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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
The idea of this book is interesting and not too far removed from reality. It was slow to get into and it was hard to get used to the author’s writing style. The second half was a good read but the characters didn’t have a lot of depth.
medium-paced
An intriguing and relevant semi=dystopia with a realistic edge (thanks to the current political climate). I enjoyed the style of the book and Zumas's unique take on characterization and character perspective.
I was so utterly engrossed in this the book on my flight that I completely missed an emergency landing due to a massive storm. I didn’t notice the turbulence, and I didn’t notice I was in Kansas City until we had been sitting on the runway for twenty minutes. It was beautifully written, believable, and important.
Books like this remind me of the struggle and privilege that is womanhood.
Books like this remind me of the struggle and privilege that is womanhood.
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
What a depressing reality. Well... this is a sort of "alternative" future.... but looking more and more like our immediate future, which is the depressing reality bit.
Roe v Wade is overturned and of course to the benefit of no woman and leaves the decisions of bodily autonomy in the hands of the old white dudes. uuuugh. I cant even enjoy the book because it depresses me so much.
Roe v Wade is overturned and of course to the benefit of no woman and leaves the decisions of bodily autonomy in the hands of the old white dudes. uuuugh. I cant even enjoy the book because it depresses me so much.
My thoughts on Red Clocks are complicated. I was instantly drawn in based on the set up. The novel achieves certain goals, but ultimately fails to live up to its great promise in significant ways. Zumas missed the opportunity to break new ground in dystopian feminist fiction by telling stories that haven’t already been told time and again by other writers by portraying characters who aren’t slightly varied versions of the same middle class white woman.
Zumas masterfully captures the feeling that the walls are closing in on you when, for any number of reasons as illustrated by these characters, a woman loses the ability to make her own autonomous choices about her body and family building.
Additionally, part of what’s so chilling about the speculative future presented in Red Clocks is that it in nearly every way its future mirrors our present. It could be set in 2020. And the seemingly extreme laws passed in Red Clocks aren’t hard to imagine. They are all restrictions that have been proposed and heartily supported by those looking to reassert legal control over women’s bodies in ways that have slowly been attempted since Roe v Wade gave us the right to bodily autonomy as an extension of the right to privacy under the US Constitution. These changes are terrifying and angering precisely because they’re so easy to imagine.
Zumas is also strongly in her element when she depicts the apathy among even women who privately feel strongly about reproductive freedom, but take it for granted until it’s too late. This is one of the most eerily on point aspects of her character Ro (the Biographer), who acknowledges that she largely ignored the drive toward implementation of these draconian federal laws until it was too late. And then found herself directly impacted in her pursuit of becoming a parent. Thankfully we learn she feels inspired to become part of the resistance as she considers what she wants her life to look like past the question of how to become a parent under extremely limited circumstances.
Finally, Zumas deftly illustrates the interconnectedness between controlling women’s bodies in the context of abortion and IVF and imposing strict adoption laws that are biased against same sex couples and single people. All of these restrictions are acceptable to people with a very specific world view who have generally not personally been in a position to make these difficult decisions or needed to get an abortion, use IVF to conceive a baby, or adopt to build a family. That and/or they just don’t have much empathy for anyone who isn’t exactly like them and use their religion to justify that closed mindedness.
Because regardless of your moral views on abortion, many women find themselves in a situation where it’s not simple to judge their circumstances. Termination procedures save women’s lives under a variety of circumstances. Women seek IVF for all types of reasons, including having had cancer treatments, not simply because they had the nerve to seek careers or same sex partnerships.
Reducing all these issues to a strict black and white question is simply not reflective of reality. It would be much easier to assume every woman who seeks a termination is irresponsible and/or selfish. Or that God is saying you don’t deserve to be a parent if you cannot conceive without IVF. After all, draconian viewpoints supported by manipulative, misogynistic religious teachings are easier to hold and stand by when there is absolutely no nuance. But that isn’t real life.
Unfortunately, Red Clocks is sorely lacking in a diversity of experiences. I’m disappointed the author didn’t do a better job capturing the way these situations impact women of color (WOC) differently than they do white women. Ignoring the way in which WOC often have fewer options and are punished more harshly than white women for the same behavior is an inexcusable missed opportunity.
