While this had an interesting premise and this would normally be the genre and type of story that I would like, I couldn't get into this at all. I really disliked the writing and the glibness of this. I'm sure this will be a bit hit, but it was too satirical for me.

Four young siblings learn of a special 'seer' in their neighborhood, an old woman who can tell them their future, specifically to impart to them the day they will die. Each child hears this date alone, and must live with the consequences of knowing their future and thus the story begins. As the tale unfolds, we follow each of the four children in singularity: Simon, a young gay man, as he heads to San Francisco in the early 1980's; Klara, a free spirit who dreams of becoming a magician; Daniel, the oldest boy in their Jewish family, working towards 'normalcy;' and Varya, the eldest child, career biologist, with deeper secrets than anyone ever knew. This is a strange yet extraordinarily compelling book. Often, I did not care for the characters - their habits, their life choices, their relationships. Yet I could not put this book down. It brings up provocative themes and ideas: how would one live their life if their day of death was foretold? Do we owe it to ourselves to fulfill our life's dream? Or do we owe loyalty to our families? Is being selfish wrong or is it fulfilling our passion? The Immortalists would be an incredibly provocative choice for a book club, eliciting some fascinating and powerful conversation.

The writing style didn't work for me--I didn't finish this.

Following in the footsteps of The Handmaid's Tale and The Power, Red Clocks will make you think, make you feel, make you angry, and give you the fuel you need to keep fighting back against those who would see women returned to a time where their rights and autonomy did not exist. A powerful must-read for 2018.

There are two things that changed the playing field for women in the United States: the pill and Roe v. Wade. These two things made it possible for women to chose when or if we would get pregnant. This is not the case for most of the women in Leni Zumas’ moving, gut-wrenching novel, Red Clocks. In this book, abortion and in-vitro fertilization are banned, the Pink Wall prevents women from getting these procedures in Canada, and only married heterosexuals are allowed to adopt. Red Clocks takes a bold look at what might happen when the choice to get pregnant or adopt or legally end a pregnancy is taken away.

The novel rotates between four female characters (and another who appears in one character’s manuscript) who all live in the same small Oregon town. Over and over, this book asks us to think about what it means to bear and raise a child—and what it means to make the choice to become a mother in the first place. We see their anger, regret, hopelessness, weariness, and occasional motherly love as their stories progress.The four women’s live intersect here and there, but the contrasts between their varied experiences are more important than these tangential connections.

Our first narrator, Ro Stephens, is a 42 year old history teacher who desperately wants to be a mother. Her age and a diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome mean that it is virtually impossible for her to have a biological child. As a single woman, she can’t adopt in this alternate America either. Ro is contrasted with Mathilda, a fifteen year old who accidentally gets pregnant after uninspired sex with her boyfriend. She can’t bear to tell her parents and she’s absolutely terrified of what might happen if anyone finds out. Where Ro very much wants a child, Mathilda wants to be not pregnant now, thank you very much.

We also get to meet Susan, a mother of two who is fed up with her childish husband. Susan had plans to be a lawyer when she got pregnant and married her husband. Now she has two kids and is not coping well with being shanghaied into life as a housewife. Meanwhile, Gin is living a comfortably solitary life on the outskirts of town as a practical witch and unofficial healer. When she was pregnant, years ago, she gave up her child for adoption. Unlike the other women, Gin has no regrets but she’s curious about the child she gave up.

I identified most with Ro, because I am almost her age and I am incapable of having a child. (Unlike Ro, I am thrilled about this.) But I worried about all of the women in this book because they all felt as trapped as an animal in a snare. The tension just keeps ratcheting up as Mathilda comes up against the end of her first trimester, Ro approaches the deadline of a new law that will prevent her from adopting, Gin goes on trial after being accused of trying to help a women have an abortion, and Susan starts to come up with disturbing ways to end her marriage.

