Thread by @LitReviewing

"The Power" by N. Alderman Review
Summary:

Content rating: Not for children or sensitive people; shocking
Literary value: Culturally relevant and well-written
Ethics: Depraved
Themes: Revenge, greed, lust for power and sex, war between sexes, apocalypse

“The Power” by Naomi Alderman reminds me of the decision I made not to read Stephen King anymore. It was 2009. I was pregnant with my third child. Some of the content and the author’s note at the end of a book disturbed and angered me.

I felt the need to swear off all horror, for the protection of my own emotions. In reading “The Power,” I chose to overlook my usual standards for content, so I could write a review for your benefit, in case you don’t have time or inclination to read it.

I hope you enjoy my perspective, but if not, I understand that’s probably because we have different taste in literature, which is a beautiful thing we should embrace.

The last books I had read before this one were: The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas, Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, and Born Again by Chuck Colson. That is my literary taste.

“The Power” is gory. There’s no other word for it. I marked all occurrences of abuse, violence, and obscenity in the book that I could find, which was a total of more than 1,500. Naturally, this makes the book adult literature, and not suitable for children or adolescents,

but in my opinion, when judging the worth of a book, we should ask the question: Does the shocking content decrease the moral value of the piece to the extent that we should warn others away from it?

In other words, most people would probably agree that there's a level of coarseness allowed in true “literature,” as long as the literary value such as themes, social commentary, artistry, & truth conveyed outweigh the effects of violence, gore, and obscenity on the human mind.

I would answer that this book does address some important feminist themes and has had enough exposure that it should be considered culturally relevant, but I would caution sensitive readers that this book contains descriptions of people’s brains being fried inside their heads,

eyes being pushed in and smashed, mouths frothed with blood, gangs cheering on rape conveyed in agonizing detail, vivisection by a mob, many murders, beatings, and abuses, and an enormous amount of blood.

In fact, I counted nearly 70 occurrences of “blood” or “bloody,” (some of them British expletives) which is close one occurrence every six pages. The anti-Christian sentiment isn’t overwhelming, but palpable, and I don’t see much point in a Christian reading this book “for fun.”

I also think that the book’s assumptions about what causes men to seek leadership positions and women to care for children are completely wrong and unscientific.

But, “The Power” is still worth a read if someone can tolerate the violence and copious religious heresy and also wants to understand how critical theory affects feminist literature and its themes.

For contrast, an example of a book I feel is not worthy of your time, due to content, is “Naked Lunch” by Burroughs. You’ve been warned.

Unique to Alderman’s book are sex scenes in which a desire to be electrically shocked is presented in a titillating way. I confess, I found these scenes cringeworthy. I have never viewed electric shocks as sexy.

In fact, no matter how the author presented sex, I felt strictly more sickened and nauseated by the sex scenes as I progressed, to the point that I had trouble forcing myself to finish this book.

If a book is a journey, I began to get seasick about 60% of the way through, and longed for home by 80% through, remarking: “I don’t care at all, anymore what happens in this book, and I just want all the characters to hurry up and die, so it can be over.”

Near the end, there is a sex scene that is not violating in any way (this is our reward for getting to the plot point that neither partner has power over the other, because of the loss of the woman’s power).

I suppose this sex scene should be received as some sort of healing balm after the preceding violence and rape, but I had no interest in it and did not enjoy it, and I wasn’t happy for the characters, whom I disliked.

In fact, while reading, I typed out: “I can’t even get in the mood to read about sex at this point, and I did not enjoy this scene, and I basically hate sex right now, which is not like me. Someone, please make this book end!”

On to the story. The premise of “The Power” is that, in an era and place similar to our own, young women suddenly begin to develop the ability to propel electric shocks out of their bodies.

Instantly, women who are abused begin to defend themselves from attacks and also to commit any abuse they can conceive of, to anyone.

Of course, most of the victims are men, and not weak or disadvantaged men, which would have been more realistic, since those are the men mainly abused by women here and now.

The first effect of this sudden phenomenon is that many homeless teen girls are kicked out and looking for new homes.

One of them, Allie, has murdered her foster father with her power, and then finds shelter at a convent, using the fake name “Eve.”

(I found it odd that the author seems to take such a dim view of Christianity, but her story tacitly admits that Christians will help most anyone, even people who are known to be dangerous.)

Through her advanced ability to control her electric power, she convinces some nuns and the other runaway girls that she’s the prophet of the New Church, which is a re-interpretation of the Bible with Mary superior to Jesus and as the godhead.

God is called “she” throughout the book, and many Christians or even practitioners of Judaism may bristle at the strange twisting of passages and themes from the old and new testaments in this novel.