There is only woman of color addressed in the book (Yasmine), and the story of the impact of these laws on her life is told by her white friend / classmate, the Daughter. And even then it feels like an afterthought. We get very few details and the ones we do get feel shoehorned in. I so badly wanted to see the story of at least one girl or woman who is marginalized told through her own eyes. Be it a woman of color, a trans person, or a fully fleshed out gay or bisexual woman (Gin could have been this character but isn’t. More on this later.).
We do see that Yasmine and the daughter make the same choices, but experience vastly different outcomes and consequences. This was a good start, but I don’t appreciate the choice to only present one such story in such a minor way and only through the eyes of someone who is not only a young white woman, but also doesn’t really get why she’s able to access a safe abortion and go on with her life while her friend is not.
As a white woman it can be too easy to ignore the fact that these restrictive laws and the way they are applied (even the ones we’re already living with, not just the stricter versions imagined in a speculative near future in Red Clocks) impact marginalized women differently and hold a different significance. Against the backdrop of the longstanding use of such practices and policies to strip marginalized women of the right to control anything about their own bodies, these laws are even more revolting.
The impact of such policies are always harsher for people who are already lacking the kind of power cis het middle class white women have enjoyed throughout history. But once you see it and begin to look for it, the failure to acknowledge this reality is glaring in its absence. It leaves a gaping hole in otherwise promising feminist fiction. In 2018 there is no excuse for ignoring intersectional feminism and hasn’t been for a long, long time.
I found Zumas’s choice to reduce each of the five women to a label others apply to them to be an effective strategy (The Biographer, The Mender, The Wife, The Daughter). Still, I can see where this tips over into embracing the very misogyny ostensibly being critiqued by the work for some readers. Particularly when we observe Gin (The Mender) making disparaging remarks about the bodies of other women, including one with whom she engaged in sex. This seems inconsistent with Gin’s character and has me questioning why the author would portray her this way.
I know women whose husbands are as clueless and self-centered as Didier. But I think providing more nuanced characters for him and his wife would’ve been more interesting and created more tension. As things are, who would willingly stay in that relationship?! Almost no one.
Ro is by far the most well developed, nuanced, and relatable character. I wanted a similar character development for Gin, in particular, who had the potential to be extremely compelling. Unfortunately I found the daughter and the wife so flat and uninteresting that not only did I not actually take note of their names as I did with Ro and Gin, I didn’t care enough about them to want more. I found their story lines and personalities one dimensional and lackluster. This despite the fact that they both find themselves in extremely gut wrenching and relatable circumstances.
Ultimately I find the homogeneous nature of these characters and the lack of development of all but one of them to be a real let down. Publishers have taken note of our interest in feminist dystopian fiction. But please give us fresh takes on the genre that do more than tell slight variations on the experiences of heterosexual middle class white women.
Zumas masterfully captures the feeling that the walls are closing in on you when, for any number of reasons as illustrated by these characters, a woman loses the ability to make her own autonomous choices about her body and family building.
Additionally, part of what’s so chilling about the speculative future presented in Red Clocks is that it in nearly every way its future mirrors our present. It could be set in 2020. And the seemingly extreme laws passed in Red Clocks aren’t hard to imagine. They are all restrictions that have been proposed and heartily supported by those looking to reassert legal control over women’s bodies in ways that have slowly been attempted since Roe v Wade gave us the right to bodily autonomy as an extension of the right to privacy under the US Constitution. These changes are terrifying and angering precisely because they’re so easy to imagine.
Zumas is also strongly in her element when she depicts the apathy among even women who privately feel strongly about reproductive freedom, but take it for granted until it’s too late. This is one of the most eerily on point aspects of her character Ro (the Biographer), who acknowledges that she largely ignored the drive toward implementation of these draconian federal laws until it was too late. And then found herself directly impacted in her pursuit of becoming a parent. Thankfully we learn she feels inspired to become part of the resistance as she considers what she wants her life to look like past the question of how to become a parent under extremely limited circumstances.
Finally, Zumas deftly illustrates the interconnectedness between controlling women’s bodies in the context of abortion and IVF and imposing strict adoption laws that are biased against same sex couples and single people. All of these restrictions are acceptable to people with a very specific world view who have generally not personally been in a position to make these difficult decisions or needed to get an abortion, use IVF to conceive a baby, or adopt to build a family. That and/or they just don’t have much empathy for anyone who isn’t exactly like them and use their religion to justify that closed mindedness.
