Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by litdoes
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
3.0
What happens if the States were to ban abortions, make it harder for people to adopt, and outlaw in vitro fertilisation, and insist on two parents as the only legitimate model for a family? These are the questions this novel addresses, focusing on 4 women who live in a small Oregon town, and they are all named by the roles they play: the Biographer, the Wife, the Daughter, and the Mender. It takes a while for the reader to see how they are related to one another, and it may seem like a frustrating narrative device to make the reader work harder at first. But Zumas is making a statement about the reductive way individuals are nailed to certain labels, when they are so much more than that, and it is through the unfolding of each of their intertwined narratives that we become aware of their multi-faceted personalities.
For a dystopian novel, the ordinariness of the characters’ world is underlined by the natural way in which personal rights are wrested without much drama, and the chillingly wide acceptance of the way things are. That arguably makes it even more terrifying. There are no huge displays of political hegemony or the threat of mass violence in any way, save for the domestic kind, and even that is related indirectly and recounted as part of a minor character’s story. The individual dramas of the Biographer and the Wife, for instance, are to do with loneliness, personal fulfilment, the pursuit of happiness in a deadened marriage, and career woes, all very realistic and by no means unimportant issues in and of themselves.
As character studies, Zumas does more than an able job at keeping us interested in her four leads, but as a novel with larger aspirations (if that is what it is meant to achieve), somehow the issues touted never quite come to the fore, beyond individual drama. And for a large part of it, they lie within the internal mindscape of these characters, save for the daughter’s foray beyond the borders to good old Canada to terminate her pregnancy, but even that is more of a little flub than a climactic event.
An enjoyable enough novel in its own right, but comparing it with a groundbreaking work like “The Handmaid’s Tale”, like how it’s being marketed, may be stretching it a little.
For a dystopian novel, the ordinariness of the characters’ world is underlined by the natural way in which personal rights are wrested without much drama, and the chillingly wide acceptance of the way things are. That arguably makes it even more terrifying. There are no huge displays of political hegemony or the threat of mass violence in any way, save for the domestic kind, and even that is related indirectly and recounted as part of a minor character’s story. The individual dramas of the Biographer and the Wife, for instance, are to do with loneliness, personal fulfilment, the pursuit of happiness in a deadened marriage, and career woes, all very realistic and by no means unimportant issues in and of themselves.
As character studies, Zumas does more than an able job at keeping us interested in her four leads, but as a novel with larger aspirations (if that is what it is meant to achieve), somehow the issues touted never quite come to the fore, beyond individual drama. And for a large part of it, they lie within the internal mindscape of these characters, save for the daughter’s foray beyond the borders to good old Canada to terminate her pregnancy, but even that is more of a little flub than a climactic event.
An enjoyable enough novel in its own right, but comparing it with a groundbreaking work like “The Handmaid’s Tale”, like how it’s being marketed, may be stretching it a little.