The Power

by Naomi Alderman

the aquatic-ape hypothesis; that we are naked of hair because we came from the oceans, not the jungle, where once we terrified the deeps like the electric eel, the electric ray.

It’s this exact moment, yes, when any secret you have from your parents becomes precious. Anything you know that they’ve never heard of.

That’s not all electric eels can do. They can “remote control” the muscles in their prey by interfering with the electric signals in the brain. They can make those fish swim straight into their mouths if they want to.

She listens at doors and around corners. She has always had this habit. A child in danger must learn to pay more attention to the adults than a child loved and cherished.

a few people always look at anything and go, “Where’s the profit in this, and where’s the advantage?”

This is how it works. The younger women can wake it up in the older ones; but from now on all women will have it.

Did you know, in the oldest texts, that the God of the Israelites had a sister, Anath, a teenage girl? Did you know that she was the warrior, that she was invincible, that she spoke with the lightning, that in the oldest texts she killed her own father and took his place?

There are nasty names now for a girl who can’t or won’t defend herself. Blanket, they call them, and flat battery. Those are the least offensive ones. Gimp. Flick. Nesh. Pzit.

Margot suddenly remembers how much she would have liked to have a secret to share with her mother. How the yearning for it made even the grubby rituals of elasticated bands for sanitary towels or carefully concealed leg razors seem faintly lovable or even glamorous.

It’s Margot’s name, when you come right down to it, on the official documentation saying that this testing equipment will help save lives. She tells herself, as she signs the forms, that it’s probably true. Any woman who can’t stop herself from discharging under this mild pressure is a danger to herself, a danger, yes, to society.

Boys dressing as girls to seem more powerful. Girls dressing as boys to shake off the meaning of the power, or to leap on the unsuspecting, wolf in sheep’s clothing.

It doesn’t matter that she shouldn’t, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.

Eve says, “Then God will show us what She wants of us.” And this “She” is a new teaching, and very shocking. But they understand it, each of them. They have been waiting to hear this good news.

It is theorized that Guardian Angel merely amplified a set of genetic possibilities already present in the human genome. It is possible that, in the past, more women possessed a skein but that this tendency was bred out over time.

“The day someone else knows where your money’s going better than you do, that’s the day you’ve lost.”

Not all girls have it; contrary to early thinking, about five girls in a thousand are born without.

More than 50 percent of the time, if a skein is severed, the person dies. They don’t know why; it’s not a vital organ. The current theory is that it is connected to the electrical rhythm of the heart and its removal disrupts something there.

After the end of the Second World War, when the peaceniks and do-gooders had the upper hand, they decided to put this stuff in the water. They thought men had had their turn and we’d messed it up—two world wars in two generations.

They’re running out of family. He wants to be family to her.

Sometimes a bloke is better at that than a woman—less threatening; they’re better at diplomacy.

we institute today this law, that each man in the country must have his passport and other official documents stamped with the name of his female guardian. Her written permission will be needed for any journey he undertakes.

Roxy knows the look on her face; she’s seen it before. The kind of face her dad would have said was a bad bet for business. Never keep someone on a job who likes it too much. She knows when she sees the single flash of that gleeful and hungry face that they’re not here to raid for what they can find. They’re not here for anything that can be given.

One of them says, “Why did they do it, Nina and Darrell?” And the other answers, “Because they could.” That is the only answer there ever is.

with the slow intensity with which a three-year-old examines each leaf and stone and splinter.

Gender is a shell game. What is a man? Whatever a woman isn’t. What is a woman? Whatever a man is not. Tap on it and it’s hollow. Look under the shells: it’s not there.

Neil, I know this might be very distasteful to you, but have you considered publishing this book under a woman’s name?