Because regardless of your moral views on abortion, many women find themselves in a situation where it’s not simple to judge their circumstances. Termination procedures save women’s lives under a variety of circumstances. Women seek IVF for all types of reasons, including having had cancer treatments, not simply because they had the nerve to seek careers or same sex partnerships.
Reducing all these issues to a strict black and white question is simply not reflective of reality. It would be much easier to assume every woman who seeks a termination is irresponsible and/or selfish. Or that God is saying you don’t deserve to be a parent if you cannot conceive without IVF. After all, draconian viewpoints supported by manipulative, misogynistic religious teachings are easier to hold and stand by when there is absolutely no nuance. But that isn’t real life.
Unfortunately, Red Clocks is sorely lacking in a diversity of experiences. I’m disappointed the author didn’t do a better job capturing the way these situations impact women of color (WOC) differently than they do white women. Ignoring the way in which WOC often have fewer options and are punished more harshly than white women for the same behavior is an inexcusable missed opportunity.
There is only woman of color addressed in the book (Yasmine), and the story of the impact of these laws on her life is told by her white friend / classmate, the Daughter. And even then it feels like an afterthought. We get very few details and the ones we do get feel shoehorned in. I so badly wanted to see the story of at least one girl or woman who is marginalized told through her own eyes. Be it a woman of color, a trans person, or a fully fleshed out gay or bisexual woman (Gin could have been this character but isn’t. More on this later.).
We do see that Yasmine and the daughter make the same choices, but experience vastly different outcomes and consequences. This was a good start, but I don’t appreciate the choice to only present one such story in such a minor way and only through the eyes of someone who is not only a young white woman, but also doesn’t really get why she’s able to access a safe abortion and go on with her life while her friend is not.
As a white woman it can be too easy to ignore the fact that these restrictive laws and the way they are applied (even the ones we’re already living with, not just the stricter versions imagined in a speculative near future in Red Clocks) impact marginalized women differently and hold a different significance. Against the backdrop of the longstanding use of such practices and policies to strip marginalized women of the right to control anything about their own bodies, these laws are even more revolting.
The impact of such policies are always harsher for people who are already lacking the kind of power cis het middle class white women have enjoyed throughout history. But once you see it and begin to look for it, the failure to acknowledge this reality is glaring in its absence. It leaves a gaping hole in otherwise promising feminist fiction. In 2018 there is no excuse for ignoring intersectional feminism and hasn’t been for a long, long time.
I found Zumas’s choice to reduce each of the five women to a label others apply to them to be an effective strategy (The Biographer, The Mender, The Wife, The Daughter). Still, I can see where this tips over into embracing the very misogyny ostensibly being critiqued by the work for some readers. Particularly when we observe Gin (The Mender) making disparaging remarks about the bodies of other women, including one with whom she engaged in sex. This seems inconsistent with Gin’s character and has me questioning why the author would portray her this way.
I know women whose husbands are as clueless and self-centered as Didier. But I think providing more nuanced characters for him and his wife would’ve been more interesting and created more tension. As things are, who would willingly stay in that relationship?! Almost no one.
Ro is by far the most well developed, nuanced, and relatable character. I wanted a similar character development for Gin, in particular, who had the potential to be extremely compelling. Unfortunately I found the daughter and the wife so flat and uninteresting that not only did I not actually take note of their names as I did with Ro and Gin, I didn’t care enough about them to want more. I found their story lines and personalities one dimensional and lackluster. This despite the fact that they both find themselves in extremely gut wrenching and relatable circumstances.
Ultimately I find the homogeneous nature of these characters and the lack of development of all but one of them to be a real let down. Publishers have taken note of our interest in feminist dystopian fiction. But please give us fresh takes on the genre that do more than tell slight variations on the experiences of heterosexual middle class white women.
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a fascinating read in the vein of Margaret Atwood. The setting is an all-too-believable dystopian America where reproductive freedom is yanked from the grasp of women and subjected to the heavy-handedness of patriarchy. The novel's structure is unique and the writing itself lives in the realm of symbol and myth while the storytelling is unflinching and raw. The result is something lovely and primordial with a point to make, which it does with a great deal of impact. Good stuff.