Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
I was really looking forward to reading this book as it has been on my list since either October or November when it was reviewed on NPR. I wanted to like this book and feel engaged with the five women who were portrayed in the novel. The story was ok and the characters were ok. With the exception of the Biographer, none of others reached out and grabbed my heart-they were just there-bland or maybe it is where we are in each stage of our lives when we attach ourselves to a character.... It is worth worth reading and definitely a cautionary tale about paying attention to what is going on in the world. For that reason alone it is worth reading because it definitely parallels the times we are living in. Scary, we need to pay attention! Lately, it seems like I have been reading quite a bit of dystopian fiction about women and very little of it has made much of an impression, with the exception of the Handmaid's Tale. Margaret Atwood is the very best. I consider a book to be great when I am still thinking about it years later and the Handmaid's Tale was one of those books and I still think of Ofred nearly everyday...I see myself in her, as well as the women who are apart of my life... I think that says it all!
Now that it's become one queasy step closer to reality since its publication last year, "Red Clocks" feels not so much speculative as predictive. With the backdrop of an America where abortion has been banned at the federal level (can you imagine??), and where adoption is about to be restricted to married couples, its story is shared between four women in a tiny Oregon coastal village. These characters have names, but Zumas prefers to refer to them as the Biographer, the Daughter, the Mender, and the Wife. It's in keeping with the novel's theme of confining women to prescribed roles, as well as lending it a parable-like quality.
The world of "Red Clocks" doesn't have the dystopian horror of "The Handmaid's Tale", but it's just as thrilling. In Atwood's book the world essentially changed overnight by way of a violent coup, but Zumas shows us, basically, the here and now, where rights are being gradually stripped away in fits and starts. Zumas's staccato, fast paced prose and exceptionally true-to-life dialogue is a pleasure to read, and it plunges into the interior lives of four very different personalities with great skill. Interlaced with each chapter are fragments of the Biographer's work-in-progress, on the life of a pioneering female Arctic scientist. These cutaways may irritate some readers, but for me they were eerily apt. Emotionally astute, quirky, but never less than gripping.
The world of "Red Clocks" doesn't have the dystopian horror of "The Handmaid's Tale", but it's just as thrilling. In Atwood's book the world essentially changed overnight by way of a violent coup, but Zumas shows us, basically, the here and now, where rights are being gradually stripped away in fits and starts. Zumas's staccato, fast paced prose and exceptionally true-to-life dialogue is a pleasure to read, and it plunges into the interior lives of four very different personalities with great skill. Interlaced with each chapter are fragments of the Biographer's work-in-progress, on the life of a pioneering female Arctic scientist. These cutaways may irritate some readers, but for me they were eerily apt. Emotionally astute, quirky, but never less than gripping.
I didn’t like the way this is written, which is sad because I think all of the women’s stories were important. But it was hard to really have feelings while reading this because the writing was just poor.
My husband and I both read this for a book club — and he finished before I did. He told me all the things he didn’t like about the book (mostly that the different characters and their stories seem like they’re going intersect in satisfying and mutually beneficial ways…but they don’t…at least not in the way he expected), so I went in assuming I was going to be equally frustrated. Happily — maybe because I had low expectations? — I really enjoyed reading this book. It’s (unfortunately) timely, considering how the US is retreating back to the “good old times” (VOMIT) when men could govern women’s reproductive systems (EW). It has multiple narrators, each with a very different voice and a very different story about pregnancy/birth. It’s somehow hopeful, despite the subject. And I loved, loved, loved the writing (I highlighted so many sentences on my Kindle).
I do wish Zumas had used the women’s names throughout the book instead of using their titles (mother, daughter, etc). Her method is clever, but I found it confusing, especially considering each MC was named when she appeared in another MC’s narration.
I also spent a lot of time trying to figure out where/when this was taking place (I think in an alternative universe). There’s a reference to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off being something the teacher would have seen, but not the student — so current day-ish? And I know it was meant to be in Portland, OR but some of the word choices felt non American (maybe European? Examples: Yuletide, Shrovetide bun, a butter and brown sugar sandwich, coconut crunches, almond smushies, and pretty much everything the witch says/thinks, but she’s a witch so.).
I do wish Zumas had used the women’s names throughout the book instead of using their titles (mother, daughter, etc). Her method is clever, but I found it confusing, especially considering each MC was named when she appeared in another MC’s narration.
I also spent a lot of time trying to figure out where/when this was taking place (I think in an alternative universe). There’s a reference to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off being something the teacher would have seen, but not the student — so current day-ish? And I know it was meant to be in Portland, OR but some of the word choices felt non American (maybe European? Examples: Yuletide, Shrovetide bun, a butter and brown sugar sandwich, coconut crunches, almond smushies, and pretty much everything the witch says/thinks, but she’s a witch so.).
It did take me awhile to adjust to the style (and to remember all the names of everyone), but once you get a feel for the writing style, it is SO good. The way each of the characters' stories intertwine is truly amazing. When I got to the last 100 pages I didn't want to put it down. Echoing some of the others' reviews, I suppose this is "dystopian" but it is more than that, it's an incredibly interesting and moving look into the lives of 5 women and how they determine 'purpose.'
Plus, there were some really great lines about the ocean.
Plus, there were some really great lines about the ocean.
When is a dystopian novel not a dystopian novel? When it's plausibly a year or less into the future and all the political pawns it needs to pass into reality are solidly in place. This is speculative fiction that doesn't need much speculation, and it's highly likely there may be readers who don't see the scenario depicted here as a negative future. In that way, it's more frightening than Handmaid's Take, as the nation doesn't need much pushing to get here, and it's a likelier immediate future than Atwood's seminal vision. We're privileged to multiple perspectives here, demonstrating a broad, overlapping vision that demonstrates how easily those with a common cause can be turned against each other.
I know everyone is loving this book, but I absolutely could not get into it or get invested in the characters at all. Maybe because it just feels too damned close to real life right now? I don't know, but I couldn't enjoy it. I forced myself to finish it, but. Meh.
I put this book on my TBR list after Roe was overturned in the United States, and I’m only now getting around to reading it. When I did pick it up, I finished it in the span of one day, and that’s perhaps due to a number of things I liked: the short, vignette-style chapters; the lush, evocative prose; the sympathetic yet flawed inner lives of the protagonists. There are things I feel like I can criticize - such as the lackluster story of the female Arctic explorer - but overall, this was a well-written novel that really resonated with me as a reader interested in reproductive rights. Thus, it gets 4 stars from me.
Writing: Zumas’ prose is very literary in that it combines lyrical descriptions with a kind of experimental, loose structure. Some readers may be put off by this style, but personally, I found it incredible engaging and it held my interest, perhaps because I find the topic of reproductive rights more meaningful when driven by emotional, human stories (as opposed to debates about power and statistics). Zumas has an incredible talent for writing emotion, and I felt like I could understand what each character was experiencing without being told “XYZ happened” and “this character did this.”
I do think, however, that the little snippets of the life of the Arctic explorer, Eivør, were under-developed. These snippets occur between each chapter, and most are only a few lines or a paragraph. While I do think they added to the tone and setting of the novel, they didn’t really do much for me in terms of the themes of the book. If Eivør had been another character in her own right or her life was much more strongly about rejecting motherhood, I think it would have fit in better, but as it stands, the snippets felt a bit like filler.
Plot: The plot of this book follows four women in a small Oregon fishing town as they try to navigate issues of motherhood and womanhood in a world where abortion, IVF, and adoption by single parents have been banned. Over the course of the novel, we watch Ro (a single woman in her 40s) struggle to conceive a child using artificial insemination; Susan, a mother of two who is trapped in an unhappy marriage; Mattie, a teenager faced with an unwanted pregnancy; and Gin, a “witch” who lives on her own and distributes remedies to the local women.
Zumas seems less interested in telling the reader what happens than she is showing the reader various impressions of the protagonists’ emotions, and personally, I liked it better than your traditional dystopian novel. Zumas doesn’t put power and government at the center of these women’s lives, but instead focuses on their inner lives and what challenges they face in a post-Roe world.
As a result, this book perhaps hits a little differently today than it would have at the time of publication. Reading it in 2022, the “dystopian” elements are less a product of imagination and more a reflection of the very real reproductive rollbacks we’ve been seeing in the United States. The “Pink Curtain,” for example, calls to mind the recent discussions surrounding restricting women to travel for abortions; the claim that less abortions would mean more available babies for adoption - while seemingly farfetched in the novel - was actually said by a US lawmaker this past year. All in all, the scary similarity to today’s world makes this book feel less “speculative” than something like The Handmaid’s Tale, and perhaps that’s why I took to it so readily.
Characters: There are quite a few characters in this book, so for the purposes of this review, I’m going to focus on our four protagonists: Ro, Susan, Mattie, and Gin.
