The Power Summary: Naomi Alderman’s Electrifying Dystopia
TL;DR: The Power at a Glance
A new organ appears in the collarbones of teenage girls across the globe.
It allows them to generate and discharge lethal electrical currents from their hands.
This single biological shift upends every existing power structure on Earth.
Naomi Alderman’s The Power follows four characters across a decade as they navigate a world where physical dominance has abruptly changed hands.
Roxy Monke, the daughter of a London crime boss, discovers her power during a violent attack.
Tunde Edo, a Nigerian journalist, captures the first viral footage of the phenomenon and documents its global spread.
Margot Cleary, an American politician, sees the power as a path to influence. Allie, an abused foster child, hears a voice that leads her to found a new religion.
Their stories intersect as the world descends into chaos and war.
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- Premise: Teenage girls develop the ability to generate lethal electrical currents, instantly shifting global gender dynamics.
- Structure: A frame narrative set 5,000 years in the future, with a historical novel recounting the “Cataclysm.”
- Four POVs: Roxy (crime syndicate), Tunde (journalist), Margot (politician), and Allie (religious leader).
- Key Themes: Power corrupts regardless of gender, religion as propaganda, and the erasure of history.
- Ending: A deliberate global cataclysm wipes out civilization, leading to a matriarchal future where male dominance is dismissed as fantasy.
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Characters In This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Allie / Mother Eve | An abused foster child who kills her foster father and becomes the founder of the New Church, preaching a female-centered religion. |
| Tunde Edo | A young Nigerian video journalist who films the early outbreaks of female electric power and becomes the world’s chief male media chronicler of the global revolution. |
| Roxy Monke | The illegitimate daughter of a London mob boss whose exceptionally potent skein propels her to leadership in the global illegal drug trade. |
| Margot Cleary | A pragmatic American Mayor, Governor, and U.S. Senator who establishes “NorthStar” camps to train girls in using their electric power for political and military gain. |
| Jocelyn (Jos) Feinburg-Cleary | Margot’s daughter, whose fluctuating and unstable electric power serves as the initial catalyst for Margot’s political career. |
| Bernie Monke | Head of the London Monke crime family and Roxy’s ruthless father. |
| Darrell Monke | Roxy’s half-brother who surgically steals Roxy’s skein to usurp her power within the family business. |
| Tatiana Moskalev | Former gymnast and wife of Moldova’s Finance Minister who seizes absolute rule over the matriarchal nation of Bessapara. |
| UrbanDox | An anonymous online male-rights influencer who incites men’s rights terrorism and anti-female resistance movements worldwide. |
| Neil Adam Armon | A member of the Men Writers Association in a far-future matriarchal society who writes a historical novel about the “Cataclysm.” |
| Naomi | A prominent female colleague in the far-future frame narrative who reviews Neil’s manuscript with condescension. |
The Power Book Summary
SPOILERS AHEAD. This section covers the entire plot, including the ending.
The novel opens with a framed correspondence between Neil Adam Armon, a member of the Men Writers Association in a far-future matriarchal society, and his female colleague Naomi.
Neil submits a historical manuscript depicting the “Cataclysm”—a global gender revolution that occurred roughly 5,000 years earlier. He seeks feedback on his speculative account of an ancient era when men held societal dominance.
The internal historical novel begins ten years prior to the Cataclysm. In various corners of the globe, adolescent girls begin discovering an innate physical ability to channel high-voltage electrostatic charges.
Medical researchers discover a newly evolved strip of striated muscle across female collarbones, dubbed the “skein.”
This organ was chemically triggered by Guardian Angel, a Second World War nerve-gas antidote distributed through global water supplies. The chemical accumulated genetically across generations until reaching critical mass in modern young women.
Four key central figures chronicle the global transformation over a decade. Roxy Monke is a fourteen-year-old London teenager and illegitimate daughter of crime boss Bernie Monke.
When mob rivals murder her mother, Roxy uses her exceptionally powerful skein to defend herself and kill the assassin.
She quickly carves out an influential position within her father’s criminal enterprise. She eventually manufactures and distributes Glitter, a purple illegal crystal drug that amplifies the skein’s electrical discharge.
Tunde Edo is a twenty-one-year-old Nigerian video journalist who captures early viral video footage of a girl defending herself in a supermarket. Hired as a roving reporter, Tunde travels across Saudi Arabia, Moldova, India, and the United States.
He documents female-led revolts, paramilitary uprising groups, and the rapid collapse of patriarchal governments. Margot Cleary is an ambitious American politician and Mayor who discovers her own latent power alongside her teenage daughter, Jocelyn.
Recognizing the political opportunity, Margot advocates for state-sanctioned “NorthStar” training camps designed to teach girls how to control and weaponize their electricity. She ultimately rides a wave of fear and public support to become Governor and later U.S. Senator.
Allie is an abused American foster child who hears an internal “voice” guiding her actions. After using her electricity to kill her abusive foster father, Allie flees to a secluded coastal convent.
