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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
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.
Thus far, my favourite book of 2018. I was lucky enough to meet Leni Zumas at Edinburgh Book Festival this August where she signed her book for me; I think I almost then put off reading it because I was scared it wouldn’t live up to expectations - however it did and more. Whilst I realise that there are connections with the work of Atwood in much of the current wave of writing on female experience , I feel this work very much stands on its own and has its own points to make. The characters here are living in an easily imaginable America , not far off into the future at all, where abortion is a criminal act and only couples can adopt. Just these two changes act as a catalyst for the exploration of female experience from different perspectives - wife, daughter, potential mother, ‘witch’ - and explore the question on the cover - ‘what is a woman for?’
The writing is clear and beautiful , and the characterisation is tender and memorable. So much of this book resonated with my own experiences and I will be thinking of this novel for a long time.
The writing is clear and beautiful , and the characterisation is tender and memorable. So much of this book resonated with my own experiences and I will be thinking of this novel for a long time.
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Lately it seems like people can't publish reproductive dystopian novels fast enough. So I had some trepidation in reading yet another one, having just finished Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God recently, and not really enjoying it at all. But I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. It's told from the perspective of the biographer, the wife, the daughter, and the mender, with inserts from the biographer's book about an Icelandic female explorer. The asides about the explorer are fascinating just by themselves, even if you don't take into account the parallels with the modern day story.
In a town in Oregon, the four women seem to be only vaguely aware of each other, until we learn more about all the ways they are connected. The biographer's sections are clearly the most interesting and most well-written. She is a single schoolteacher desperate for a child. And when I saw desperate, I mean desperate. There are laws in place banning abortion, banning IVF, and soon to be banning single parents from adopting children. The biographer is up against a lot and we are truly able to see into her thought process and how a person who on the outside appears to be put together can harbor some dangerous thoughts. I can't think of many books that go to the length that this one does to explore how a woman who wants a child but cannot have one feels.
The weaknesses in the book are pretty general, it can feel like a slog because the characters are never happy and are constantly whining and complaining and feeling immense self-pity. Not that self-pity isn't understandable given their circumstances, it just makes it difficult to read for a long period of time without feeling depressed.
I don't think Red Clocks is ever going to read the status of Handmaid's Tale, but it's a solid story with some new ideas introduced.
In a town in Oregon, the four women seem to be only vaguely aware of each other, until we learn more about all the ways they are connected. The biographer's sections are clearly the most interesting and most well-written. She is a single schoolteacher desperate for a child. And when I saw desperate, I mean desperate. There are laws in place banning abortion, banning IVF, and soon to be banning single parents from adopting children. The biographer is up against a lot and we are truly able to see into her thought process and how a person who on the outside appears to be put together can harbor some dangerous thoughts. I can't think of many books that go to the length that this one does to explore how a woman who wants a child but cannot have one feels.
The weaknesses in the book are pretty general, it can feel like a slog because the characters are never happy and are constantly whining and complaining and feeling immense self-pity. Not that self-pity isn't understandable given their circumstances, it just makes it difficult to read for a long period of time without feeling depressed.
I don't think Red Clocks is ever going to read the status of Handmaid's Tale, but it's a solid story with some new ideas introduced.
My thoughts on this are all jumbled up; I thought I would adore this and it is not a bad book by any means but it took me three months to finish this. I could just not get on board and I am not quite sure where my problems lie.
I love the plausibility of the world Leni Zumas has created here, it feels organic in a way that is scary and frustrating. Set in the not so distant future, reproductive rights have been severely limited: abortion is illegal in all and every circumstances (and in fact considered murder), in-vitro fertilization is unavailable, and soon adoption will only be possible for straight, married couples. Told from five different perspectives, Zumas shows the far-reaching consequences these changes to the law might have. Her world is plausible and aggrevating and often feels contemporary rather than speculative.
My main problem were the characters that often felt underdeveloped and not particularly fleshed-out. As they are often refered to by a descriptor (“the mother”, “the daughter” etc.) this was probably on purpose: these things that are happening do not happen to these women because of who they are but rather because of the way the social structure is set up. Intellectually, I get, emotionally, I did not care for their stories at all. There was a large chunk in the middle that did not work for me because of that distance. I do think that the storylines converged nicely in the end and that the character development if slight did work.
I enjoyed Leni Zumas’ particular prose a whole lot and thought it added a nice layer of urgency and intimacy to an otherwise distant book. Her sentences are choppy but have a nice rhythm to them.
I received an arc of this book courtesy of NetGalley and HarperCollins UK in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
I love the plausibility of the world Leni Zumas has created here, it feels organic in a way that is scary and frustrating. Set in the not so distant future, reproductive rights have been severely limited: abortion is illegal in all and every circumstances (and in fact considered murder), in-vitro fertilization is unavailable, and soon adoption will only be possible for straight, married couples. Told from five different perspectives, Zumas shows the far-reaching consequences these changes to the law might have. Her world is plausible and aggrevating and often feels contemporary rather than speculative.
My main problem were the characters that often felt underdeveloped and not particularly fleshed-out. As they are often refered to by a descriptor (“the mother”, “the daughter” etc.) this was probably on purpose: these things that are happening do not happen to these women because of who they are but rather because of the way the social structure is set up. Intellectually, I get, emotionally, I did not care for their stories at all. There was a large chunk in the middle that did not work for me because of that distance. I do think that the storylines converged nicely in the end and that the character development if slight did work.
I enjoyed Leni Zumas’ particular prose a whole lot and thought it added a nice layer of urgency and intimacy to an otherwise distant book. Her sentences are choppy but have a nice rhythm to them.
I received an arc of this book courtesy of NetGalley and HarperCollins UK in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
This book can only be summed up as...weird. BUT I enjoyed it! It takes place in a small town and mainly follows four, technically five, women who live in a world that can only be described as pre-Gilead. The characters were interesting (especially the Mender and the Biographer) and, once I got into it, I was hooked!