I suspect Red Clocks will appeal most to women, not just because women tend to bear the brunt of parenthood in our society. It’s is a very female book, full of references to ovaries, eggs, blood, cramps, pubic hair, and vaginal smells. Because of this, it felt very intimate to me because it contains so many things that most women keep to themselves or only reveal to their closest friends. This intimacy, for me, gave additional weight to the truth at the heart of this book: that being a mother should be a personal choice, not a trap.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 16 January 2018.

I guess we can probably expect more of these weird feminist(?) dystopias in the wake of The Handmaid's Tale's Hulu series. Between this and the superhero-movie-turned-superhero-book trend, you can pretty much predict the new book trends based on what's popular on the big and small screens.

Here, Zumas imagines a United States where the Personhood Amendment gives rights to unborn embryos, outlawing abortion and IVF (because said embryos cannot give consent). The Canadian government assist by erecting a figurative "Pink Wall" across the U.S.-Canadian border, meaning that they will capture and return any woman suspected of crossing the border for an abortion or IVF.

It sounded fascinating to me. Given the political climate in the U.S. and the fervor of pro-life advocates, it is not a particularly implausible scenario. But, unfortunately, the amount of "literary" frills in Red Clocks made it almost impossible to enjoy (maybe that isn't the right word, but you know what I'm saying).

It is such a painfully cerebral read, and it feels to me like a book of this kind has the greatest impact when you are pulled deep into the lives and horrors of the characters, not viewing them through a distant lens. 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.

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.

Each of the main four are dealing with womanhood issues that are threatened by the new laws. Ro's perspective is easily the most palatable, though we still have to sit through a vaginal exam that unfolds like this:

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.


Yum.

Ro is trying desperately to conceive before a new law is introduced banning single parent families. Susan is something of a cliche depressed housewife, struggling with the dissatisfaction of staying home. Mattie is a teenager, pregnant, and unsure of what to do. Gin provides herbal remedies for abortion, amongst other things, and is the modern-day equivalent of a witch under the new amendment.

Zumas experiments with different styles that change as we jump from one character to another. The narrative is fractured and messy - definitely more about experimental writing than telling a compelling and/or important story. I appreciate that this will be better suited to the kind of reader I am not.

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.

Continuing my habit of reading feminist dystopian fiction with this one—set in the near future, in a world where the US has finally granted personhood to fetuses, this story focuses on four women in a small town in Oregon. Obviously I found some of these women more compelling than others, but it was interesting to see them through each other's eyes. I think Zumas is a very fine writer, this is a very well done book, and I eagerly await whatever she does next. A-.

This book blew me away. Zumas attacks the patriarchy with a subtle and devastating blow. The writing is beautifully simple and the stories are interwoven to reveal each of the characters' truths. I will be recommending this as one of the best books I've read this year.

Hardcover edit
Review I couldn't finish this one. I'm disappointed because I liked the premise. I thought it was very hard to get into.

Free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

DNF due to excessive descriptive wording and confusing multiple POVs. The story was hard to follow.

Thank You Net Galley for the free ARC.

In a conservative America, Roe vs. Wade is overturned, the personhood amendment passes, there is a "pink" wall preventing pregnant teenagers from entering Canada in order to get an abortion and all families must consist of two heterosexual parents. The story definitely plays on current sentiments and shows an alternative society that allows little deviation from the "norm". The main characters are dealing with each of those issues from their own perspective. Well done.

“Everyone wants charms, but thirty-two years on earth have convinced the mender charms are purely for show.”

In this novel, abortion is illegal, in-vitro fertilization is banned and soon single people won’t be allowed to adopt. The Personhood Ammendment grants rights to embryos (that cannot possibly give permission to be born) and desperate women seek help, anywhere they can. For some, it is in the hands of the mender (Gin). Gin, the forest dwelling healer, understands roots and herbs, how women used nature for centuries for healing and ridding themselves of unwanted ‘problems’. But there is a witch hunt built on lies, and it’s illegal to help women end their pregnancies. Is it also illegal to save women from brutal abuse?

