Listening before legislating. Credit that practice, however small, as Cataclysm prevention in miniature. Books rarely give homework this clear. Do it.