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A review by rae_swabey
Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed
5.0
Firstly, I need to put a trigger warning here. This is a disturbing book and contains child sexual abuse, so it won’t be for everyone.
It is, however, a powerful piece of writing, hugely compelling and affecting. A reviewer quoted on the cover describes it as ‘Handmaid’s Tale meets Lord of the Flies’ and that seems pretty on-the-money to me.
Gather the Daughters is set on an island, a couple of generations after some kind of apocalyptic event. The children grow up fast before being married off as teens, but every summer they’re set free on the island to run feral, covering themselves with mud to ward off mosquitoes, fighting and generally running amok.
The writing is gorgeous and by telling the story from the perspective of various girls on the island, Melamed creates an effect that’s both polyphonic and specific - it is very much the ‘daughters’’ point of view we get here, so, while the different narrators have their own individual takes, they are all subject to the similar forces of the highly prescribed role of their age and sex in this strange yet hauntingly familiar society.
It is that tension between familiarity and strangeness that makes this such a disturbing read. And there are other contradictions here too. This is a story that seems at the same time simple and complex. It is pacy and easy to read, but speaks to so many themes - loss of innocence, patriarchy, community, freedom, leadership, religion and belief, and what it means to live a fulfilling life - that it stayed with me long after I’d put it down. It has an allegorical quality that makes it seem timeless, but also seemed to me to speak to many contemporary concerns.
Thoroughly recommend this book, trigger warnings notwithstanding. An amazing story that had me absolutely gripped.
It is, however, a powerful piece of writing, hugely compelling and affecting. A reviewer quoted on the cover describes it as ‘Handmaid’s Tale meets Lord of the Flies’ and that seems pretty on-the-money to me.
Gather the Daughters is set on an island, a couple of generations after some kind of apocalyptic event. The children grow up fast before being married off as teens, but every summer they’re set free on the island to run feral, covering themselves with mud to ward off mosquitoes, fighting and generally running amok.
The writing is gorgeous and by telling the story from the perspective of various girls on the island, Melamed creates an effect that’s both polyphonic and specific - it is very much the ‘daughters’’ point of view we get here, so, while the different narrators have their own individual takes, they are all subject to the similar forces of the highly prescribed role of their age and sex in this strange yet hauntingly familiar society.
It is that tension between familiarity and strangeness that makes this such a disturbing read. And there are other contradictions here too. This is a story that seems at the same time simple and complex. It is pacy and easy to read, but speaks to so many themes - loss of innocence, patriarchy, community, freedom, leadership, religion and belief, and what it means to live a fulfilling life - that it stayed with me long after I’d put it down. It has an allegorical quality that makes it seem timeless, but also seemed to me to speak to many contemporary concerns.
Thoroughly recommend this book, trigger warnings notwithstanding. An amazing story that had me absolutely gripped.