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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
Books named after vagina are maybe not my go-to genre pick. Lightly dystopian, invested in how close it feels to possible, but also still something that would get pejoratively identified as 'women's lit'. It did have the brutally irritating need to spell out what it was trying to tell the reader, rather than let them understand and move forward.
I didn't hate it. I felt an awful lot of apathy for some of the others and can't say I *liked* any of them, but I didn't hate them.
I didn't hate it. I felt an awful lot of apathy for some of the others and can't say I *liked* any of them, but I didn't hate them.
interesting. favorite line: "If it is possible for you to come to me, little one, let you come to me. If it is not possible, let you not come, and let me not be shattered," (117)
A little strange, but enjoyable. I feel like there was so much going on here that things felt incomplete in each of the women’s stories except for Ro. Still, a timely book that I did enjoy.
This book promised a lot and didn’t quite deliver, perhaps because it begs comparison with the utterly brilliant Margaret Atwood. For me, part of the problem is that the four main characters are referred to primarily by their “roles” - wife, daughter, mender, biographer - yet I don’t think these roles are really fully explored or made sense of, and perhaps the most important role to the stories in the book, mother, is left unspoken. Perhaps that’s the point, but I was left feeling that something more needed to be said.
I was also struck by the almost total absence of real conversation between the women in the book. None of them understand each other’s life experience because they don’t talk to each other at all, in any depth about anything that matters. This felt contrived and somehow off. Because women do talk to each other. Especially when things are difficult about those difficulties. Of course the story wouldn’t make sense if they talked to each other, and there are reasons here why they don’t, but it struck a false note for me.
Having said all that, the political background within which the book is set feels all too real. The notes of distrust and envy between the women are plausible and Didier in particular is a very recognisable man to me (sorry guys!). And I liked Edward very much - he’s perhaps the one character in the book I’d most want to meet.
So a mixed bag for me, a good read but not as great as the glowing reviews suggest.
I was also struck by the almost total absence of real conversation between the women in the book. None of them understand each other’s life experience because they don’t talk to each other at all, in any depth about anything that matters. This felt contrived and somehow off. Because women do talk to each other. Especially when things are difficult about those difficulties. Of course the story wouldn’t make sense if they talked to each other, and there are reasons here why they don’t, but it struck a false note for me.
Having said all that, the political background within which the book is set feels all too real. The notes of distrust and envy between the women are plausible and Didier in particular is a very recognisable man to me (sorry guys!). And I liked Edward very much - he’s perhaps the one character in the book I’d most want to meet.
So a mixed bag for me, a good read but not as great as the glowing reviews suggest.
Ron Charles (book reviewer for the Washington Post and a favourite critic of mine) gets it right when he says that it’s the ordinariness of Red Clocks that makes it so disturbing. It takes very little effort to imagine an America where abortion is illegal, where IVF and the freezing of eggs has been banned (though freezing sperm is still OK, which speaks volumes as to the real target of the Laws) and where only a mother and father can adopt, single parents need not apply (it’s never made clear whether same-sex couples can adopt). Setting the novel in Salem, Oregon, with a population of about 150,000 only normalises things further. While these Laws do directly affect our four protagonists in fundamental ways, everyday life keeps rattling along.
While I know the comparisons have been made Red Clocks is not The Handmaidens Tale; it does not depict a dystopian society where fertile women are raped on a monthly basis and where the freedom to associate or just leave your house without a chaperone has been banned. What it does depict is an America that’s making strides in The Handmaidens Tale direction. Just like the boiling frog, the people of Oregon and America have adapted to the changes. There is a suggestion of a women’s movement protesting these Laws, but their activities occur off screen and have little bearing on the lives of our protagonists (not until the very end anyway).
It’s because everything is so ordinary and familiar – the wife unhappy with her husband, the woman who desperately wants a child but can’t seem to get pregnant, even the teenage pregnancy – that when the Laws are applied, we can’t help but feel horrified. Zumas, therefore, should be applauded for not taking the full-on dystopian approach, the sort that’s easy to ignore because it’s never clear how the society got that way. While she doesn’t dive into the nuts and bolts of the changes (Rowe v Wade is mentioned once), the reader can readily fill in the gaps.
