The Power (2017)
Who wrote it?
Naomi Alderman (1974- ; active 2006- ), born London, UK. She is the daughter of a specialist in Anglo-Jewish history, and studied PPE at Lincoln College, Oxford, and later Creative Writing at UEA in Norwich. She initially worked in children's publishing, and alongside her novel-writing contributed to the writing of storylines for several popular video games.
Her debut novel, Disobedience (2006) attracted significant acclaim, winning her the Orange Award for New Writers, and seeing her listed by both the Sunday Times and Waterstones on promising new/young writers' lists in 2007. She subsequently published The Lessons (2010) and The Liars' Gospel (2012), with many of her works dealing with religion and her Jewish faith (which she claimed she lost early into her writing career).
In 2012 she was selected by Margaret Atwood as a protegee on an international philanthropic talent exchange programme. As well as co-writing a short story together, the exchange led to Atwood being involved in early reading and feedback of The Power, her fourth novel. The novel is also dedicated to Atwood.
What's it about?
The Power is a science fiction novel based around the premise of almost all women on Earth suddenly developing an extra organ (a ‘skein’) that allows them to shoot powerful bursts of electricity from their hands. Over a very short period, the balance of power in genders shifts and the novel sets out to explore the impact of this shift on society generally and a specific cast of characters from different backgrounds and locations.
The novel is framed by imagined correspondence between the author and a 'Neil Adam Armon' (see what she did there) who is positioned as the true author of the main body of the novel. More on that later.
The main characters we focus on in the novel are Allie, a teenager in the US who is raped by her foster father and kills him with her powers before joining a convent, adopting the name Eve and undergoing a journey that sees her a kind of religious influencer, all the while taking instructions from a mysterious (but rather god-like) voice in her head; Roxy, an English teenager and already tough daughter of a thuggish criminal, who inherits a particularly powerful form of the new power; Tunde, an aspiring journalist in Africa who boosts his fledging career by filming early incidences of the new power and travelling the world to capture more (eventually sponsored by CNN); and Margot, a politician in the US whose daughter Jocelyn is struggling with her powers, and who uses the situation to boost her political profile.
While the novel is ostensibly global in scope, much of the focus ends up centring on a female coup in Moldova, where Tatiana, the wife of the former president, steps in to lead the country, and becomes emblematic of the dangers of power, whoever's hands it may be in, as her regime removes power from men and eventually begins mass killings. After lots of further action, the novel ends with Allie/Eve taking power from Tatiana and deciding to start a world conflict that will sent the planet back to the Stone Age, seeing this as the only way to begin a 'better' female-led era. It's confirmed that the original interchange between authors is set some 5000 years after the events described in the novel's main body, and we learn that a new world has indeed developed, but with signs that is no more of a Utopia than the one which preceded it, merely another world with huge power imbalances.
What I liked
The concept of the novel is brilliant. It’s the reason I picked this up at an airport a few years back, way before I was reading all these prize winners. I enjoy TV/film sci-fi (even if I’ve rarely followed that through with my reading), love what I’ve read of Margaret Atwood, and thought this sounded like a genuinely exciting idea. Which it is.
It starts well, depicting a strange new world with all the requisite fear and excitement it bringing, and building intrigue to where it might lead.
I thought the framing authorial conversation was possibly the most interesting aspect of the whole book - while it’s brief, it manages to ask important questions about our world and the world we read about in the book (including answering some of the concerns I mention below, to some extent, albeit belatedly) and at the same time offering a wryly humorous commentary on the present day treatment of female authors.
If you like reading lots of action-packed scenes (fighty-fighty zappy-zappy description a-go-go) then there’s a lot in here for you too.
What I didn’t like
Hmm, this is the trickier bit to write. While I loved the book’s concept and the idea of exploring what a genuinely better, female-dominated world in which men are disempowered, could look like, I found it on balance to be quite an underwhelming read.
I guess part of this was down to me having the wrong expectations: the novel doesn’t so much posit a better world as present an alternative reality in which another, equally destructive, power imbalance leads to the same old problems. In some senses that’s a more interesting, balanced, thing to explore, but it just felt a little too doom-laden a conclusion for even my generally rather nihilistic tastes.
I wasn’t really engaged by most of the characters. Some felt like cliches (Roxy and her oi-oi gangster family; the cartoon villain Tatiana) and others just dull (Margot and daughter) - Tunde is probably the exception as the character who most clearly gets to explore the consequences of the gender-flipped world.
The pacing felt really off. I think that’s what I mean, at least? It felt like there was this seismic shift in world power largely happening off-stage, and at something of a snail’s pace. This isn’t a change that (like many in the real world) you’d imagine creeping up slowly and insidiously, it’s literally an explosion and upending of everything our society is built on. So the fact that the major events take years rather than months or weeks to start really kicking in felt really weird to me.
