This won feminist book of the year a few years back. It portrays a world where women take power and men are subjugated, and was very much in the mainstream. It certainly wasn't an erotica book. The overall tone was critical of this abuse of power by women and the message was very much that people in power regardless of gender tend to abuse it if allowed to. But I wondered what those of a submissive mindset or female supremacist views thought of it? I was discussing it with a female colleague and it was quite shocking in a good way to hear her casually talking about the themes like what would happen if men were stripped of the vote or if wives held all the wealth in a marriage. Does anyone who read it have any personal highlights from the book? Also I heard something very interesting which was partly why I raised this topic here. It's been picked up by Amazon to be made into a tv show by a female-led production company. And my cousin knows someone who works there. Apparently, in response to #metoo, they have chosen to dillute the original message of the book, that women can abuse power too. And instead they're going to make it more a female flag waving type rallying cry. Most of the men portrayed will be patriarchal bastards and so horrid to women that their subjugation can be presented as justified, and the authoritarian matriarchy portrayed as righteous in their defeat of men. My cousin's contact says they are very optimistic with the potential for this show to really take off in the current climate, and it's going to cause a lot of twitter rage. So something to watch out for!
I enjoyed it as a political satire, with eye-opening ideas about how the male-dominated world must look to women at times. Reminded me a fair bit of The Handmaid's Tale (in reverse), too. I read it because I really liked the movie Disobedience, based on an earlier novel by this author. That story was about a lesbian raised in an orthodox Jewish household (her father was a rabbi, too) who was outcast, but came back and tried to deal with the schism when her father died.