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A review by writerrhiannon
Outlawed by Anna North
5.0
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
When I first saw Outlawed pop up on my radar in April 2020 I had just recently read Upright Women Wanted and I loved the idea of another queer Western novel. Where Upright Women Wanted is a near-future dystopia, Outlawed takes place in an alternate, late 19th century United States where a quasi-Christian religion values reproduction above all else.
"We had read Burton's Lessons of the Infant Jesus Christ every year since third form, so we had heard about how God sent the Great Flu to cleanse the world of evil, just like he'd sent the flood so many centuries before. We knew that baby Jesus had appeared to Mary of Texarkana after the sickness had killed nine of every ten men, women, and children from Boston to California, and struck a covenant with her: if those who remained were fruitful and peopled the world in His image, He would spare them further sickness, and they and their descendants forever after would be precious to Him."
Just as in our real world, the world of Outlawed is peopled with those who are not cis, heterosexual, and/or fertile, but if a person doesn't fall into these expected categories they are run out of town, hanged, and/or violently assaulted. Main protagonist, eighteen-year-old Ada has been accused of witchcraft due to her failure to become pregnant and accusations from the community are leading to whispers of her hanging. Sent out of town to a convent Ada begins to research the true reason behind barrenness (medical not religious *gasp*) and then risks a journey beyond the convent to seek out rare medical texts. When she comes upon the camp of The Hole in the Wall Gang, she realizes there is something different about these outlaws.
I loved that this novel integrated themes of mental and physical health, intersectional feminism, and opposition to patriarchal expectations but I did have a few problems with not mixing up the characters. I think this is due to the author's intention of showing how each character initially confuses Ada with their sexuality and demeanor. I also think that too many characters are introduced at a single time (when Ada meets The Whole in the Wall Gang) but they are not given enough descriptors to firmly establish each character in readers' minds. My advice is to take a few notes about the characters as you read.
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When I first saw Outlawed pop up on my radar in April 2020 I had just recently read Upright Women Wanted and I loved the idea of another queer Western novel. Where Upright Women Wanted is a near-future dystopia, Outlawed takes place in an alternate, late 19th century United States where a quasi-Christian religion values reproduction above all else.
"We had read Burton's Lessons of the Infant Jesus Christ every year since third form, so we had heard about how God sent the Great Flu to cleanse the world of evil, just like he'd sent the flood so many centuries before. We knew that baby Jesus had appeared to Mary of Texarkana after the sickness had killed nine of every ten men, women, and children from Boston to California, and struck a covenant with her: if those who remained were fruitful and peopled the world in His image, He would spare them further sickness, and they and their descendants forever after would be precious to Him."
Just as in our real world, the world of Outlawed is peopled with those who are not cis, heterosexual, and/or fertile, but if a person doesn't fall into these expected categories they are run out of town, hanged, and/or violently assaulted. Main protagonist, eighteen-year-old Ada has been accused of witchcraft due to her failure to become pregnant and accusations from the community are leading to whispers of her hanging. Sent out of town to a convent Ada begins to research the true reason behind barrenness (medical not religious *gasp*) and then risks a journey beyond the convent to seek out rare medical texts. When she comes upon the camp of The Hole in the Wall Gang, she realizes there is something different about these outlaws.
I loved that this novel integrated themes of mental and physical health, intersectional feminism, and opposition to patriarchal expectations but I did have a few problems with not mixing up the characters. I think this is due to the author's intention of showing how each character initially confuses Ada with their sexuality and demeanor. I also think that too many characters are introduced at a single time (when Ada meets The Whole in the Wall Gang) but they are not given enough descriptors to firmly establish each character in readers' minds. My advice is to take a few notes about the characters as you read.
Come chat with me about books here, too:
Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest