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The Power cover art

The Power

By: Naomi Alderman
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Naomi Alderman, Thomas Judd, Emma Fenney, Phil Nightingale
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Publisher's Summary

2017 Winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction

'She throws her head back and pushes her chest forward and lets go a huge blast right into the centre of his body. The rivulets and streams of red scarring run across his chest and up around his throat. She'd put her hand on his heart and stopped him dead.'

Suddenly - tomorrow or the day after - girls find that with a flick of their fingers, they can inflict agonizing pain and even death.

With this single twist, the four lives at the heart of Naomi Alderman's extraordinary, visceral novel are utterly transformed, and we look at the world in an entirely new light. What if the power to hurt were in women's hands?

©2016 Naomi Alderman (P)2016 Audible, Ltd

Critic Reviews

"Electrifying! Shocking! Will knock your socks off! Then you'll think twice, about everything." (Margaret Atwood)
" The Power is a subtly funny, lyrical and utterly subversive vision of an impossible future. As all the best visionaries do, Alderman shines a penetrating and yet merciful light on to our present and the so many cruelties in which we may be complicit." (A. L. Kennedy)
"Alderman is a fluent and powerful writer." ( Sunday Times)

What listeners say about The Power

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  • Overall
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic thought experiment!

Great book, very simple concept well executed. The book takes a simple and obvious concept; that the physical power and strength men have that allows them to dominate women is the reason they have dominated governments, militaries and religion through the ages. It then imagines a future where women have the power to hurt and dominate men in the same way and how that would transform society. This future is not a feminist ideal of equality and peace but rather a dystopia of inequality and violence between the genders which is horrifying for its cruelty and injustice but much more viscerally for the way it holds up a mirror to the horrors of our current world.
Oh and the voice performances on the audiobook are entertaining and energetic.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great story

Nice job of turning gender bias and inequality on it's head. Captivating storyline and well narrated. I'd recommend this to anyone.

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10 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Next Big Thing

I loved this book. Genuinely gutted when it ended. The characters were fascinating, the premise was well thought through, the story was performed with flair and drama. It felt more like a play than an audio book. Totally recommend.

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9 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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Great concept but lacked depth

Some great passages, and a great exploration of the concept. Would love to hear what happened next. Some chapters were a little tacky or too dramatic, particularly conversations.
The big downer was the accents - they were pretty bad and detracted from storyline.

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5 people found this helpful

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Remarkable

A most remarkable and insightful exploration of power, gender, and what it might mean to be human. The intersection between writen history and gender is explored, in terms of its limiting effects. This is a marvelous book, and every woman and man should read it!

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4 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Just couldn't get into it...

I wanted to like this book but I just couldn't quite get into it. The concept was great but the story itself was kind of average. Personally, the narrator is what killed this book for me in the end; she was more like a newsreader not a story teller.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Narration produced a gag reflex

Great concept and reasonably well executed. I felt that the main story sort of just petered out in the end.
But I reserve my main criticism for the woeful job done on the narration: frequently overwrought, at times verging on hysterical, it was as though the narrator thought it was all about her and her (very mediocre) acting skills rather than the story itself. And the accents - particularly the Russian/ Moldovan accents- were nothing short of appalling.

In all, the narration really distracted and detracted from the story itself, a great shame as the story was really rather interesting.

my recommendation: Read it, but avoid the audiobook.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting Concept re a change of Power

I liked the concept of the book, and a great way of looking at the idea of 'if women suddenly become more powerful than men' seen through the eyes of gender and race.
Great narration, felt more like a radio play at times.
Explores inequality through the concept of power.
I initially struggled to engage with the book, as it was hard to dip in and out of, I then started to listen on a long car trip and found it most enjoyable.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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Fzzzt.

A great concept but the execution is woeful. The accents of the narrator are terrible - Southern American, African and Russian. Just read the story please. The ending is messy and rushed. The post script goes on far too long. The whole thing needed to be thought out better.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

I wish there was a way to un-listen this book

A story written by a 6 year old author who mixed all the known dystopian ingredients while adding the gender debate to spice it up!

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