Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Power (A Novel)
Author: Naomi Alderman
Narrated By: Adjoa Andoh
Naomi Alderman (Author, British writer, novelist, producer for TV and movies.)
This is a marginally interesting novel about gender inequality. Naomi Alderman begins her story with two male thugs who murder the heroine’s mother and leave a daughter for dead. The young daughter defends her mother with a deadly electrical power that has laid dormant in her life but becomes energized by a force of will. The daughter attacks the overpowering thugs but is unable to save her mother. Alderman’s idea is to reverse the traditional roles of men and women by giving women a power greater than the physical strength advantages of men. This latent power is alleged to have been repressed and is miraculously discovered and cultivated in this young girl by her mother.
The reason I find Alderman’s story tiresome is because she creates the same problem for women that exists in this largely patriarchal world. Great men like great women that wield inordinate power over others are almost always bad because as Lord Acton noted “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
The influence of raw power is diminished by social change, not by leaders’ gender, or the risk of superior weapons of mass destruction.
Raw power is not a gender problem. WMD as a raw power in the hands of a male or female leader are a societal problem. Unequal opportunity and inequality of race, ethnicity, and the sexes are societies’ problems. This foolish story is a waste of reader/listener’s time because it fails to address the reality of social inequality with a solution that can make a difference.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 