My rating: 9/10 Summary: The world dynamic undergoes a massive shift as women gain the power to shoot electrical pulses at will and become able to seriously injure or kill men within seconds. It's framed as a manuscript sent from a male writer to a female writer 5000 years after the events of the book occur. It's been several months since I've written down any of my thoughts on books, and to be quite honest, I haven't been reading as much as I'd like to. But I started The Power on a whim after grabbing it from the bestseller shelf at the library and I found myself reading it throughout the day, finishing it in the afternoon. It wasn't the kind of book that made my heart pound and my skin sweaty and pulled me in with frenetic, addictive, hauntingly magneticism (like Manhattan Beach did) but rather a book that wowed with its content rather than language, structure, and dialogue. It is the type of work that frightened and awed me as a holistic piece rather than down to the level of the line. The novel, which stands at around 400 pages (after a brief Google search, my suspicions have been confirmed; it is actually exactly 400 pages), revolves around four characters: Roxy Monke, the daughter of a London crime family; Allie, a runaway who becomes a religious icon; Tunde, a journalist who documents the arc of the world's movements; and Margot Cleary, a state representative. I have so, so many thoughts on this book, but almost all of them are spoiler-heavy, so I will end the non-spoiler section here and jump right in before I forget any of them. [WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW.] 1. The characters are so simple. I cannot decide how to feel about this, at all. I think that one of the biggest virtues of this book (again, I cannot stress hard enough that when I say "biggest virtue", or any kind of praise/criticism, I mean it only in terms of my personal taste and I am by no means an expert speaking for the whole literary community) is its simplicity, actually. It's devastatingly simple and clear, whereas with other books that are in the same genre of making profound social commentary through speculative worlds with surrealist and/or sci-fi elements to them are frequently riddled with intense symbolism and inexplicable actions and chaotic fluctuations in character development. This book cuts all of that away. Every action of every character is targeted and obvious, and Ms. Alderman lays it out cleanly for us. The subtle explanation of how Margot is lying to Jos about Jos's boyfriend is the example that comes to mind. It's expertly done but really doesn't require much brainpower on the part of the reader.
Roxy, Allie, Tunde, and Margot. I don't know if I can feel their three-dimensionality. So far, I can still characterize them in words, which generally for me means that their characterization is not complete enough, because when a character grows into completion, they become less of a quantifiable figure and more of a vibe. And when I see this vibe on the page, in a line of dialogue, I can recognize who it is from an inexplicable aura I get, rather than factual knowledge or idiosyncrasy recognition. All the characters in East of Eden represent a vibe for me. But the characters in The Power seem to fit into specific categories, with certain variations. The one character who I find most intriguing and provokes further thought is Allie. I did not expect her to remain as Mother Eve throughout the entire book and then carry on that image for the rest of time. Her spunky and moral personality at the beginning convinced me Mother Eve was a momentary persona to propel her through hard times and to provide hope for other girls, and she'd eventually put Eve to bed, tell the truth, confess her sins, and become the better person and leader for it. Yet looking back, I can detect the hard undercurrent of embittered resolve from the beginning, from her murder of Mr. Montgomery-Taylor. This conflicts with her actions, which center around healing and soothing complications of the electrical frameworks in other people's bodies. And yet she's hard and knife-like enough to cut through the tangled organic stuff of politics and violence, shear straight through to become the new president of Bessapara, and then rise up as a stone statue and live through eternity. 2. The meta-ness. (Starting here I'm writing from two weeks after I finished the book, so it might be a little distanced.) The story within the story itself was amazing, but what gave me shivers was the outer frame of two writers emailing back and forth. The lines about how the male soldiers seemed more like a sexual fetish than a real idea, or how a world ruled by a patriarch would be so much more gentle and kind than the one they lived in currently, and finally, the ending line of Have you considered publishing this under a woman's name? were the ones that remained in my head for days after finishing. I think this book does a great job of picking up on the nuances of gender inequality. A lot of works centering on the theme flesh out the bigger patterns of violence and power and weakness perception but fail to show the more subtle ideas. 3. Concept is simple but execution is great. I've noticed recently that in most books I read, the concepts aren't necessarily high-level or genius, but the execution is still able to fully immerse the reader in the world to the point where they can't overexamine the simplicity of the narrative. There's hardly a scientific aspect incorporated into the story, despite its physiological root (the skein being part of the body). I used to think that stories needed to be extremely complex and the premise really psychologically stimulating in order for them to be thought-provoking as a whole, but I don't think that's true anymore. 4. Redefining feminism. I've read so many tweets and posts online about women being superior to men and how the world would be a better place if it was run by women, and I'll admit, I was starting to feel uncomfortable about the double standard and how easily people accepted the snappy, humorous one-liners without truly stopping to think about what they signified. I think the Internet should remember that when a radical feminist defends her aggressively misandrist Tumblr post with "it was just a joke," that is exactly how men once defended their misogynistic locker-room talk about women half a century ago, when the patriarch still held strong. I do love a witty comeback to a vulgar comment about a woman's body as much as the next person, and people deserve to have their outlets about this male-dominated and cruel world we live in. But it's just something to keep in mind as call-out culture progressively grows stronger. In any case, I love this story because it calls out this phenomenon without offering any criticism or judgement. It just tears away the clutter of other societal factors and the double standard and the need to conform with call-out culture and shows us what might happen. I'm so glad someone wrote this, because it needed to be said. We are not perfect. Women are people and are equally as susceptible to the throes of venom and greed and violence as other humans and men are. Power is power, like Cersei Lannister once said. My thoughts fizzled out after #1 because I waited too long to write the rest, oof. Anyways, I really really enjoyed this book!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
ABOUT MENorCal student who likes books. Archives
November 2018
Categories |