There, she rebrands herself as Mother Eve, founding the New Church, a radical theological movement that reinterprets scripture to declare God as female (“God the Mother”) and preaches women’s divine right to rule.
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As the decade progresses, female empowerment transforms into systemic dominance and violence. In Bessapara, a newly declared matriarchal state formed out of Moldovan border regions, Tatiana Moskalev seizes power. She is backed by Mother Eve’s religious movement and Roxy’s drug cartel.
Men face curfews, stripped civil rights, physical violence, and sexual slavery. In response, male supremacist movements led by online figures like UrbanDox launch violent terrorist bombings.
Roxy’s half-brother, Darrell, steals Roxy’s skein through a surgical transplant, leaving Roxy powerless. Darrell attempts to run the Glitter drug syndicate, but his factory workers turn on him, mutilate him, and rip the stolen skein from his chest.
Meanwhile, Allie orchestrates Tatiana’s death, seizing political control of Bessapara. Realizing that society will continually attempt to revert to male dominance so long as old civilizational structures remain, Allie and Margot align to deliberately escalate regional conflict into a global war of nuclear and chemical annihilation.
The catastrophic conflict—the “Cataclysm”—wipes out modern technology, destroys industrial infrastructure, and kills off the vast majority of the male population. Five thousand years later, society has rebuilt as an established matriarchy where men are subjugated.
Neil’s historical manuscript exploring an ancient “patriarchy” is dismissed by Naomi as speculative male-fantasy fiction.
She suggests that if Neil wants his book taken seriously by publishers, he should publish it under a female pseudonym.
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Beneath the Surface: What the Novel Explores
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
|---|---|
| The Corruption of Power | Physical dominance dictates societal hierarchy. When women gain the skein, they replicate the same systems of oppression, violence, and subjugation that men previously enforced. |
| Religion as Propaganda | Mother Eve’s New Church reinterprets scripture to declare God as female, using divine authority to legitimize female rule and justify violence. |
| Media and Historical Erasure | Tunde’s investigative journalism is stolen and published under a female colleague’s name. In the far-future matriarchy, his accounts of male subjugation are dismissed as fantasy. |
| The Cycle of Abuse | Former victims of systemic oppression become executioners once handed physical superiority. The novel depicts this pattern across multiple characters and nations. |
| Gender as Constructed Hierarchy | The frame narrative suggests that what any society considers “natural” about gender roles is determined by who holds physical power at a given moment. |
Books Like The Power
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood — A dystopian novel exploring gender inequality, religious extremism, and systemic bodily control. Alderman cites it as a primary influence, and both use framed historical endings set long after the main crisis.
- Vox by Christina Dalcher — A high-concept dystopian thriller where political power structures manipulate technology and law to subjugate women. Shares the focus on state control over female bodies and autonomy.
- When She Woke by Hillary Jordan — Explores the intersection of female physical autonomy, state surveillance, and fundamentalist religious dogma within a speculative dystopian society.
- The Grace Year by Kim Liggett — Focuses on societal terror surrounding young women’s perceived power. Examines how patriarchal elements attempt to isolate, control, and neutralize female capability.
- The Female Man by Joanna Russ — A feminist science fiction novel featuring parallel worlds with different gender dynamics. Shares the exploration of how power structures shape gender roles and societal norms.
- Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy — A time-travel narrative contrasting a dystopian present with a feminist utopian future. Explores themes of gender, power, and social organization.
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Book Details
- Genre & Subgenre: Speculative Fiction / Dystopian Fiction / Feminist Science Fiction / Satirical Alternate History
- Core Narrative Tropes: Gender Reversal, World-Reset Cataclysm, Messianic Cult, Corrupting Influence of Power, Framing Epistolary Narrative
- Tone & Atmosphere: Gritty, satirical, cinematic, provocative, and multi-perspective
- Primary Conflict: The global political, social, and military clash resulting from women acquiring physical dominance over men
- Pacing Style: A multi-POV countdown structure that builds momentum across ten years leading to global civilization collapse
- ISBN: 978-0316547611
- Pages: 400
- Book Structure: Frame narrative with opening and closing letters. Core novel divided into a 10-year countdown across 9 temporal sections containing 32 named POV chapter-sections. Post-narrative elements include Apocrypha and Epilogue Letters.
Quotes from The Power
“The shape of power is always the same; it is the shape of a tree. Root to tip, central trunk branching and re-branching, spreading wider in ever-thinner, searching fingers.”
“She cuppeth the lightning in her hand. She commandeth it to strike.”
“You can’t shoot all the women, Daniel.”
“The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.”
“God is neither woman nor man but both these things. But now She has come to show us a new side to Her face, one we have ignored for too long.”
“We are on the same side; we’re on the side of all men.”
“Why did they do it, Nina and Darrell?” And the other answers, “Because they could.” That is the only answer there ever is.
Naomi Alderman: Author of The Power
Naomi Alderman is a British novelist and professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.
She studied at Oxford University and was mentored by Margaret Atwood through the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.
Her other novels include Disobedience, The Liars’ Gospel, and The Future. The Power won the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR.
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