The Power by Naomi Alderman

An Exploration of Power Dynamics and Gender

The Power by Naomi Alderman is a speculative fiction novel that examines the complexities of power dynamics through a provocative lens. The narrative is set in a contemporary world where women develop the ability to generate electrical shocks, which they can use at their will. This newfound power upends traditional gender hierarchies and explores the implications of such a shift in societal power structures.

The story begins with the sudden emergence of an extraordinary ability among adolescent girls worldwide. These girls discover they can produce electrical jolts from their bodies, an ability they can awaken in older women as well. This power, referred to as "the skein," gives women a physical advantage over men, leading to a dramatic shift in the balance of societal power.

Alderman explores how power, regardless of who holds it, has the potential to corrupt. The novel depicts women using their power for both protection and aggression, mirroring the historical use of power by men.

The book provides a critique of gender inequality by flipping the traditional power dynamic. It questions what true equality looks like and whether a reversal of roles would lead to a more just world.

Through the character of Mother Eve, the book examines the role of religion in shaping social norms and behaviours. The novel portrays how new belief systems can emerge in response to changing power structures.

Pre-book club communications suggested that this would not be a positive discussion, but how wrong we were. The vast majority said this was not a book they would recommend scoring 3.27 and 4.1 on Monday and Tuesday respectively. However we delved into some interesting discussions on power, religion, culture which meant extensive discussion

The violence and language caused some to not like the book and most felt there was nothing to like about the characters, and more depth may have improved the read. Without that connection to the characters, we didn’t really care what happened to them. However, the main male figure, Tunda, did have some fans but others thought he actions were purely for selfish reasons.

Many did not like the way the book was written, finding the flipping from character to character, place to place and different timelines confusing and this prompted some to give up reading the book.

There were multiple areas of the book where the actions were compared to things happening in real life, for example, the need to only keep men for breeding and the culling of female babies in China as male babies had more value. The world war poison causing the skein and the introduction of micro plastics and other chemicals into our food cycles being blamed for cancer and mental health issues.

Some interesting themes included in the book included social media, which we felt does not always help society and it allows the fake news to become believable due to the ‘Chinese Whispers’ approach if left unchecked. Another was that drugs seemed to become prevalent and pervert the rule of society. One of the Monday groups key discussions was around the cult culture. It was suggested that the word had become demonised overtime, but several cults might simply have been a group of likeminded people doing what they like. Outsiders might see this as a cult and could turn society against the group by telling all that would listen it was a cult and allow society to turn against an innocent group. Some people thought some religions are just cults that are followed by a lot of people. It was observed that the phases of human civilisation, primitive culture, agricultural civilisation, industrial civilisation and knowledge civilisation have different focuses on religion and we discussed why that was and how close are we to another re-phasing of civilisation. The next big war we thought would be a fight for resources caused by climate change.

One table summed it up very well when they suggested the author was trying to show that we all have equality but we also all have evil and compassion within us and these can be brought out depending on the circumstances. We discussed that people do terrible deeds just because they can! Of course, the subject of Donald Trump was discussed on every table on Tuesday

The overall reaction was that the book made it clear that power corrupts and this is not a trait reserved for men. It was thought that more men are considered corrupt simply because more men hold powerful positions than women. When asked if that corruption is a result among politicians or a wider section of humanity the group were unanimous that the whole human race is corruptible. One member was struck by the ending of the book which references a character saying in the future that if men ran the world, not the women, it would be a more compassionate place, after reading the book, how ironic is that!

On Monday during the group discussion, Chris asked the group to convince him that he needed to read the book. They did not try at all let alone very hard!

A final point of the discussion was when it was pointed out that the manuscript presented in the book was by Neil Adam Armon. That is an anagram of Naomi Alderman!

Other information

One member of the group told the meeting that Robert Harris, author of Fatherland, was recently on Radio 4 on the This Cultural Life show and it was very interesting, The programme should be available on BBC Sounds.