Ro was incredibly sympathetic in that she was desperate to have a child and was irritated by all the judgments put on her regarding her age, marital status, and income. Reading her perspective made me understand how earth-shattering it could be for one’s life to go in an unexpected direction, and I think her story was an important look at what a post-Roe world would mean for (potential) mothers who were not your typical young, married, upper-middle class white women. I did get annoyed by her when she began to feel resentful of Mattie’s pregnancy, and I got the sense that she was almost entitled at a certain point - but this was a very real and understandable flaw that doesn’t necessarily come from a place of rationality, and it made Ro a bit more realized as a character.
Susan was also sympathetic in that she was presented as both a loving parent and a parent who felt trapped by her kids and her marriage. Reading her perspective illuminated the pressure that many women feel to present themselves as devoted wives and mothers, and after reading about how Susan’s husband is absolutely useless, I was rooting for her to find some happiness away from her family. Susan also has some flaws in that she can be judgmental - especially of Ro - but again, it’s a very human flaw, and though I might be irritated as a reader, it also meant that Susan felt like a real person.
Mattie was perhaps the perspective that tugged at my heartstrings the most. At age fifteen, she gets pregnant and seeks an abortion, going so far as to attempt to escape to Canada and avoid arrest when visiting underground, unregulated providers. Her perspective was filled with fear, and I think it would be hard to look at someone like Mattie and tell her to just have the baby - so much was at stake, including Mattie’s future, and I desperately wanted her to be okay in the end.
Gin was a very intriguing perspective in that her role as the “village healer” was an interesting callback to the days when women’s local knowledge was in conflict with male institutionalized knowledge. Gin seemed to have a cure for any ailment, including unwanted pregnancies, and her failure to finish school just hammers home the gap between knowledge and education, as well as the history of women taking care of other women. But what I really liked about Gin was her rejection of the “normal” world and her insistence on living her life on her own terms. Even in her more grumpy and eccentric moments, I took a liking to her, and I think her trial was an important lynchpin that tied many of the book’s narratives together.
TL;DR: Red Clocks is a eerily prescient look at a post-Roe America, focusing on four very distinct women as they navigate the nebulous category that is “womanhood.” While the prose style and organization might not be to every reader’s taste, I think the more impressionistic look at a post-Roe world makes for a great emotional impact, and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the effect that a rollback on reproductive rights might have on individuals.
Writing: Zumas’ prose is very literary in that it combines lyrical descriptions with a kind of experimental, loose structure. Some readers may be put off by this style, but personally, I found it incredible engaging and it held my interest, perhaps because I find the topic of reproductive rights more meaningful when driven by emotional, human stories (as opposed to debates about power and statistics). Zumas has an incredible talent for writing emotion, and I felt like I could understand what each character was experiencing without being told “XYZ happened” and “this character did this.”
I do think, however, that the little snippets of the life of the Arctic explorer, Eivør, were under-developed. These snippets occur between each chapter, and most are only a few lines or a paragraph. While I do think they added to the tone and setting of the novel, they didn’t really do much for me in terms of the themes of the book. If Eivør had been another character in her own right or her life was much more strongly about rejecting motherhood, I think it would have fit in better, but as it stands, the snippets felt a bit like filler.
Plot: The plot of this book follows four women in a small Oregon fishing town as they try to navigate issues of motherhood and womanhood in a world where abortion, IVF, and adoption by single parents have been banned. Over the course of the novel, we watch Ro (a single woman in her 40s) struggle to conceive a child using artificial insemination; Susan, a mother of two who is trapped in an unhappy marriage; Mattie, a teenager faced with an unwanted pregnancy; and Gin, a “witch” who lives on her own and distributes remedies to the local women.
Zumas seems less interested in telling the reader what happens than she is showing the reader various impressions of the protagonists’ emotions, and personally, I liked it better than your traditional dystopian novel. Zumas doesn’t put power and government at the center of these women’s lives, but instead focuses on their inner lives and what challenges they face in a post-Roe world.
As a result, this book perhaps hits a little differently today than it would have at the time of publication. Reading it in 2022, the “dystopian” elements are less a product of imagination and more a reflection of the very real reproductive rollbacks we’ve been seeing in the United States. The “Pink Curtain,” for example, calls to mind the recent discussions surrounding restricting women to travel for abortions; the claim that less abortions would mean more available babies for adoption - while seemingly farfetched in the novel - was actually said by a US lawmaker this past year. All in all, the scary similarity to today’s world makes this book feel less “speculative” than something like The Handmaid’s Tale, and perhaps that’s why I took to it so readily.
Characters: There are quite a few characters in this book, so for the purposes of this review, I’m going to focus on our four protagonists: Ro, Susan, Mattie, and Gin.
