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Chargement... The Power (édition 2017)par Naomi Alderman (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreThe Power par Naomi Alderman
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I love the premise of this book—5 stars for the idea. I don’t love the execution. The way the author jumps around between characters leaves something to be desired; I feel this could’ve been done in a way that still leaves the reader invested in the outcome for each individual, but it didn’t happen for me. Also, personal preference, the violence and SA in particular turned the story sour pretty quickly. I get it as a plot device, but it was a lot.
Alderman [...] imagines our present moment — with our history, our wars, our gender politics — complicated by the sudden widespread manifestation of “electrostatic power” in women. Young girls wake up one morning with the ability to generate powerful electric shocks from their bodies, having developed specialized muscles — called “skeins” — at their collarbones, which they can flex to deliver anything from mild stings to lethal jolts of electricity. The power varies in its intensity but is almost uniform in its distribution to anyone with two X chromosomes, and women vary in their capacity to control and direct it, but the result is still a vast, systemic upheaval of gender dynamics across the globe. Alderman has written our era's "Handmaid's Tale," and, like Margaret Atwood's classic, "The Power" is one of those essential feminist works that terrifies and illuminates, enrages and encourages. The novel is constructed as a big, brash, page-turning, drug-running, globetrotting thriller, one in which people say things such as: “It’s only you I’ve blimmin come to find, isn’t it?” and “You wanna stand with me? Or you wanna stand against me?” But it’s also endlessly nuanced and thought-provoking, combining elegantly efficient prose with beautiful meditations on the metaphysics of power, possibility and change. Appartient à la série éditorialePrix et récompensesDistinctionsListes notables
Aux quatre coins du monde, les femmes découvrent qu'elles détiennent le « pouvoir ». Du bout des doigts, elles peuvent infliger une douleur fulgurante – et même la mort. Soudain, les hommes comprennent qu'ils deviennent le « sexe faible ». Mais jusqu'où iront les femmes pour imposer ce nouvel ordre ?Un roman d'une énergie fascinante. Une écrivaine puissante, qui n'amble pas avoir peur de grand-chose. Raphaëlle Leyris, Le Monde des livres.Ce troublant commentaire social, rythmé comme un thriller, est avant tout une réflexion sur la manière dont le pouvoir corrompt les individus. Amandine Schmitt, L'Obs.Réjouissant et captivant. Éric Libiot, L'Express.Un récit à la fois électrique et troublant. Sophie Pujas, Le Point.Baileys Women's Prize.Traduit de l'anglais par Christine Barbaste. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Alderman explores this new world through four people: Roxy, the daughter of a British crime boss, whose Power is exceptionally strong; Allie, an abused teenage foster child who turns the voice she hears in her head into a new religious movement; Margot, an ambitious politician; and Tunde, the only man, a Nigerian journalist chronicling the changes in the world since the Power emerged. There's chaos, initially. No one knows what to do, what it all means. But things change quickly, all the way from men needing to learn how to protect themselves against violent women, to women dominating the military, to women toppling oppressive regimes. Eventually the storylines all converge in a fictional Eastern bloc country, now ruled by a woman as a dictator, that's the center of a proxy war between the powers-that-be in the old world against those of the new.
This is a fascinating idea to consider, how the world would change if something like what Alderman describes happens. And I think the failure of the book (as you can see from my rating, I didn't think it was especially good) comes from trying to capture too much. Roxy and Allie's perspectives dominate the book, and while I understand why Alderman included Tunde, to give an idea of what it would be like to come of age as a man in the world as we know it and live through the way it changes, I think Margot's storyline was weak and could have been cut to develop Tunde better. There's some good characterization going on with Roxy and Allie (particularly the former), but it's inconsistent, and it seems almost like Alderman was so excited to really dig into what she thought might happen in her new world that she didn't really think about the people who would be living in it beyond broad strokes.
That being said, it's an effective exploration of the way that power corrupts. At first, many women lash out at men in revenge for the ways they themselves have been hurt, which is an understandable reaction. The reader expects it to settle down after a while, after some wrongs have been righted, but it doesn't. Women begin to objectify the men around them, use their superior position to commit emotional and physical violence against them. While it's easy, living in the world we do live in, to imagine that women would wield large-scale power more effectively and humanely than men have and do, Alderman punches through that fantasy by remembering that women are, after all, human, and human beings do not have a great track record when it comes to the way we mistreat each other when given the opportunity to do so. I do think that as a novel, there are significant weaknesses, but as a piece to engage with intellectually, there's a lot to think and talk about here. ( )