NP: Naomi Alderman's The Power

[John Bailey]

I'm a third of the way into this glorious page-turner called The Power
and was pleased to note that writer Naomi Alderman conversed with
Ursula Le Guin while developing it (Margaret Atwood and Karen Joy
Fowler, too).
It begins with 15-year-old girls the world over discovering they have
this ability to cause terrible pain and even death, and they quickly
start teaching older women the power as well. In very short order the
power dynamics of sex and gender are completely upended and the book
very smartly teases out the implications. The section in which women
storm the streets of Riyadh kept me reading late into the evevning
last night and the book overall is that wonderful mix of genre
satisfaction and fine intellectual playfulness.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l