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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Drug use, Infertility, Miscarriage, Medical content, Abortion, Pregnancy
3.5. Dystopian to the extent that it’s futuristic and reverted to legalized pro-life. Feminist in that all the main characters are women and mostly disagree with the law. Locale - obscure, unattractive fishing village in Oregon.
Somewhat satisfying in that most of the stories are wrapped up, though not necessarily happily but also not twisty.
Somewhat satisfying in that most of the stories are wrapped up, though not necessarily happily but also not twisty.
Both well written and with an interesting premise I had a hard time enjoying this book. I wanted to know what happened, I ached for the characters, & I HATED so many of the people they encountered. The book got under my skin, reading was an uncomfortable, tense experiance. I didn't want to stop reading, but I dreaded what traps & pitfalls might lay ahead. In the end I loved it and would recommend it to others, but now, I'm reading something light.
Review written for The Brooklyn Rail:
At first glance, Red Clocks by Leni Zumas sounds like a futuristic, dystopian, science fiction thriller in the vein of Children of Men or The Handmaid’s Tale. The Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dubbed the “Personhood Amendment,” grants life, liberty, and property rights to every human embryo. Abortion is illegal. Since an embryo can’t give its consent to be moved, so is in-vitro fertilization. Performing an abortion or aiding one in any way means being an accomplice to murder. To the north, Canada has enacted what’s called the Pink Wall. Any woman attempting to sneak into Canada for an abortion is turned over to U.S. prosecutors.
With a backdrop of such fertile material, Zumas could have told any number of large, grand-scale stories. But this is not the story of a small group of freedom fighters taking on a shadowy, overreaching government. In fact, the men in power here remain unseen and faceless. Outside of the casual reference to “a fetus-loving new president,” we know next to nothing about them. Instead, the book explores the reverberations of these policies in the lives of four women in a small Oregon fishing town. It doesn’t take long to see that this world isn’t science fiction at all. We’re perilously close to it becoming a reality in our own.
In the narration, Zumas refers to none of her characters by name. Each character is defined either by her role in society or her relationship to someone else. There’s “The Biographer,” Roberta Stephens, a single, middle-aged high school teacher working on a biography of a nineteenth century female Arctic explorer. “Ro” is desperate for a child, but nothing she’s tried so far has worked. She’s running out of time, as soon a new law called “Every Child Needs Two” goes into effect. Under it, unmarried people will be legally prohibited from adopting children.
One of Ro’s students, Mattie, referred to as “The Daughter,” becomes pregnant by a boy in her class. She quietly carries the fear and shame of her pregnancy, afraid to tell her parents and unsure of where to turn. “The Wife,” Susan Korsmo, is stuck in a dead-end, lifeless marriage to one of Ro’s teacher colleagues. Susan has two children of her own, but isn’t sure if she’s thankful of that fact. She wants to leave her marriage but lacks the courage to do so.
Then there’s “The Mender,” Gin Percival, a woman who lives on the outskirts of society. Seen as a witch, Gin helps many women in the town with various medical remedies, abortion being one of them. The fifth major presence is Eivør Minervudottir, the polar hydrologist who is the subject of Ro’s book. Eivør’s story is told through short excerpts between chapters. All five of these women share some connection. Over the course of the novel, these connections are revealed and transformed in surprising ways.
The book is marvelously written. Each character is vivid, and Zumas captures their individual patterns of thought and behavior remarkably. Of them all, The Mender feels the most unnecessary. Her story takes an unexpected turn in the third act. Without it, the book essentially remains the same. Instead, it would have been interesting to see the viewpoint of a female pro-life advocate. I wondered how someone who ardently supports the government would react to some of the characters’ situations. That’s a layer left curiously unexplored. The story is also firmly rooted in place. The town of Newville, Oregon becomes almost like a sixth character, with its beached whales and “the air cold and gritty with salt.”
Red Clocks is a searing and irresistible look at the ways in which women are subjugated, both visible and invisible. Time and again, Roberta brushes up against the stigma of single parenting. She often questions her relentless quest to have a child, wondering if she’s doing it for her own selfish benefit. But that’s a question a couple rarely needs to answer. The social pressure to be a certain kind of parent exists even in a world where the Every Child Needs Two Law doesn’t exist.
Red Clocks shows that when it comes to women’s bodies, and what they choose to do with them, we’re still a long way off from actual freedom. Every day, it feels like the needle is moving, for better or worse. Red Clocks portrays one way that needle might swing, and the reality is not as inconceivable as it first sounds.
At first glance, Red Clocks by Leni Zumas sounds like a futuristic, dystopian, science fiction thriller in the vein of Children of Men or The Handmaid’s Tale. The Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dubbed the “Personhood Amendment,” grants life, liberty, and property rights to every human embryo. Abortion is illegal. Since an embryo can’t give its consent to be moved, so is in-vitro fertilization. Performing an abortion or aiding one in any way means being an accomplice to murder. To the north, Canada has enacted what’s called the Pink Wall. Any woman attempting to sneak into Canada for an abortion is turned over to U.S. prosecutors.
With a backdrop of such fertile material, Zumas could have told any number of large, grand-scale stories. But this is not the story of a small group of freedom fighters taking on a shadowy, overreaching government. In fact, the men in power here remain unseen and faceless. Outside of the casual reference to “a fetus-loving new president,” we know next to nothing about them. Instead, the book explores the reverberations of these policies in the lives of four women in a small Oregon fishing town. It doesn’t take long to see that this world isn’t science fiction at all. We’re perilously close to it becoming a reality in our own.