Ro was incredibly sympathetic in that she was desperate to have a child and was irritated by all the judgments put on her regarding her age, marital status, and income. Reading her perspective made me understand how earth-shattering it could be for one’s life to go in an unexpected direction, and I think her story was an important look at what a post-Roe world would mean for (potential) mothers who were not your typical young, married, upper-middle class white women. I did get annoyed by her when she began to feel resentful of Mattie’s pregnancy, and I got the sense that she was almost entitled at a certain point - but this was a very real and understandable flaw that doesn’t necessarily come from a place of rationality, and it made Ro a bit more realized as a character.
Susan was also sympathetic in that she was presented as both a loving parent and a parent who felt trapped by her kids and her marriage. Reading her perspective illuminated the pressure that many women feel to present themselves as devoted wives and mothers, and after reading about how Susan’s husband is absolutely useless, I was rooting for her to find some happiness away from her family. Susan also has some flaws in that she can be judgmental - especially of Ro - but again, it’s a very human flaw, and though I might be irritated as a reader, it also meant that Susan felt like a real person.
Mattie was perhaps the perspective that tugged at my heartstrings the most. At age fifteen, she gets pregnant and seeks an abortion, going so far as to attempt to escape to Canada and avoid arrest when visiting underground, unregulated providers. Her perspective was filled with fear, and I think it would be hard to look at someone like Mattie and tell her to just have the baby - so much was at stake, including Mattie’s future, and I desperately wanted her to be okay in the end.
Gin was a very intriguing perspective in that her role as the “village healer” was an interesting callback to the days when women’s local knowledge was in conflict with male institutionalized knowledge. Gin seemed to have a cure for any ailment, including unwanted pregnancies, and her failure to finish school just hammers home the gap between knowledge and education, as well as the history of women taking care of other women. But what I really liked about Gin was her rejection of the “normal” world and her insistence on living her life on her own terms. Even in her more grumpy and eccentric moments, I took a liking to her, and I think her trial was an important lynchpin that tied many of the book’s narratives together.
TL;DR: Red Clocks is a eerily prescient look at a post-Roe America, focusing on four very distinct women as they navigate the nebulous category that is “womanhood.” While the prose style and organization might not be to every reader’s taste, I think the more impressionistic look at a post-Roe world makes for a great emotional impact, and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the effect that a rollback on reproductive rights might have on individuals.
I read this in one whirlwind 3-hr sitting and, while it’s no The Power or The Handmaid’s Tale, anyone who gave it less than 4 stars is still crazy.
Things I loved about this book:
-A thoroughly female perspective of a thoroughly male-dominated world. I especially loved the choice to title the women's POVs based on their relationship to the wider (patriarchal) world. Excellent.
-An unapologetic look at the fear, anxiety, guilt, grief, pain, danger, and need of abortion, as well as fertility issues.
-Really lovely writing.
Things I didn't love about this book:
-Plot holes:
-Singular focus on reproduction. I would have liked to see a more wide-ranging look at women's issues in this world. What about the wage gap? What about the glass ceiling? What about lesbians and bi women, and trans women?
-The characters are a bit tropey. An unhappy wife/mom with a dick for a husband and rowdy kids. A single, barren working woman. A teenager who doesn't enjoy sex but does it to please her boorish boyfriend. Wah wah. The one shining exception is The Mender-- I would take 6 more books featuring her.
Anyway. 4 stars. It's a fine addition to the feminist bookshelf.
Things I loved about this book:
-A thoroughly female perspective of a thoroughly male-dominated world. I especially loved the choice to title the women's POVs based on their relationship to the wider (patriarchal) world. Excellent.
-An unapologetic look at the fear, anxiety, guilt, grief, pain, danger, and need of abortion, as well as fertility issues.
-Really lovely writing.
Things I didn't love about this book:
-Plot holes:
Spoiler
What about gay couples? & women wanting babies but unable to get them after the Every Child Needs 2 law... why didn't they just go bang a rando?-Singular focus on reproduction. I would have liked to see a more wide-ranging look at women's issues in this world. What about the wage gap? What about the glass ceiling? What about lesbians and bi women, and trans women?
-The characters are a bit tropey. An unhappy wife/mom with a dick for a husband and rowdy kids. A single, barren working woman. A teenager who doesn't enjoy sex but does it to please her boorish boyfriend. Wah wah. The one shining exception is The Mender-- I would take 6 more books featuring her.
Anyway. 4 stars. It's a fine addition to the feminist bookshelf.