Blog

I didn’t think I would ever write a book review, and I’m not sure you can really call this a book review. Perhaps it is more like a musing.  I just finished reading The Power by Naomi Alderman.  I am unsettled, confused, disappointed, discouraged, curious, and questioning.

I decided to read this book because it was on the list of summer book reads at church last year. I was skeptical about why this book was chosen, but knowing the person who put the title forward, my guess was he was doing it for shock value and attention.  That was enough to get me to read it. I was prepared to scoff all the way through because how can this story of a futuristic world where women come into a magical power and take over the world be a spiritually uplifting book.  The person who loaned me her copy described it in a way that I assumed it was about witchcraft and fairy dust.  How wrong I was on so many levels.

Shame on me. Who am I to judge a person’s reason for choosing a book? Who am I to say a book won’t be worthy of reading when I haven’t even cracked it open?

At first, I was surprised and maybe even feeling a little guilty as I read the descriptions of women around the world who have been sold into slavery, beaten, killed, raped, and kept in bondage in basements their entire life.  I know these things happen, and when I say I know – it’s more like a textbook knowledge.  It’s a fact about something that happens, but it is not something I see in my everyday life. It is not something I experience in my privileged world.  Somehow in reading these words on paper, they resonated with me. Somehow this author spoke to me in a way I haven’t thought about before.  I am chastised. 

Initially, the way the author describes the change in power is eye opening. I guess it is because I accept the way the world is. I accept that my world is mostly ruled by men. I accept that although women are rising into leadership, they are few and far between and still thought of as the weaker sex in many ways.  What disturbs me is that I have no issue with this. This is the norm.

As this story develops it disgusts me. Pages and pages of descriptions of women torturing the men, killing them, maiming them, for revenge, sometimes for protection, and many times for sport.  The three main characters of this book rise to power through religion, politics, and corruption.  In all three instances they rise to the top by lying, cheating, threats, bribes, torture, death. And I am sick.

I am sick with the thought that women could become like this.  I am sick that the author would write a story of such destruction. It gives the reader no hope.  I am sick with the thought that women are no better.  Better than what? I ask myself.  I am sick when I realize I am disturbed because I have read books like this before, but in those cases the men are still the rulers and leaders of the world, the ones wielding the blows of mass destruction to each other and the world at large.  It is still the women who are in second place, and I find that acceptable.  I find it normal. This is unnerving.

This is an awakening of sorts, an awareness of what I have just always accepted.  I have never thought to peek over the fence to see another version of the world.  The author ends the book in an interesting way.  First, she leads you to the climax of realization of the three leaders, who independently from each other accept that the only way to fix the world is by a new beginning: Armageddon, war, or a flood akin to Noah and the Arc.  Then in an oh so subtle way the author hints that the world continues to be ruled by women, and men have no voice in the world. The author does not offer a solution or an answer.

I closed the book feeling despondent, that there is no hope for humanity. I was full of questions.  I could not make sense of this book and the reason behind it being written, so much so that I wish I could have been in the discussion group at church. I could not imagine voicing my thoughts or opinions because I felt so ill equipped to formulate an opinion or make a stance.  This book left me feeling so confused that I went online to read reviews from others, to try and make sense of it all.

And I guess in the end that is the point.  The author is trying to shake us up.  We need to look at our world with different eyes, different perspectives, ask questions, poke, and prod.  We need to look at what we accept as the norm, and if it is not balanced then we need to change it.  We need to decide what we are willing to do and act on it.  To stand up and say the world needs to change. To fight for each other, to come together as women, as sisters, not to overthrow the world or come into power, but to protect each other and love each other.  To make this world a place we want to raise our daughters.

I cannot change the world, but I can change my world a little bit each day.  I pray that when my time to go elsewhere comes, that I somehow have made a difference.

Love,