The Power came out in 2016, but it’s only recently gained popularity. It won the Baileys Prize for women’s fiction and it’s to be turned into a tv series. It very nearly missed out on my book of the year. Had I not read Northern Lights, this surely would have won, but NL enthralled me even more than this did.
I was shopping in Sainsbury’s one day and I made my way to the books as I always do. I took one look at this book and it instantly went in my basket. You know sometimes you just look at a book and you know. You just know this is the book for me. It was like love at first sight.
As well as falling in love with the cover, I was persuaded to buy it by a quote on the front, which is probably the only time that’s happened.
‘Electrifying!’ Margaret Atwood
As I was fresh from reading The Handmaid’s Tale which I really really liked, I knew that if Atwood thought it was good then it must be.
I don’t normally like quotes on books. Sometimes they get in the way of really good cover art or ruin it entirely. When properly placed they can add to the cover. When I picked up Hot Milk in Sainsbury’s because I heard it was good, I struggled to find a blurb. I checked all over the book, the back the front, even inside. Not a sausage. If the book isn’t willing to even give an inkling of what the book is about then I have no interest in reading it.
The premise really fascinated me. We live in a world dominated by men so I longed to experience a world dominated by women.
The Power was finished in a day. I read it non-stop and was blown away when I finished. I felt more powerful just reading it. Like I suddenly had the power of electricity and I could shock anyone that pissed me off. I can see myself reading this again if I feel especially powerless and need to take charge of my life.
It felt a bit like a gender-bent prequel of The Handmaid’s Tale. Like this is what happened before we got to the stage with the handmaids and marthas and such.
What I liked most about the book is that it was written as historical fiction in a world that’s always been dominated by women. There are emails at the end of the book between the ‘author’ and his editor in which they discuss a world run by men. They suggest it would be more loving and peaceful, but as that’s the world we live in we can say that it’s not.
But would a world ruled by women be any better? In The Power some of the women go crazy with power and start abusing men. It made me think, were they exacting revenge on men for hundreds of years of oppression, or would we be just as bad as men? If women had the power from the beginning, would the world be any better? If I suddenly had the power, what would I do with it? I would like to think that I would use it for good, on men that deserved it.
What would you do with the power? Would you use it for good, or get back at everyone all the people who had wronged you?
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