The Power by Naomi Alderman

In the not-too-distant future, young girls around the world develop the ability to send electricity through their fingertips. This charge can be as light as a static electric shock or strong enough to kill. It is soon discovered that girls can awaken this power in older women, and the world changes almost overnight. The Power follows the stories of four people living through this tumultuous time. Roxy, the daughter of an English mob boss, uses her power to fend off home invaders and soon becomes embroiled in the family business; Allie, an American teen, fights off her abusive foster father and runs away to a convent; Margot, an American politician, must hide her power as new laws make it illegal for women with the power to work in government; and Tunde a Nigerian journalist who travels the world recording and reporting on what he sees. As scientists look for answers, governments try to maintain the status quo and women take to the streets to overturn slights both personal and institutional. Vigilante groups rise up, riots break out around the globe, and women take by force the power that has often been denied and used against them.

The Power provokes its readers to question stereotypes, gender dynamics, and what it means to have power. But don’t expect Alderman to hand out easy answers; she is clearly more interested in sparking conversation and self-reflection, which she accomplishes with aplomb. This is a book that begs to be devoured, passed on to friends and acquaintances, and dissected and discussed at length.

-Portia Kapraun

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Coming November 15th 2016!

Spanning over twenty years and two continents, Zadie Smith’s new novel Swing Time is a charming account of one woman’s coming-of-age during those bygone heydays when video was still killing the radio star.  Smith’s unnamed narrator, a mixed-race child of a striving Jamaican mother and a peaceable, hard-working white father, lives in one of London’s many low-end housing units.  She meets Tracey, her first and only best friend, during dance class at their community center.  The two are bonded over the shared experience of being poor and “brown” in a class that is predominantly white, but an increasing gap in talent and two very different home lives begin to draw the girls apart before puberty even finishes its ravages. As the two stumble towards womanhood, the differences become more stark and divisive, and their friendship is ultimately fractured by what the storyteller perceives as Tracey’s final, unforgiveable act. The past and present simultaneously unfold through the narrator’s musings on her childhood, college days, and finally, her career as an assistant to the long-time pop idol Aimee.  Demanding and charismatic, Aimee requires total submission.  The protagonist’s success in this role is telling, and of a piece with her tendency to allow dominant women to manipulate her life: her mother, Tracey, and Aimee.  She seems content in her subservience until she begins to question the true cost of “privilege” during her time overseeing Aimee’s project, a school for girls, in Africa. This book will appeal to lovers of character-driven fiction because, despite the author’s hints at past hurts and scandal (doled out with a sweet slowness), it’s not the suspense that keeps you coming back. Swing Time is much like a favorite friend whose visits you anticipate, not because of their exploits, but because you simply enjoy their company.

-Jennifer Wilson