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A review by mediaevalmuse
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
4.0
I put this book on my TBR list after Roe was overturned in the United States, and I’m only now getting around to reading it. When I did pick it up, I finished it in the span of one day, and that’s perhaps due to a number of things I liked: the short, vignette-style chapters; the lush, evocative prose; the sympathetic yet flawed inner lives of the protagonists. There are things I feel like I can criticize - such as the lackluster story of the female Arctic explorer - but overall, this was a well-written novel that really resonated with me as a reader interested in reproductive rights. Thus, it gets 4 stars from me.
Writing: Zumas’ prose is very literary in that it combines lyrical descriptions with a kind of experimental, loose structure. Some readers may be put off by this style, but personally, I found it incredible engaging and it held my interest, perhaps because I find the topic of reproductive rights more meaningful when driven by emotional, human stories (as opposed to debates about power and statistics). Zumas has an incredible talent for writing emotion, and I felt like I could understand what each character was experiencing without being told “XYZ happened” and “this character did this.”
I do think, however, that the little snippets of the life of the Arctic explorer, Eivør, were under-developed. These snippets occur between each chapter, and most are only a few lines or a paragraph. While I do think they added to the tone and setting of the novel, they didn’t really do much for me in terms of the themes of the book. If Eivør had been another character in her own right or her life was much more strongly about rejecting motherhood, I think it would have fit in better, but as it stands, the snippets felt a bit like filler.
Plot: The plot of this book follows four women in a small Oregon fishing town as they try to navigate issues of motherhood and womanhood in a world where abortion, IVF, and adoption by single parents have been banned. Over the course of the novel, we watch Ro (a single woman in her 40s) struggle to conceive a child using artificial insemination; Susan, a mother of two who is trapped in an unhappy marriage; Mattie, a teenager faced with an unwanted pregnancy; and Gin, a “witch” who lives on her own and distributes remedies to the local women.
Zumas seems less interested in telling the reader what happens than she is showing the reader various impressions of the protagonists’ emotions, and personally, I liked it better than your traditional dystopian novel. Zumas doesn’t put power and government at the center of these women’s lives, but instead focuses on their inner lives and what challenges they face in a post-Roe world.
As a result, this book perhaps hits a little differently today than it would have at the time of publication. Reading it in 2022, the “dystopian” elements are less a product of imagination and more a reflection of the very real reproductive rollbacks we’ve been seeing in the United States. The “Pink Curtain,” for example, calls to mind the recent discussions surrounding restricting women to travel for abortions; the claim that less abortions would mean more available babies for adoption - while seemingly farfetched in the novel - was actually said by a US lawmaker this past year. All in all, the scary similarity to today’s world makes this book feel less “speculative” than something like The Handmaid’s Tale, and perhaps that’s why I took to it so readily.
Characters: There are quite a few characters in this book, so for the purposes of this review, I’m going to focus on our four protagonists: Ro, Susan, Mattie, and Gin.
Ro was incredibly sympathetic in that she was desperate to have a child and was irritated by all the judgments put on her regarding her age, marital status, and income. Reading her perspective made me understand how earth-shattering it could be for one’s life to go in an unexpected direction, and I think her story was an important look at what a post-Roe world would mean for (potential) mothers who were not your typical young, married, upper-middle class white women. I did get annoyed by her when she began to feel resentful of Mattie’s pregnancy, and I got the sense that she was almost entitled at a certain point - but this was a very real and understandable flaw that doesn’t necessarily come from a place of rationality, and it made Ro a bit more realized as a character.
Susan was also sympathetic in that she was presented as both a loving parent and a parent who felt trapped by her kids and her marriage. Reading her perspective illuminated the pressure that many women feel to present themselves as devoted wives and mothers, and after reading about how Susan’s husband is absolutely useless, I was rooting for her to find some happiness away from her family. Susan also has some flaws in that she can be judgmental - especially of Ro - but again, it’s a very human flaw, and though I might be irritated as a reader, it also meant that Susan felt like a real person.
Mattie was perhaps the perspective that tugged at my heartstrings the most. At age fifteen, she gets pregnant and seeks an abortion, going so far as to attempt to escape to Canada and avoid arrest when visiting underground, unregulated providers. Her perspective was filled with fear, and I think it would be hard to look at someone like Mattie and tell her to just have the baby - so much was at stake, including Mattie’s future, and I desperately wanted her to be okay in the end.
Gin was a very intriguing perspective in that her role as the “village healer” was an interesting callback to the days when women’s local knowledge was in conflict with male institutionalized knowledge. Gin seemed to have a cure for any ailment, including unwanted pregnancies, and her failure to finish school just hammers home the gap between knowledge and education, as well as the history of women taking care of other women. But what I really liked about Gin was her rejection of the “normal” world and her insistence on living her life on her own terms. Even in her more grumpy and eccentric moments, I took a liking to her, and I think her trial was an important lynchpin that tied many of the book’s narratives together.