In the narration, Zumas refers to none of her characters by name. Each character is defined either by her role in society or her relationship to someone else. There’s “The Biographer,” Roberta Stephens, a single, middle-aged high school teacher working on a biography of a nineteenth century female Arctic explorer. “Ro” is desperate for a child, but nothing she’s tried so far has worked. She’s running out of time, as soon a new law called “Every Child Needs Two” goes into effect. Under it, unmarried people will be legally prohibited from adopting children.
One of Ro’s students, Mattie, referred to as “The Daughter,” becomes pregnant by a boy in her class. She quietly carries the fear and shame of her pregnancy, afraid to tell her parents and unsure of where to turn. “The Wife,” Susan Korsmo, is stuck in a dead-end, lifeless marriage to one of Ro’s teacher colleagues. Susan has two children of her own, but isn’t sure if she’s thankful of that fact. She wants to leave her marriage but lacks the courage to do so.
Then there’s “The Mender,” Gin Percival, a woman who lives on the outskirts of society. Seen as a witch, Gin helps many women in the town with various medical remedies, abortion being one of them. The fifth major presence is Eivør Minervudottir, the polar hydrologist who is the subject of Ro’s book. Eivør’s story is told through short excerpts between chapters. All five of these women share some connection. Over the course of the novel, these connections are revealed and transformed in surprising ways.
The book is marvelously written. Each character is vivid, and Zumas captures their individual patterns of thought and behavior remarkably. Of them all, The Mender feels the most unnecessary. Her story takes an unexpected turn in the third act. Without it, the book essentially remains the same. Instead, it would have been interesting to see the viewpoint of a female pro-life advocate. I wondered how someone who ardently supports the government would react to some of the characters’ situations. That’s a layer left curiously unexplored. The story is also firmly rooted in place. The town of Newville, Oregon becomes almost like a sixth character, with its beached whales and “the air cold and gritty with salt.”
Red Clocks is a searing and irresistible look at the ways in which women are subjugated, both visible and invisible. Time and again, Roberta brushes up against the stigma of single parenting. She often questions her relentless quest to have a child, wondering if she’s doing it for her own selfish benefit. But that’s a question a couple rarely needs to answer. The social pressure to be a certain kind of parent exists even in a world where the Every Child Needs Two Law doesn’t exist.
Red Clocks shows that when it comes to women’s bodies, and what they choose to do with them, we’re still a long way off from actual freedom. Every day, it feels like the needle is moving, for better or worse. Red Clocks portrays one way that needle might swing, and the reality is not as inconceivable as it first sounds.
This is described in other reviews as a dystopia, and it is. But it feels more like realism than speculative fiction. The literary devices (referring to the characters as “the daughter” etc. rather than by names, interspersing the biography of the explorer between chapters) did not bother me at all. I thought it served to draw you into the world and think about the characters and their relationships to womanhood.
In this novel we are introduced to a near future where the political climate has impacted the country and changed reproduction laws. These laws and the power shift that goes with it impact each woman differently but in ways that force them (and you) to dissect how they feel and why they feel that way. Each views men from a variety of indifferent or disappointed viewpoints that bring them to their ultimate decisions. Few, if maybe one, man is given grace in this book and most are just one dimensional characters that help you understand the realities of the main characters.
Each character is given its own perspective which we hear mostly from their perspective dispersed throughout the novel with stories pushing and bumping together as life circumstances require them to collide. We slowly find that they are all intertwined and that the women find themselves leaning in to understand one another in their own ways. They all need something or have something the other needs or wants. In between these stories we get small clues into the life of an early North American explorer who as a woman is not recognized for her contributions to science. These glimpses are provided in small sentences and paragraphs that lend themselves to a beautiful short story that gives little by sparing the details but says so much more in its silence.
The book tells a story from a captured space of time. If you need a book with a clear narrative and a story that wraps up all the details at the end, you will not be getting that here. What you will get is a beautifully written book of reflections from women who are challenging their existence and questioning where they get to belong in the world that has changed the rules without asking them how they feel. Leni Zumas reaches deep into the well to provide a look at womanhood. It is a complicated topic that is met with complicated characters but they will draw you in and take you on their journeys.
Each character is given its own perspective which we hear mostly from their perspective dispersed throughout the novel with stories pushing and bumping together as life circumstances require them to collide. We slowly find that they are all intertwined and that the women find themselves leaning in to understand one another in their own ways. They all need something or have something the other needs or wants. In between these stories we get small clues into the life of an early North American explorer who as a woman is not recognized for her contributions to science. These glimpses are provided in small sentences and paragraphs that lend themselves to a beautiful short story that gives little by sparing the details but says so much more in its silence.
The book tells a story from a captured space of time. If you need a book with a clear narrative and a story that wraps up all the details at the end, you will not be getting that here. What you will get is a beautifully written book of reflections from women who are challenging their existence and questioning where they get to belong in the world that has changed the rules without asking them how they feel. Leni Zumas reaches deep into the well to provide a look at womanhood. It is a complicated topic that is met with complicated characters but they will draw you in and take you on their journeys.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book was very difficult to get into, but once I adjusted to the narrating style and became acquainted with all the characters it became a fascinating read about what it means to be a woman, particularly when men try to control our reproductive systems. Abortion and IVF have become a crime in the US, and only married straight couples are going to be allowed to adopt. The story interweaves five women's lives: an unhappy wife with children, a childless (but desperately trying not to be) single teacher, who is writing a biography on a way-ahead-of-her-time Polar explorer, a healer who helps women abort babies (amongst other things) and an unwed pregnant teen who desperately wants an abortion. The way the stories intersect is beautifully done, and I really grew to care what happened to everyone, especially the teacher. The dystopian part, where abortions are a crime, are just real enough to be terrifying. Great book.