Roxy, a lower-class British young woman from a crime family, shows up at the convent one day looking for “Mother Eve.”

The two instantly bond and become friends, neither knowing that the other has already killed their abusers. They basically agree to work together to consolidate power for Eve’s church, but Roxy then leaves to continue helping with her father’s crime business.

Does either of these stories resonate a note of identification in your heart? No? I actually did not identify with any of the characters in this book.

Margot is a politician who begins dreaming of murdering and usurping her superiors as soon as her power manifests. Her daughter, Jos, probably represents transgendered persons: her power doesn’t work consistently and is difficult to control.

The newly-developed mutation in women that causes the power, called “the skein” is poorly understood and difficult to fix. Predictably, Jos falls for a boy who somehow does have a skein.

Jos is one of the most likeable characters in the story, even though she injures a boy terribly and kills a man and lies about it. That should tell you something about how violent the other characters are.

With Margot training women to use the power in military fashion, and Eve winning disciples and money for the New Church, women’s power quickly consolidates in the government and in organized religion.

The more physical power a woman has, the more she is able to use it against others using murder (especially men and other powerful women), and the more she’s able to control the world of the book.

The whole story is the gradual killing off and suppression of all the enemies of the main characters, who according to psychology could be called “antisocial” or merely “narcissistic” in some cases.

These characters all end up agreeing that apocalypse is better than any type of compromise. “Mother Eve” is somehow shocked to learn, near the end, that her fake religion is corrupt and fosters abuse of women.

I found this incredible, having had some experience trying to do ministry work: it’s very difficult to help people without hurting them, and the Allie character did nothing to direct or help her charges directly.

Of course they ended up getting abused (this is suggested), just as she was.

Only one character, Tunde, comes across as fairly nice, but he’s also pretty foolish in some ways. Predictably, this critical-theory-influenced novel will only allow the reader to have any affection for either a dark-skinned or otherwise “marginalized” character.

I felt manipulated by this device, but I think it’s probably a sign of the author’s ethic that only “oppressed” people are deserving of love, and everyone else (oppressors) are worthy of punishment.

I found it dishonest that none of the women used their power to falsely accuse minority men of raping them, so those men would go to jail. Isn’t that how women use their power now?

Where is the idea of “The New Jim Crow” in this book? Furthermore, where is the idea of intersectionality? Am I supposed to believe that white women suddenly stop being racist as soon as all women are more powerful than men?

These are the types of questions I think the people cheering on the ideas of grievance studies should have come up with.

I had trouble believing that men wouldn’t just wear Faraday cage suits and carry lightning rods. Seems like an easy fix.

I saw something like that at a festival in Austin. You can see it on YouTube if you look up “Arc Attack.” I also wanted more of an admission that many women would side with men (“gender traitors,”) and that these would be the hardest women to beat,

because the men who currently held power would support and lionize them to the fullest extent, and also they would never want to mate with women they considered “dangerous.”

There should have been a different religious leader for traditional religion that did opposing acts of supernatural power. I wanted to see street gangs of women stealing instead of destroying (which is more of masculine tendency.)

I also wanted to see gangs of vigilantes opposing them, and street fights. Instead, most of the violence was tinged with some kind of edgy “justice” flavor.

There were riots, invasions, and assassinations, but I thought it would have made more sense if the social fabric broke down gradually and the power was split up into tribes before the apocalypse.

I found it unrealistic how the book on one hand bought into

the idea of men’s natural superiority due to physical strength, and that women emulating men’s lust for power was natural, while at the same time seeming to say that lust for power is wrong by displaying so much gore as a result of women’s power.

Is the author saying that lust for power is wrong? Probably not, and yet, the gore is so off-putting, it comes across like preaching “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The “love scene” at the end seems to communicate that men and women can only be happy together if they have the same amount of physical power, but how do we know that? Is this something proven?

Surely it’s true that godlike power in the hands of humans causes misery, but how does that relate to our oughtness?

This final sex scene is also less exciting than the others, which I do think is apt: the power difference between male and female bodies does add to the excitement, so the electric power would probably ramp up the excitement even more. Fear does that.

I feel like the book begins to moralize but neglects to give direction. What shall societies do about the fact that women are physically weaker and can get pregnant? Remove the muscles and sex organs of men?

That is literally the metaphor used in “The Power:” the couple can only mutually enjoy sex after the “skein” organ has been removed from the woman.

Oddly, female genital mutilation is decried by this novel (“curbing” men is the analog), but it’s not acknowledged that some religions currently do this practice on men, so the satire falls short.

After the Roxy character has her skein cut out and transplanted in a man, the man is able to zap. This could be a metaphor for gender transition surgery, but if so, why is the surgery so creepy?