This also means she can focus on her characters, explore how those changes affect their lives. My favourite viewpoint was that of Ro (and not just because I related to her plight, she also has a dark sense of humour) but all the characters are well developed, and in each case, you can’t help but engage with the almost insurmountable challenges they face. The fact that Red Clocks has a near optimistic ending is a testament to Zumas’ refusal to take the most obvious route, to misery-up the story because of dystopian expectations. The true horror of this novel isn’t the way the plot unfolds but that there are those who will read this book and see it as the beginning of a great utopia.
While I know the comparisons have been made Red Clocks is not The Handmaidens Tale; it does not depict a dystopian society where fertile women are raped on a monthly basis and where the freedom to associate or just leave your house without a chaperone has been banned. What it does depict is an America that’s making strides in The Handmaidens Tale direction. Just like the boiling frog, the people of Oregon and America have adapted to the changes. There is a suggestion of a women’s movement protesting these Laws, but their activities occur off screen and have little bearing on the lives of our protagonists (not until the very end anyway).
It’s because everything is so ordinary and familiar – the wife unhappy with her husband, the woman who desperately wants a child but can’t seem to get pregnant, even the teenage pregnancy – that when the Laws are applied, we can’t help but feel horrified. Zumas, therefore, should be applauded for not taking the full-on dystopian approach, the sort that’s easy to ignore because it’s never clear how the society got that way. While she doesn’t dive into the nuts and bolts of the changes (Rowe v Wade is mentioned once), the reader can readily fill in the gaps.
This also means she can focus on her characters, explore how those changes affect their lives. My favourite viewpoint was that of Ro (and not just because I related to her plight, she also has a dark sense of humour) but all the characters are well developed, and in each case, you can’t help but engage with the almost insurmountable challenges they face. The fact that Red Clocks has a near optimistic ending is a testament to Zumas’ refusal to take the most obvious route, to misery-up the story because of dystopian expectations. The true horror of this novel isn’t the way the plot unfolds but that there are those who will read this book and see it as the beginning of a great utopia.
As a prochoice feminist, I really wanted to like this book, but it is so poorly written. The unnamed character gimmick is meant to be some type of every woman thing, but it is just needlessly confusing and makes you care even less about the characters. The strike through editing bits were unnecessary. I lost track of how many times the biographer threw stuff against the wall/destroyed something out of rage (Over ten at least. Where was the editor on this? Also, I imagine the first time she had to clean up after flinging oranges against the wall she would have learned her lesson, but apparently not 🤷🏻♀️ .) Also, how many times can the wife be chowing down on hidden chocolate bars or fantasizing about driving off a cliff (the first time it can have deeper significance, but by the sixth or seventh time it is just eye roll inducing)? The repeat mentions of pubic hair and weird slang for vaginas were gross and tedious as well. It doesn't read like a novel, and you end up not caring about any of the characters (Mattie is the only semi-okay character; the wife never should have dropped out of law school or married her loser husband, the biographer needs to get some hobbies to get over her baby fever, and the mender/witch is just crazy-why would I care about these characters?). In terms of feminist dystopias, The Handmaid's Tale, When She Woke, and The Power are all better. This book needed to go through quite a bit more editing before being published because it reads like the bad first draft of a MFA student who is being bankrolled by their parents while they pretend to be artistic and deep.
2.5 maybe? I don't know, not a particularly painful read just not an enjoyable one.
Quick, easy read, but there wasn’t too much of a storyline and it didn’t really get into the implications of making abortion illegal. The only two interesting and important storylines were the biographer and the daughter, specifically the biographer juggling her strong belief in a woman’s right to choose with her desire to have a child of her own. Otherwise, the wife’s story was really nothing special, the mender’s was completely anticlimactic, and the explorer’s story just didn’t fit in at all (besides maybe attempting to give an undertone of strong women??). Perhaps the most disappointing part of this book was that absolutely no one was fighting or trying to change the new societal norms. That’s a backbone of dystopian novels.
Unfortunately my takeaway from this book is that, if the US were to outlaw abortion, life would go on as normal for everyone. And that is a terrible message to give women like me facing this very same reality.
Unfortunately my takeaway from this book is that, if the US were to outlaw abortion, life would go on as normal for everyone. And that is a terrible message to give women like me facing this very same reality.