The Power
Naomi Alderman · 2016
Women develop the ability to produce electrical jolts, and civilization inverts. Alderman's speculative fiction is mercilessly rigorous about how power corrupts regardless of who wields it, making the book more feminist critique than fantasy wish-fulfillment. The premise is the argument.
The case against
Alderman's thesis arrives early and the novel mostly repeats it at increasing volume: power corrupts women exactly as it corrupted men, atrocity by mirrored atrocity. The four viewpoint characters are positions more than people, Tunde especially, who exists to be endangered. By the Bessapara chapters the book is grinding through its proof like a syllabus. The bookend letters land one good joke.
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