Robert Fromont reviewed The Power by Naomi Alderman
What if women were physically more powerful than men?
4 stars
Naomi Alderman's answer is not a ‘more kind, more gentle, more loving and naturally nurturing’ matriarchy that lets men off lightly. This is a violent, tumultuous tale that sometimes makes uncomfortable reading. But this is not ‘merely’ a list of feminist talking points brutally driven home; Alderman plays a long and subtle game, bedding in the most important and durable perspective changes (at least for this male reader) subtly over the course of the entire novel.
This novel is perhaps a kind of response to the call of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, to which it owes much; from the framing of near-future action within far-future intellectual perspectives, to the presentation of events that appear at first preposterously unrealistic, until one realises that most have actually happened, and in some cases continue to happen, IRL.
It's a gripping, prespective-changing read.
