Red Clocks

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If she constructs a solid argument, he’ll be convinced.But then you’d actually have to go to counseling with him. It's a not entirely unlikely future scenario - hell we're already well underway with the cagily named "Heartbeat" rulings being pushed in several US states. In this, the darkest of timelines, abortion has become illegal. Those that provide abortion services can be charged with second degree murder and those seeking abortion can face significant jail time. In vitro fertilization is banned and legislation is being put into place demanding every child should have two parents. Disintegration and Reintegration: much of Gin’s medicine is harvested from the unburied body of the woman who raised her; when Eivør dies a passage of Ro’s biography speculates on how her body re-entered the food chain. I loved the interactions between the characters. How these characters see each other through their own wants and desires. How the childless Ro quietly seethes at the mother in Susan and yearns at the possibility in Mattie. Wrestling between her own self-interest and what Mattie needs. How Gin, the healer in the woods is understood by the women in the community. Those moments really shine for me.

Why could I stand to see the whales killed, but not the lambs?" - What makes us value one form of life over another? This question is interesting from many several angles and extends beyond the issue of reproductive rights. Dirt and decay: Susan is obsessed with a plastic bag she sees which she thinks might be a dying animal; when Susan has her final argument with her husband she falls to the floor and eats dirt; her husband is obsessed with (but not prepared to contribute to) cleaning hairs from the toiletThis is getting billed as a dystopian novel to cash in on Handmaid hysteria, but it's really not that much of a stretch from our current environment, given that abortion access is being so severely curtailed in many states. The leaders of Zumas' world, though, have taken it a step farther and banned in-vitro fertilization and are about to ban adoption by single parents. These three laws complicate the lives of four women in rural Oregon: Ro, an unmarried biographer and high school teacher desperate to have a child despite her potential infertility; Mattie, a teenager who is stunned and frightened to realize that she is pregnant; Susan, the unhappy housewife and mother of two ill-behaved young children; and Gin, a natural healer who is looked at with skepticism by the townspeople who think of her as a witch. Overall this was a much more complex book than I had expected – at times I think trying to do too much, but certainly impressive for its ambition. Life doesn’t feel super duper secure at the moment. So the best reason to read this book IMO... is to wake up our own complacency sluggishness. So I found it very useful to read in detail what the author said about this aspect of the book, which also brings out the autobiographical elements of the book:

We see this story unfold through the eyes of four women, The Biographer – Ro, who is writing a book about Eivør Mínervudottír, The Daughter – Mattie, a student, adopted, with dreams of attending an esteemed math school finds herself pregnant around the time her boyfriend has moved on to another girl, The Wife – Susan, whose thoughts are about her dissatisfaction with her life, her marriage, the distance she feels between what she has and what she wants, and The Mender – Gin, a woman who the townspeople think of as a bit of a hermit who might be a witch, a woman who lives alone in the forest and provides “cures” for ailments and assorted other troubles, for those who come seeking. I like the way that the story ties each woman into the story and the conections they have with each other. It shows the choices we make may mean the laying down of other choices- Babies verses having a career, being tied down to living in freedom, and accepting thoes choices or changing direction. THE BIOGRAPHER (Ro) - A forty-two-year-old high school teacher who desperately wants a child but her time is running out thinks to her own body and the government.

I enjoyed the novel’s unique structure including the interludes of the biographer’s novel. The character development is excellent. The more I read, slowly but surely, the more I became invested in each character. I love that you start out just knowing these women’s roles in society rather than their names, but over the course of the story, you learn who they are and how they connect to one another. THE MOTHER (Susan) - A frustrated stay-at-home mom in an unhappy marriage with an annoying husband. She was in law school when she got pregnant with her first child. She chose to fully immerse herself in motherhood, but now she's overwhelmed and needs a break. While all the laws in the US were changing, she was caught up in her own life. Her husband Didier works with Ro. Ro and Susan resent each other. When her Didier told his child to “Use your NPR voice, chouchou,” I knew these people were going to irritate me for the rest of the story! ;) It is very much present day, but examines how very different our society could be if just a couple of laws pertaining to female reproductive rights were changed; think alternative herstory.

In less than three months .. [the] Every Child Needs Two [law] takes affect .. Unmarried persons will be legally prohibited Witches – Gin’s trial is a modern version of a Salem Witch trials. Apparently at one stage pre-editing the link was going to be much stronger (with actual transcripts used) but even still I found some elements a little unbelievably given the near alternative future in which the world was set – for example a large part of the hostility to Gin seems to stem from her being blamed for the reappearance of some harmful-to-fishing seaweed. Opinion: Pregnant, and No Civil Rights (New York Times: 2014) Related to the creation of an unlikely class of criminals. The "i-would-nevers" sometimes find us in unexpected ways. Abortion is an understandably emotional issue, but it's important to objectively think about all the implications of laws. Are the trade-offs worth it? Are there better ways to reach the intended goals? In addition Canada has agreed to the Pink Wall – and actively tries to seek out and detain Americans seeking abortions (including carrying out pregnancy tests on unaccompanied minors) You may not like all these woman or agree with their actions but it is hard not to love how Zumas wrote these characters. She has a fantastic way with description and voice, its at once humorous and deeply despairing. The writing is quite lyrical and the way the story is told may not be to everyone's taste, it is quite an eclectic mixture of reproductive biology, herbal remedies, polar exploration, boiled puffin recipes and one too many pubic hairs.The effects of complacency and selfishness -Our own selfish wants or being caught up in our own lives can cause us to betray or forget our values. So much of what happened in this story happened not because most wanted it it, but because the majority was disengaged. Remain steadfast meaningful action. retreat into our own lives