Ro is a high school teacher, single and desperate to have a child of her own. The ideal partner hasn’t materialized, and pretty soon her options will run out as it will no longer be legal for her, as a would be single mother, to have a child legally. She is struggling too with fertility, trying to get pregnant before the laws change. Gin may be able to help her with her fertility or hormones or something, certainly the doctor she’s been seeing for treatment isn’t doing such a hot job! Her friends ( Didier and Susan) live the high life, a beautiful big home (Ro doesn’t envy them that), children but they are convinced Ro needs a partner. They are an example, children need both parents, and who will Ro turn to when she needs help, child-rearing can be rough! But for Susan, it may well be time for she and Didier to be ‘single’ again, there is a fault line in their marriage that she isn’t sure she can ignore any longer. Susan is disenchanted with her life, numb with the demands being a mother and wife make on her. Mattie is a young high school student, adopted by wonderful parents who certainly would not be proud to discover their cherished daughter is pregnant. Her boyfriend is useless, and she is desperate for a solution, her last resort may be in the hands of the odd witch, Gin. There is so much more to Gin than Mattie understands, and they may be more alike than she could have ever guessed. But her plan to save herself may come undone when Gin is arrested, and the fates of the women are tied. Gin tries to protect another woman, one who may well have turned on her with bitter lies. Everything is in chaos when the mender is locked up, who will the women turn to now? Maybe each-other.

Gin (the mender) is my favorite character. I can’t help it, I fancy stories about healers, forest dwellers, heck- throw some mountain fiction my way and I am happy. Before the sterilization of medicine, women turned to women for healing, not just for birthing or ending pregnancies but also for herbs/root medicine to treat illnesses (feminine and otherwise). People will debate this until they are blue, because each feels their truth is all that matters. But this is a provocative novel, because it raises a lot of questions that can lead to a healthy debate, and likely some unhealthy ones too. What happens when women have nowhere to turn? It’s not just about physical health, it’s spiritual too. You cannot separate the two. It’s interesting, Ro is desperate to be a mother, while young Mattie would give anything not to be and Susan is drained by it all.

This doesn’t just touch on abortion, but in Ro (who is writing a biography of Eivør, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer) it expresses the limits society’s laws on women’s health would put on so many lives. Ro, with the clock ticking, may never know motherhood. Where would we put all the young criminals, that seek to end unwanted pregnancies, if they were lucky enough to survive ending them? As Ro gives snippets of the explorer’s life, it’s easy to see how much she admires her bravery. “Eivør Minervudottir did things she wasn’t supposed to. Took plunges.” Ro is opposed to the traditional way of things, and hates that you must have romantic companionship to be seen as whole, to be approved for motherhood. The new laws as they stand don’t leave room for those who shirk the traditional family setting. It’s strange that women in this novel are in some ways as limited now as they were in Eivør’s time.

There is a disjointed feel to the novel in the first chapter or so, but it flows and comes together if you stick with it. I was curious about the novel but didn’t think I would enjoy it nearly as much as I did. Again, it’s the mender who drew me in deeply but each character’s perception is vital to the novel. It’s not simply about the freedom of choices, it’s also about how women are hemmed in, limited. Told in alternating views, Mattie shares the tormented mind of a young pregnant teenager hunting for a solution. Ro expresses the hopelessness of a grown woman who simply wants to be a mother without all the trimmings of a traditional family. Susan exposes the stresses of a frazzled, harried life of a mother and wife who no longer has much faith in her husband, and longs to free herself. Gin is the mender who just wants to live her life without being harassed, healing women who need her and maybe herself included.

A surprising gem of a forth-coming novel.

This will be published in January, add it to your reading pile! I will revisit it when it’s released.

Publication Date: January 16, 2018

Little, Brown and Company

Lee Boudreaux Books

i went into this book with high hopes it would reflect The Handmaid's Tale, and its author may very well have hoped the same. alas, the good idea was poorly executed. the narrative jumps around too much, characters are weakly drawn, plot unevenly developed.
perhaps my expectations were too high. The Handmaid's Tale has stayed with me for 30 years