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The Power by Naomi Alderman Summary Study Guide

Detailed plot synopsis reviews of The Power


Plot Summary Part 4

She suddenly has a crisis of conscience and wonders if everything she has been doing, setting up the lesbian religion, is correct. There is no explanation why learning about the misdeeds of her stepmom would cause Allie to doubt herself. This is a major turn in the plot and Allie's motivations for having second thoughts are simply unexplained.


Allie starts to wonder if the voice in her head, which told her to set up the lesbian cult, is good or evil.


The voice in Allie's head gives a long philosophical speech that has very little meaning. Then the voice in her head leaves.


Oh, and Jos, who we thought was dead, isn't dead. She's just wounded. She recovers.


Allie asks lesbians from America to come fight with her in lesbian-land, and to build a Noah's Arc.

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Roxy goes to visit Bernie, her Dad, and it is sort of implied both of them as well as Darrell die, though that is not at all clear.


 


The end.


Yes, that is the end. Right in the middle of the story, without anything being resolved.


Hope you enjoyed the book!


Literary Criticism:


Young adult books are usually poorly written, and this one is no exception. Let's count some of the reasons:


1) There are too many characters floating around doing their own thing. We're following Roxy, Allie, Tunde, Jos's, and Margot's story in very short chapters, making for very choppy and disjointed reading which in the beginning is hard to keep track of.


2) Most of the characters are two dimensional. Most of the characters have little depth to them except Allie and Roxy. The people around them are two dimensional cutouts. The problem with writing what is essentially five separate stories is that there is no time to develop the secondary characters around each main characters, so they all are underdeveloped.


3) This book is feminist lesbian porn fantasy. I throw around the word "lesbian" in this book a lot even though not once does any character explicitly do any carpet munching. The book clearly focuses on women having close relationships (wink, wink) with each other and men being slaves.  The lesbian part is heavily implied. This far-left feminist fantasy makes me want to vomit. And yet, I am sure it will be a bestseller for young girls who are brainwashed into believing that women are superior to men.


4) Nothing happens in many of the plotlines. Allie's story obviously has things happening as she builds her cult, and so does Roxy's story as she fights rival drug dealers. But the other stories are vapid. Margot runs for governor and senator and... so what? Who cares? What is the result? Tunde as a reporter documents women taking over in different countries but in a brief, overview like a newspaper article. There is no focus on character interactions in Tunde's story, I might have well been reading an article in The New York Times. Jos's story was plenty boring, she didn't do anything worthy of mention until she had the zap battle with Darrell at the end.


5) A key plot point, who or what is the identity of the voice in Allie's head, is never explained. Is it mental illness? Another lifeform? We are never told.


6) The book focuses on the takeover of Moldova. Most people have never heard of Moldova and certainly couldn't find it on a map. The story might have been a little more relatable to some readers if it has focused on a place people had heard of, like Vermont.


7) The book ends abruptly without explaining what happens to Allie's lesbian cult.


 


This could have been a somewhat more dramatic story if it had focused exclusively on two or three main characters, all in the same place, and showed them interacting with other complex characters. Even Allie's story, which is the most meaty, felt shallow because all the characters around her (her followers) were superficial and vapid.


But really, the idea of a lesbian cult religion is laughable, and basically undermines the entire story. Aside from the ridiculous cult aspects of it, the book is stridently anti-male and panders to feminist fantasies of global domination. But, even worse, it's not even a well-written feminist fantasy.


Having said that, I'm sure this will get a million five star reviews on Amazon.com.

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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s).
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