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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
This book is a bit hard to get into, and a little bit confusing at first (the author calls her main characters "The Wife", "The Biographer", "The Daughter" and "The Mender", and it is difficult to figure out who is who when real names are used), but ultimately fascinating, absorbing and scary. Abortion is once again illegal in America, there is a "pink wall" between the US and Canada (to prevent out of the country abortions) in-vitro fertilization is banned, adoption is about to be legal ONLY for 2 parent (male and female) families, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights to every fetus. The book brings together the four above named women in an Oregon town (plus snippets of the biography of Eivor, an explorer of the Arctic Ice from the 1800's) and culminates in a modern witch hunt.
I wanted to like this more. Interesting and disturbing topic, but the writing style was so strange that it made it hard to understand, especially at the beginning.
Maybe my expectations were too high. Or maybe the writing style was just too weird. I’m sure it was to set the tone but...I needed more.
Maybe my expectations were too high. Or maybe the writing style was just too weird. I’m sure it was to set the tone but...I needed more.
3.5 Stars
Not my typical read so maybe I just wasn’t really in the mood for this one. It took me a while to get into it.
Not my typical read so maybe I just wasn’t really in the mood for this one. It took me a while to get into it.
This was sort of weird, but I liked it. This is a popular genre right now, but I believe this one’s stands out because of the unique way Zumas approaches the story. It isn’t as cut and dried as some in the genre and feels eerily real. Definitely worth trying if you enjoyed Handmaid’s Tale.
I really disliked this book because it was more about making political statement and not about the characters in the book. It felt cold and impersonal and one of the characters felt placed into the book by mistake and made no sense in connection to the book. When I read a book, I want to be drawn in by story and be told a message. It was a difficult book to finish
It’s a little hard to get into at the start, but by the end I was holding my breath while driving (listening to the audiobook.)
Red Clocks is one of the rare novels that can boast of being cleverly written and fiercely imaginative in its narrative. Other reviewers have argued that its "experimental form" is a distraction but I found it beautiful and intriguing, and amplifying an already gripping story.
Red Clocks is set in a not-too-distant town in Oregon, after a federal ban on abortions, IVF, and single-parent adoption. All women who break the law are charged with felonies, and can be imprisoned as young as 12 years old. The reader follows four women affected by the current political climate: a teenager with an unplanned pregnancy, a single teacher in her 40s desperate to be a mother, an unhappy wife and mother of two, and an herbalist who lives in the woods branded as the "town witch." The book alternates between viewpoints, with short excerpts of the teacher's biography of an arctic explorer. The women's stories become enmeshed as they each pursue a certain reproductive goal and have to wrestle with what legislation and social mores have deemed acceptable.
Whereas Naomi Alderman's "The Power" grew and grew in its pathos and drama, and eventually boomed into a cataclysmic event, "Red Clocks" is much quieter while still wrestling with the same questions: who gets to make the rules, how do people bend the rules, and just how far should the government go in enforcing them?
Red Clocks is set in a not-too-distant town in Oregon, after a federal ban on abortions, IVF, and single-parent adoption. All women who break the law are charged with felonies, and can be imprisoned as young as 12 years old. The reader follows four women affected by the current political climate: a teenager with an unplanned pregnancy, a single teacher in her 40s desperate to be a mother, an unhappy wife and mother of two, and an herbalist who lives in the woods branded as the "town witch." The book alternates between viewpoints, with short excerpts of the teacher's biography of an arctic explorer. The women's stories become enmeshed as they each pursue a certain reproductive goal and have to wrestle with what legislation and social mores have deemed acceptable.
Whereas Naomi Alderman's "The Power" grew and grew in its pathos and drama, and eventually boomed into a cataclysmic event, "Red Clocks" is much quieter while still wrestling with the same questions: who gets to make the rules, how do people bend the rules, and just how far should the government go in enforcing them?
This would have been five stars if the endings had been less tied up in a bow.
If the last year's have taught me anything, it is that women's voices, once called into question, don't recover. The witch doesn't make it back to her solitary hermitage, she will die in prison. If not for this one, for another. The teenager doesn't find the one clinic that doesn't maul her and take her entire college savings. The biographer never finishes her book. The mother never never leaves.
I just didn't buy the happy endings.
If the last year's have taught me anything, it is that women's voices, once called into question, don't recover. The witch doesn't make it back to her solitary hermitage, she will die in prison. If not for this one, for another. The teenager doesn't find the one clinic that doesn't maul her and take her entire college savings. The biographer never finishes her book. The mother never never leaves.
I just didn't buy the happy endings.
I read a lot of disappointed reviews about this book that it was like Handmaid's Tale, but Red Clocks is so much more than that -- if ANYTHING, it's pre-Handmaid's Tale, in the time when laws are just being passed banning + punishing abortion and the prohibiting single parents from adopting. And then you realize that this dystopian legislation is just another mode of subjugating women, which has been in practice for most of history. Nothing is different. The women (and girl) in this book learn in their own ways to PERSIST through the shit that brings you down, to take action against said shit in the ways that they can. It is a hopeful novel, with 5 female characters that are so fully formed, flawed, and realistic. This was a great buddy read, a story with a lot to unpack and celebrate.
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"Mash up a few berries and seeds and call it a solution. But what if it works? Thousands of years in the making, fine-tuned by women in the dark creases of history, helping each other."
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"Mash up a few berries and seeds and call it a solution. But what if it works? Thousands of years in the making, fine-tuned by women in the dark creases of history, helping each other."
I didn't love everything about this book, but I could have read another 400 pages, easily.