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Loading... The Powerby Naomi Alderman
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» 40 more Best Dystopias (110) Books Read in 2019 (114) ALA The Reading List (43) Top Five Books of 2017 (118) Female Author (354) Books Read in 2017 (852) Top Five Books of 2022 (480) Books Read in 2023 (936) Overdue Podcast (193) Female Protagonist (411) Books Read in 2020 (3,095) SFFKit 2018 (6) Strong Characters (18) Banging Book Club (25) Horror & Thriller (73) Dystopia Must-Reads (16) No current Talk conversations about this book. First adolescent females and later all females begin developing an electrical power that changes the power dynamics of society as a whole. So sorry and diassapointed to see that Power corrupts both sexes. Ugh. Poignant, powerful, and wonderfully different for a change. For once, women are the power hungry, the dominant, the top of the food chain. Eerily reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale and other dystopian literature, The Power chronicles the female ascent to the top. Worldwide young girls are discovering that they have the power to release electrical charges, effectively shocking other people, sometimes to death. They also discover that when they shock older women they have the power to waken the dormant abilities. Soon women all over the world have this power and for once the men know fear. Told through multiple perspectives over a ten year span we see a female mayor aspiring to be governor, a young teenage girl with stronger raw power then anyone has ever seen, Mother Eve a prophet of the power, and a journalist, the lone male voice in this book. Together their panic, amazement, and greed tell the tale of how men became the weaker sex and the movement that changed the course of history forever, Wonderfully fresh and inventive. I loved it! I'm not sure I've ever read a piece of fiction that I think would be better suited to a book club discussion. So if you are in search of such a book, you're welcome. For the rest of you, I thought this book was more thought provoking than actually fun to read. But I like a good provoked thought, so very worthwhile on that front. The premise of the story is what would happen if gender roles were completely reversed and women were the ones with the more powerful body? The Power tries to answer that question by setting up a world where women basically have the ability to course and direct electrical power using only their bodies. The book then speculates on the fall out from that simple premise including social commentary on everything from the political structures to the criminal underworld to religion by telling the story through several different characters. Under the guise of storytelling, the book questions whether power corrupts and whether women would somehow be more circumspect in their use of power than perhaps men have been using theirs. You can certainly read this book as just an entertaining work of fiction, but as simply that, I found the characters a little too flat/villainous, but I think fans of more genre fiction might disagree and be able to read it as more of a thriller. Personally, I thought the real thrill was in simply imagining "what if?"
Alderman [...] imagines our present moment — with our history, our wars, our gender politics — complicated by the sudden widespread manifestation of “electrostatic power” in women. Young girls wake up one morning with the ability to generate powerful electric shocks from their bodies, having developed specialized muscles — called “skeins” — at their collarbones, which they can flex to deliver anything from mild stings to lethal jolts of electricity. The power varies in its intensity but is almost uniform in its distribution to anyone with two X chromosomes, and women vary in their capacity to control and direct it, but the result is still a vast, systemic upheaval of gender dynamics across the globe. Alderman has written our era's "Handmaid's Tale," and, like Margaret Atwood's classic, "The Power" is one of those essential feminist works that terrifies and illuminates, enrages and encourages. The novel is constructed as a big, brash, page-turning, drug-running, globetrotting thriller, one in which people say things such as: “It’s only you I’ve blimmin come to find, isn’t it?” and “You wanna stand with me? Or you wanna stand against me?” But it’s also endlessly nuanced and thought-provoking, combining elegantly efficient prose with beautiful meditations on the metaphysics of power, possibility and change. Belongs to Publisher SeriesAwardsDistinctions
In this stunning bestseller praised as "our era's Handmaid's Tale," a fierce new power has emerged--and only women have it (Washington Post). In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets. From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways. "Captivating, fierce, and unsettling...I was riveted by every page. Alderman's prose is immersive and, well, electric." --New York Times Book Review No library descriptions found.
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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'Allie says: Then what shall I do?
The voice says: Listen, I'll level with you: my optimism about the human race is not what it once was. I'm sorry it can't be simple for you any more.
Allie says: It's getting dark.
The voice says: Sure is.' (