The Power

This intriguing dystopian fiction of inverted gender dynamics is the 2017's winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Women suddenly develop the power to produce and discharge electricity and suddenly they are the gender in power. The oppressed become the oppressors. Shocking fictional tales of treatment of men become the more shocking when you remember that the exact thing happens to some women in our world today. The story is told from several perspectives and spans 10 years - from the discovery of the new powers to the inevitable culmination that such a shocking disruption of culture can bring. What the book is trying to do (and achieves) is stronger than the actual story. I want to like it more than I actually do, as I was intrigued by the characters yet never fully warmed up to them.