The Power

Using a narrative frame like the one employed here is always tricky. A frame represents the writer’s decision to move the reader one step back from the unfolding action. It introduces the possibility of irony as the reader judges the reliability of the narrator based solely on the story and how it is told.

As engrossing as the unfolding story becomes, the frame is never irrelevant. The exchange of letters between a struggling historian and an autocratic editor begins and ends the novel. Thus, the rise of women after the discovery of the skein is actually the secondary story. The four characters that center that novel are the creations of one historian who relies on scant archival records to tell a hybrid fictional work. He tells his editor he will look into the social, economic, religious, and political implications of what his contemporary readers take for granted: women have power.

The lines between history, mythology, and fiction are most blurred with regard to the character of Mother Eve. She and her mystical writings have secured a significant place in the contemporary culture. Armon apologizes to his editor for his daring recreation of the lost years of Mother Eve. He knows it borders on sacrilege to suggest, as he does, that Mother Eve was an abused orphan girl who heard voices in her head. Thus, his novel begins.

In recording events around the day that has come to be called The Day of the Girls, “Ten Years to Go” captures the initial reactions to the skein. The four characters are introduced not so much as individuals with psychological depth and behavioral nuances. Rather, in the hands of historian Neil Adam Armon, they are more representatives of particular aspects of the skein. Roxy, the daughter of a powerful crime lord, represents the impact of the skein on crime, traditionally a seamy underground world long dominated by men. The orphan Allie, who hears the compelling voice in her head long before she finds her way to the convent in South Carolina, represents the impact of the skein on religion. Religion—particularly Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism—has long been defined by male-dominated power structures that hold women as second-class citizens. Within this institutional vision, women see male-centric religion as right, fitting, and even inevitable. Margot Cleary, meanwhile, a savvy politician, has butted up against the glass ceiling because of her gender. She recognizes the men around her as ineffectual dolts who nevertheless have opportunities she does not. In Tunde, Armon provides a male perspective. He will serve as an example of men suddenly removed from power. At first, Tunde acts as witness. As an aspiring journalist, he reaches for his video device and records girls testing their newly discovered powers. His social media posts become an international craze, as the initial demonstrations of the skein are intriguing, even entertaining.

This first section emphasizes the helplessness of the women. Women here all clearly victims of men. Roxy hides in a closet listening to her mother being raped and killed; Allie bites her lip as her foster father rapes her; Margot is frustrated by men unwilling to recognize her potential as a politician; and the girl resists Tunde as he tries to engage in playful sex at his whim. Each of these women experiences the frustrations, anxieties, and dangers of real-world, real-time helplessness. They are powerless and vulnerable. Inevitably, then, this first chapter creates sympathy for women as wronged, put upon, and used. Initially, the skein is seen as a long overdue compensation, a chance at last for wronged women to fight back.

When each woman fights back, the sudden jolt produces an upbeat feeling that will make many readers think, “Yes, at last, it’s about time.” Only on second reading do these displays of the skein seem unsettling. Nothing better suggests this foreboding than when Margot Cleary has her daughter give her a jolt. Unlike Roxy and Allie, Margot is a grown woman whose political experience gives new dimension to what for teenage girls is an entertaining kind of trick. The skein, Margot sees, inflicts real pain. Armon writes, “Only pain can bring such attention to the body; this is how Margot notices the answering echo in her chest” (27). For Margot, the skein will allow women to get in touch with their bodies and to discover unprecedented power. Women, Margot sees, do not need weapons really nor men at all: “[S]he was enough all by herself” (27). This moment begins the novel’s movement toward the imbalance between the sexes that will prove disastrous.