Red Clocks

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The bulk of the book is set in a small Oregon coastal town and told from the alternating third party viewpoint of four characters – who in their own chapters are given a label but who are named in the other characters’ chapters. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the shrill funk of an elderly cheese and one being no odor at all, how would he rank the smell of the biographer's vagina? How does it compare with the other vaginas barreling through this exam room, day in, day out, years of vaginas, a crowd of vulvic ghosts? Plenty of women don't shower beforehand, or are battling a yeast, or just happen naturally to stink in the nethers. Kalbfleisch has sniffed some ripe tangs in his time. To be honest ... I’ve signed more petitions this year - for justice in our world .. than many years past. 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.

I have to assume the emotional distance is intentional. Zumas refers to the four main characters as "The Biographer" (Ro), "The Wife" (Susan), "The Daughter" (Mattie) and "The Mender" (Gin), with the fifth perspective being that of fictional explorer, Eivør Minervudottir, who "The Biographer" is writing a book about.She was placed on the adoption wait-list three years ago. In her parent profile she earnestly and meticulously described her job, her apartment, her favorite books, her parents, her brother (drug addiction omitted), and the fierce beauty of Newville. She uploaded a photograph that made her look friendly but responsible, fun loving but stable, easygoing but upper middle class. The coral-pink cardigan she bought to wear in this photo she later threw into the clothing donation bin outside the church. The women in this suspenseful book resist.They will not be circumscribed. The effect on the reader is cathartic.” I went to find this book review for a news article link, but the entire review had been wiped! Maybe it was too long? I pieced it together again from Netgalley and a draft with quotes. I'm going to try to put my link section in the comments instead)

And this comes out strongly in the book – for example Ro and Susan have a mutually suspicious and judgemental relationship; Ro struggles when Mattie asks for her assistance, desperately wanting to suggest that she pays Mattie to deliver the baby for her to secretly adopt despite Mattie’s clear wish to terminate the pregnancy; Gin’s relationship to Mattie is even more nuanced. The structure of the novel is basically perfect. The four women in the book all have lives centered around the central system of the female sex: its ability to bear children. It is the thing that has made patriarchal culture what it is, but it is also something that women have reclaimed and found joy and identity in as feminism has evolved. The way these women relate to pregnancy, birth, abortion, and childrearing stands in stark contrast to one another, but they all felt real and personally relevant. That Zumas allows them to be so different, to envy and dislike each other for their differences, and leaves it all without comment, without choosing any one character to be a moral highground or an arbiter of what is good, is another thing I liked about it so much. The book stays zoomed in on these women's lives, letting us see how they intertwine and react. It doesn't try to make a bigger statement, which is why it makes such an effective statement. 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.Ro is also of course the writer of these biographical inserts which: function as a story in their own right (see comments above); serve as an overarching metaphor (women trying so survive in an icy and hostile environment); and often have small, immediate parallels with the preceding or following chapters (as an example Gin’s male lawyer studied with Gin – and may even have had a relationship with her, just like the speculation around Eivør and the Scottish scientist – and his breakthrough in the trail is suggested to him by Gin but not credited to her). She was just quietly teaching history when it happened. Woke up one morning to a president-elect she hadn’t voted for.”

I could go on, and on, and on, and on about this book, but really the most important thing I can say is that this is now an all-time favorite. It is absolutely brilliant, and I expect to see it not only on "Best Books of the Year" lists, but also "Best Books of the Decade." It's that good. And yet, what makes this novel popular is the fear that this little freedom will soon go away. In real life. Enter into a novel about vaginas. Names are missing because it's popular to write about real people as only their roles. Fourthly by the wide (perhaps too wide) range of influences and ideas the author brings to the book. 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. My perception was that it was a dystopian and political novel – very much in the spirit of The Handmaid's Tale (or The Power).I liked the characters. The majority of these women were interesting, and it held my curiosity. However, I do think the setting of the story could have been better. For instance, it could have been set in the present day. There are so many people that are physically unable to have children naturally and who are also turned away from adopting any children. And, there is still a terrible stigma present, if a woman of a certain religion, or social group, wishes to get an abortion.