Red Clocks

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This ambivalence, I think, is part of the reason I gave the five characters such different relationships to motherhood.

It's probably very forward and front-looking and experimental and feminist and corresponds to a bunch of other buzz-words, still it's incomprehensible. The most obvious repercussion of this is that abortion is now illegal, but Zumas dives deep into the actual implications of such an amendment. Women like Gin become de facto healthcare providers, offering remedies that Ro describes as being “thousands of years in the making, fine-tuned by women in the dark creases of history, helping each other.She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is Director of Creative Writing at Portland State University. Red Clocks would be a horror story for many women, including myself, and yet I felt so emotionally-distanced from the story and all four (or you could say five) perspectives. The only tweak Zumas has made is that in the world of her book abortion has been criminalized in the U. It puts their lives in danger, wrongfully incarcerates them and subtly pits them against each other. Or does the desire come from some creaturely place, pre-civilized, some biological throb that floods her bloodways with the message Make more of yourself!

What this all builds into is a thoughtful, complicated picture of womanhood—and a fierce argument for individual choice. It's who we are, we are woman and we are important, we need to encourage each other and support each other through the ups and downs in our lives.Ro also likes to make lists and one of the most emotional ones is "Accusations from the World," where she details all the baggage society saddles her with because of her personal choices. The novel follows the perspectives of four different women, plus a fifth historical perspective, who are all loosely connected to one another. In the world of Red Clocks, the same administration that’s criminalized abortion has also outlawed IVF, since fertilized eggs can’t give their consent to be moved from laboratory to uterus.

Bridles designed for women’s bodies are already hanging in legislators’ barns, just waitiI was thinking a lot about the narratives women inherit about motherhood, marriage, professional ambition, purpose in life—and how these narratives are not great for many of us. The Handmaid's Tale is so much more coherent and engaging and introducing the reader to the complications of a world gone horrible. Honestly, the book is more conceptual than story-driven, and I think that focus made me less interested in what was going on.

The reality Zumas conceives is much like the reality of any society where abortion is outlawed: Deprived of options, women go to increasingly desperate and unsafe lengths to end their pregnancies.The book starts (and is threaded) with excerpts from a work-in-progress biography of a (fictional) 19th century Icelandic female polar explorer and scientist Eivør Mínervudottír who has to fight against a hostile environment – both literally and figuratively (she can only get her ideas publicised by giving them to a male Scottish scientist and adopts his identity to get a place on the expedition; at one stage her revolutionary observations on ice packs are dismissed out of hand by her captain who claims she will soon be spotting ice fairies; next her male companions believe narwahles are unicorns). I had heard about this novel as part of the speculation leading up to the 2018 Women’s Prize – and was surprised not to see it longlisted.