Coupled with this, the idea of a global phenomenon again didn’t really feel like it was properly explored. We get a bit of the impact on the US (but not much), a huge amount on Moldova and some associated developments in the Middle East (the latter a logical choice to explore, of course), but very little on how the changes impact the rest of the world. Yes, there are occasional passing allusions to other countries, but I’d have liked less on the specifics of the underwhelming core characters and more on the geopolitical influence across wildly differing global cultures and regimes. Maybe I’m asking too much here, but if the core focus is going to be relatively geographically narrow, why build up the global change so much to begin with?
As I hinted above, I’m not personally a fan of extensive description of fighting and zapping and whatnot. There’s really rather a lot of this and it all contributed to a general sense of this being a novel that was trying to set up a world that would work well as a film/TV franchise and constantly reassuring the purse-handlers of the potential for loads of crash-bang-SFX-ACTION! Fair enough if that’s the goal, but it’s not quite what I’m personally looking for in these literary award winners I’m reading.
Food & drink pairings
Plenty of Glitter (it’s a power-enhancing drug, not the sparkly stuff, the latter might have been more interesting to read about)
If you’re a man in Moldova, nada. Tough luck.
Fun facts
The panel was chaired by Tessa Ross, a film and TV producer. No further comment!
The book was optioned as early as 2016 (its initial publication year) for TV adaptation. It finally made it to screens earlier this year (2023) in an adaptation by a UK team for Amazon. It has a mixed cast of relative newcomers and bigger names including Toni Colette (who plays Margot) and Eddie Marsan (playing Roxy’s dad), plus Ted Lasso’s excellent Toheeb Jimoh as Tunde.
Rather inevitably, I’m still quite tempted to watch it despite not being sold on the book - I actually feel like it could even work better on screen. Reviews have been mixed, but skewing mostly positive.
This was the last year Bailey’s were the title sponsor of the Prize.
Vanquished Foes
Ayobami Adebayo (Stay With Me)
Linda Grant (The Dark Circle)
C. E. Morgan (The Sport of Kings)
Gwendoline Riley (First Love)
Madeleine Thien (Do Not Say We Have Nothing)
Thien’s novel also featured on the 2016 Booker Prize shortlist. The 2017 Booker went to the near-flawless Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.
Context
In 2017:
Donald Trump sworn in as US President, becoming first to be elected without holding previous political or military office
Women's March in US and worldwide in response to Trump's election
US government under Trump announces intent to withdraw from Paris Climate Agreement
UK triggers Article 50 of Lisbon Treaty in March, beginning Brexit negotiations
UK PM Theresa May calls a snap general election in June which leaves her with a significantly reduced majority and hampers subsequent Brexit-related votes
ISIL terrorist attack in Manchester, UK, kills 22 at an Ariana Grande concert; London Bridge terrorist attack kills 8
Assassination of Kim Jong-nam, half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, in Malaysia
Displacement of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar following mililtary operation against them
Hurricane Harvey causes record-breaking flooding in the US, especially Houston
US airstrikes in Syria
Las Vegas shootings by Stephen Paddock kill 60 and injure over 800
Catalan Independence referendum; Catalonia declares independence from Spain but is not recognised by any government
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe resigns following military intervention, after 37 years of rule
WannaCry ransomware attacks
Disney announces acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox
Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends
Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
The Shape of Water
Get Out
Call Me By Your Name
The Greatest Showman
Drake, More Life
Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.
Lorde, Melodrama
Charli XCX, Pop 2
Tyler the Creator, Flower Boy
Life Lessons
Power corrupts, obvs.
Rip it up and start again
Score
5
I can certainly appreciate that this was both an entertaining book for many and an important one in its imagination of a different reality. It didn’t work for me though and felt like the second in a run of Women’s Prize winners that saw it drifting towards more populist decision-making - not necessarily a bad thing but a shame just a few years after it had rewarded complex, subtle works like A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and How to be both.
2017 Booker winner Lincoln in the Bardo got a rare 10 from me.
Ranking to date:
How to be both (2015) - Ali Smith - 9.5
Property (2003) - Valerie Martin - 9.5
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (2014) - Eimear McBride - 9.5
The Idea of Perfection (2001) - Kate Grenville - 9
Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - 9
The Lacuna (2010) - Barbara Kingsolver - 9
When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) - Linda Grant - 9
Larry’s Party (1998) - Carol Shields - 8.5
Bel Canto (2002) - Ann Patchett - 8.5
Small Island (2004) - Andrea Levy - 8.5
A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999) - Suzanne Berne - 8.5
May We Be Forgiven (2013) - A. M. Homes - 8
The Tiger’s Wife (2011) - Téa Obreht - 8
On Beauty (2006) - Zadie Smith - 8
A Spell of Winter (1996) - Helen Dunmore - 8
The Road Home (2008) - Rose Tremain - 7.5
The Glorious Heresies (2016) - Lisa McInerney - 7.5
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005) - Lionel Shriver - 7.5
The Song of Achilles (2012) - Madeline Miller - 7
Home (2009) - Marilynne Robinson - 7
Fugitive Pieces (1997) - Anne Michaels - 6.5
The Power (2017) - Naomi Alderman - 5
Next up
Straight on to the 2018 winner, Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie. Before a probable massive diversion when the Booker longlist comes out…
