Red Clocks

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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? 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. This device of labelling the characters can feel both artificial and also in some ways counter productive and anti-feminist – implying that the characters are one-dimensional and largely defined by their family status.

But… while this has a powerful message, and occasionally beautiful writing, connecting to the characters and the story wasn’t always easy. This wasn’t so much an “enjoyable” read as one I appreciated the reminder of the ultimate cost of complacency. 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 Suddenly, a broad swath of people—both people who want to be parents and those who don't—have criminal inclinations or at very least are treated as an underclasss. Overall, I felt the book was more concept and writing than characters and narrative structure. It really depends on what you're looking for, but I would personally expect a book with this intriguing a premise to contain a strong emotional pull and more of a plot. Oh well. I'm sure similar novels will be on the way. Damn, I really wanted to love this book. The premise is obviously timely and appropriate, and the book had a lot of hype. But I just didn't care for it.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. Abortion, or the sudden illegality of it, is the novel’s grounding hypothesis, but it isn’t its primary focus. Zumas has written a work that’s preoccupied with what it means to live inside a woman’s body, and to exist in that body in a world that’s long viewed it with fear and unease. And to handle a biological imperative that seems sometimes incompatible with other ambitions. And to experience the myriad small humiliations and the pain of the body’s physical state. In the first scene, Ro is visiting a fertility specialist, described as “a room for women whose bodies are broken.” At 42, Ro is many things: a teacher, a daughter, a writer working on the biography of a 19th-century Faroese polar explorer called Eivør Mínervudottír. In the doctor’s office, though, she’s defined only by her failure to fulfill her “animal destiny,” and her “elderly pregravid” status as a patient. Ro tries repeatedly to understand why she wants so badly to be a mother, but it’s an impulse she can’t quantify, a desire she can’t rationalize.

The only people working their ass off - NOT COMPLACENT- were people fighting like hell to make ‘sure’ gays would ‘not’ be allowed to marry. It’s just so hard to believe our world could feel SO STRONG against women’s rights to the extremes presented in this book. In less than three months .. [the] Every Child Needs Two [law] takes affect .. Unmarried persons will be legally prohibited from adopting children. The lesson he just learned,” says the wife, “is that if he screams long enough, he’ll get what he wants.” Poetic and terrifying...You'll thrill to Zumas's well-crafted sentences, but prepare to get angry."I enjoyed Leni Zumas’ particular prose a whole lot and thought it added a nice layer of urgency and intimacy to an otherwise distant book. Her sentences are choppy but have a nice rhythm to them. Virginia Woolf’s “The Lighthouse” which provides the epigraph, the character’s (and town’s) names and inspired both the the seaside setting and the multi-voice approach

Wry and urgent, defiant and stylish, Zumas's braided tale follows the intertwined fates of four women whose lives this law irrevocably alters." 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 circled around this book for a long time, not wanting to read another dystopian breeder novel. But I eventually decided to try it, and I'm glad I did. Told through multiple perspectives (all female), this is a near future dystopia with very probably legislation that outlaws abortion, IVF, and adoption outside of straight married couples for the entire country. The female characters are known first as these new archetypes - the Mender, the Wife, the Biographer, the Daughter, etc. As the story unfolds we learn their names and stories from their chapters but also the chapters of others, and you start to see how their lives and stories interrelate. Two years ago the US Congress ratified the Personhood Amendment, which gives the constitutional right to life, liberty and property to a fertilised egg at the moment of conception. Abortion is now legal in all fifty states. Abortion is now illegal in all fifty states. Abortion providers can be charged with second degree murder, abortion seekers with conspiracy to commit murder. In vitro fertilisation is …federally banned …. 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 toilet

It was very raw. Not shy at all about challenging societal conventions. Zumas shows courage in bringing us this story. Other areas of personal interest that the author explores in the text (not always successfully) include: 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.