I’m surprised the author didn’t treat that topic with more gentleness in the current climate. It’s not clear what the author means to say about the power of transgendered persons: are they born with it, or not?

Does the skein, indeed, represent men’s physical strength? The patriarchy? The penis? It can’t represent something women already have, such as sexuality, because that would mean we would have already taken over the world.

Another thing I wondered about is whether women actually do have some power men lack. Women are known to live longer than men, are better at judging emotions, and tend to make more careful investments.

If women have a super-power, is it manipulating people’s emotions? Is it a mimic of mind reading, because of facial interpretation? Is it surviving longer, due to less stress?

Regardless, I found it a huge oversight by the author not to recognize that pregnancy, the ability to be impregnated by rape, and menstruation are all weaknesses. Unless those are transferred to men, the women would still have been at a relative disadvantage.

Any woman could be drugged, then impregnated against her will, just as it happens today.

I think the main thing I learned from this book is the lengths some feminist writers will go to in order to prove a minor thesis such as “women are not more naturally nurturing than men.”

From the fictional letter by the editor at the end:
“I feel instinctively—and I hope you do, too—that a world run by men would be more kind, more gentle, more loving, and naturally nurturing.”

This is supposed to give us pause and make us question whether men are only violent and oppressive “because they can,” (page 318) due to their superior physical strength.

But what if the reason men tend to be domineering, aggressive, or even violent is due mainly to the effects of testosterone? These effects have been demonstrated by science. Has the author ever heard of hormones such as oxytocin?

Female mice that ate baby mice intentionally and habitually suddenly changed their behavior and began care for baby mice, after just one injection of this hormone. Sex and the associated behaviors are determined by DNA and by chemicals, which are proven by science.

We’re now living in a world that engages in contradictory activities: denying that women are more naturally nurturing (the seeming reason for writing “The Power,”) and giving people sex hormones to make them seem “more like the opposite sex.”

We simultaneously deny science and use the very findings of science that we deny. Why are we doing this?

How difficult is it to admit that since women have lactating breasts, and their hormones have been shown to inspire nurturing behavior, it’s a good thing for them to care for children and babies? That’s not wrong, nor is it wrong for men to care for children if they wish.

How difficult is it to admit that because testosterone causes aggression, it makes sense for militaries to be mainly made of men? That’s not wrong, nor is it wrong to allow women in the military.

Hormones shouldn’t limit our opportunities, but we should admit that they do prepare bodies for certain sex-related behaviors. The author seems to rail against this notion by showing countless women committing murder “because they can” with their new power.

But would it be right to show so much violence against some group other than “white men?” What if someone wrote such a book, with the same amount of murder and rape committed against a racial or religious group?

Wouldn’t it be excoriated for fear it could inspire copycat crimes? But instead, this is an award-winning novel.

I admit, the ending is so extreme, it would be difficult to parody: it’s like suggesting that if a minority group suddenly came into power, the apocalypse would occur ten years later, and nobody would even care, because they would be so miserable, they’d all be ready to die.

What does such an ending suggest about the minority group in power? That is what this book says about the nature of women. Am I expected to like that, because of “women’s empowerment?”

I’ve concluded that the novel is richly deserving of criticism for these reasons: it comes across as sexist and could be used as a model to write hateful or racist literature.

Someone could write a word-for-word translation of “The Power” as a story empowering a different protected class, or conversely into a book that would be summarily banned for being antisemitic or otherwise racist.

I don’t think that the ends justify the means: if it’s wrong to depict violence to manipulate emotions and discriminate against minorities, then we should keep this as a general principle, and not laugh off genocide against men in literature.

It’s a fact that genocide is always committed against seeming “evil overlords,” so for the good of everyone, we should be careful not to fall into the types of literature that are likely to inspire genocide.

“Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism,” is a spoof of Chapter 12 of Mein Kampf, and was accepted into an academic journal, even though it uses the same type of arguments and structure that Hitler used.

It is this fact that disturbs me and causes me to question the author’s method of achieving “justice,” a word her novel’s characters clearly misunderstand. “I want justice,” says Roxy (page 229), immediately after a thrill kill.

Still, Naomi Alderman is a talented writer who could never be accused of “boring” you. She puts in some cute humor (such as the “bitten fruit artifact”: clearly the Apple logo), some poetic passages, and some pithy thoughts to dilute the carnage.

Overall, an important book, recommended by none other than President Obama. Check it out if you want to know what feminist ideas are out there, you love paganism, and you also enjoy a little blood-gargling now and then.

Oh! If you happen to hate men, you’ll love this book. Enjoy!