There was so much potential and my disappointment is immeasurable. This book would have been better as a short story.

The premise for this book is brilliant. One day, 15 year old girls across the world awaken electrical powers. Suddenly, existing gender balance and roles are upended as girls everywhere learn to harness this power and protect themselves from abusive men- and assert themselves with confidence. There is a lot here about the role that physical strength plays in patriarchy and how by subverting it, women have a chance to build something new. The first few chapters follow this awakening and each chapter is almost its own short story that follows one girl/person/story. This was very well done and I wish that the book had ended after this first part.

Unfortunately, this book fails to deliver anything meaningful the longer I read on. The patriarchy does not solely rely on physical prowess to maintain itself just as white supremacy doesn't mean that white people are physically stronger than POC (duh). Instead, there are centuries of men, selfish men, power hungry men, greedy men, who have built a system where men benefit and hold most of the wealth and power. Just like how white people colonized the world because they were greedy with a superiority complex, stole everyone's resources, and snowballed their stolen land, resources, and power into a global system. Even if 15 year old girls suddenly awoke an electrical power and could share it with older women, they are still women raised and living in a patriarchy controlled by men. It would take generations before you'd see any collapse of the patriarchy- and if you did- the new world would take a different form and have different rules, stereotypes, cultures, and sexist beliefs. Minor spoiler, but essentially, what Alderman does is, within a handful of years, completely turn women into men. Women do in the book what men do now. A woman-led country makes up a set of laws restricting mens rights that are exactly the same restrictions that certain countries have or had for women (no driving, no being out without a chaperone). That feels lazy and also somehow racist??

There was also waAY too many examples of women committing r*pe, sexual violence, than I cared to read. As the user @Robalir said, this book feels like what current misogynist men think feminism is, or what they warn other men the world would look like if feminists get their way (a la, feminists hate men and want to kill all men and make us all femboys and etc etc). What's so interesting about the electrical power (or what could have been so interesting), is that it essentially means that women immediately have bodily autonomy and wouldn't be touched without their consent. But men still have the power. Men still have the money. Men still have the weapons. All they would need is a non-conductive long weapon like a big stick and they could knock out a young girl. The author relied a lot on water to help the women be stronger than the men, and then had the woman-led country be in a DRY ENVIRONMENT. Ma'am look at a map. The book would have been more realistic, and better, if it was women fighting against the existing patriarchy, getting killed for it, and inching closer to gender equality. There could be parts about solidarity!! Intersectionality!! The religion aspect would have fit in great still. But lbh here. If this happened in real life- men would pour money into dampeners or effective weapons.

At a certain point, it went from "oh this is an interesting thought experiment about physical power and existing power structures" to, "well this is overkill and uncomfortable in a way that doesn't actually challenge me or my ways of thinking". Ultimately, this is just another example of a liberal white feminist book that falls short of being what it is trying to be (Other examples being the End of Men and When Women Were Dragons). At least in this one, Alderman sticks to white women characters and doesn't look too hard at global politics (besides her questionable takes on the SWANA region) or non-binary people.

Edit: Also there are so many references to Israel, and in my attempts to find out if Alderman is a zionist or not I found this blog post and also a Jewish News article that explicitly calls her father a Zionist academic. The lady is not worth your money.