TL;DR: Red Clocks is a eerily prescient look at a post-Roe America, focusing on four very distinct women as they navigate the nebulous category that is “womanhood.” While the prose style and organization might not be to every reader’s taste, I think the more impressionistic look at a post-Roe world makes for a great emotional impact, and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the effect that a rollback on reproductive rights might have on individuals.
Writing: Zumas’ prose is very literary in that it combines lyrical descriptions with a kind of experimental, loose structure. Some readers may be put off by this style, but personally, I found it incredible engaging and it held my interest, perhaps because I find the topic of reproductive rights more meaningful when driven by emotional, human stories (as opposed to debates about power and statistics). Zumas has an incredible talent for writing emotion, and I felt like I could understand what each character was experiencing without being told “XYZ happened” and “this character did this.”
I do think, however, that the little snippets of the life of the Arctic explorer, Eivør, were under-developed. These snippets occur between each chapter, and most are only a few lines or a paragraph. While I do think they added to the tone and setting of the novel, they didn’t really do much for me in terms of the themes of the book. If Eivør had been another character in her own right or her life was much more strongly about rejecting motherhood, I think it would have fit in better, but as it stands, the snippets felt a bit like filler.
Plot: The plot of this book follows four women in a small Oregon fishing town as they try to navigate issues of motherhood and womanhood in a world where abortion, IVF, and adoption by single parents have been banned. Over the course of the novel, we watch Ro (a single woman in her 40s) struggle to conceive a child using artificial insemination; Susan, a mother of two who is trapped in an unhappy marriage; Mattie, a teenager faced with an unwanted pregnancy; and Gin, a “witch” who lives on her own and distributes remedies to the local women.
Zumas seems less interested in telling the reader what happens than she is showing the reader various impressions of the protagonists’ emotions, and personally, I liked it better than your traditional dystopian novel. Zumas doesn’t put power and government at the center of these women’s lives, but instead focuses on their inner lives and what challenges they face in a post-Roe world.
As a result, this book perhaps hits a little differently today than it would have at the time of publication. Reading it in 2022, the “dystopian” elements are less a product of imagination and more a reflection of the very real reproductive rollbacks we’ve been seeing in the United States. The “Pink Curtain,” for example, calls to mind the recent discussions surrounding restricting women to travel for abortions; the claim that less abortions would mean more available babies for adoption - while seemingly farfetched in the novel - was actually said by a US lawmaker this past year. All in all, the scary similarity to today’s world makes this book feel less “speculative” than something like The Handmaid’s Tale, and perhaps that’s why I took to it so readily.
Characters: There are quite a few characters in this book, so for the purposes of this review, I’m going to focus on our four protagonists: Ro, Susan, Mattie, and Gin.
Ro was incredibly sympathetic in that she was desperate to have a child and was irritated by all the judgments put on her regarding her age, marital status, and income. Reading her perspective made me understand how earth-shattering it could be for one’s life to go in an unexpected direction, and I think her story was an important look at what a post-Roe world would mean for (potential) mothers who were not your typical young, married, upper-middle class white women. I did get annoyed by her when she began to feel resentful of Mattie’s pregnancy, and I got the sense that she was almost entitled at a certain point - but this was a very real and understandable flaw that doesn’t necessarily come from a place of rationality, and it made Ro a bit more realized as a character.
Susan was also sympathetic in that she was presented as both a loving parent and a parent who felt trapped by her kids and her marriage. Reading her perspective illuminated the pressure that many women feel to present themselves as devoted wives and mothers, and after reading about how Susan’s husband is absolutely useless, I was rooting for her to find some happiness away from her family. Susan also has some flaws in that she can be judgmental - especially of Ro - but again, it’s a very human flaw, and though I might be irritated as a reader, it also meant that Susan felt like a real person.
Mattie was perhaps the perspective that tugged at my heartstrings the most. At age fifteen, she gets pregnant and seeks an abortion, going so far as to attempt to escape to Canada and avoid arrest when visiting underground, unregulated providers. Her perspective was filled with fear, and I think it would be hard to look at someone like Mattie and tell her to just have the baby - so much was at stake, including Mattie’s future, and I desperately wanted her to be okay in the end.
Gin was a very intriguing perspective in that her role as the “village healer” was an interesting callback to the days when women’s local knowledge was in conflict with male institutionalized knowledge. Gin seemed to have a cure for any ailment, including unwanted pregnancies, and her failure to finish school just hammers home the gap between knowledge and education, as well as the history of women taking care of other women. But what I really liked about Gin was her rejection of the “normal” world and her insistence on living her life on her own terms. Even in her more grumpy and eccentric moments, I took a liking to her, and I think her trial was an important lynchpin that tied many of the book’s narratives together.
TL;DR: Red Clocks is a eerily prescient look at a post-Roe America, focusing on four very distinct women as they navigate the nebulous category that is “womanhood.” While the prose style and organization might not be to every reader’s taste, I think the more impressionistic look at a post-Roe world makes for a great emotional impact, and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the effect that a rollback on reproductive rights might have on individuals.