What a time to read this novel. This dystopian novel has women limited to only 100 words a day, in present time. A part of America decided that women belonged at home, quiet and abiding by their husbands, while the men work. Some of the similarities with the conservative thinking in the US gave me chills, and it didn't seem that far from reality.

The "Pure" religious movement takes over and it is terrifying. Women are fitted with a counter that sends violent electric pulses for any words spoken over 100. Despite all the signs, everyone assumed 'this could never happen to us', which again feels similar to the state of the world today.

I found this book to be thrilling and couldn't put it down. It was an easy read in terms of getting through the book, but it was difficult to read what can happen we stand as quiet bystanders when the world is changing.

I received a copy of this book, free of charge, from #netgalley and Berkley Publishing as a host of a chapter of the Girly Book Club.

Thank you, Berkley, for our gifted review copy.

Wow. Fans of The Handmaid's Tale need to get going on Vox- for real. This one infuriated me, made me uncomfortable & I wanted to scream.

While I'm not a fan of the dystopian genre, this one was all too real to me in a world where women continue to be stripped of their rights. It's a slippery slope and this book gives insight into that.

Definitely a great book club pick.

I expected this book to be an uplifting story about women rising up, but instead it was more of a thriller about one woman who wasn't very likeable. That isn't always a bad thing, but in this case, it is. I'd like this premise to be rewritten as a better book. Harsh, but real. This book just didn't seem to be about what it said it would be about, and I couldn't get into it.

Really interesting concept and terrifyingly plausible in the current socio-political climate. While I wish the affair sub-plot had been less of a focus, or left out all together, I’d still recommend VOX highly.

The writing is good, but I just couldn't get into this one, I'm sorry. The world is headed towards dystopia already, and with a grim reality, I couldn't find escape in a grim fiction.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. The concept of limiting words and moving towards a society of domesticity is fascinating. I felt many feelings while reading - happiness, sadness, anger and really cared about each and every character, especially as they developed through the course of the book. There were some twists at the end that I didn't see coming and I loved that. The only thing stopping me from giving this book five stars is that the ending wrapped up too quickly and left me wanting more details. I would recommend this book.

March's Girly Book Club choice was considered a hit by most of our group. That hasn't happened in a while but it was agreed that it was one of the best books we have read since our group joined last January.

In political times like what we currently have it touched some nerves to imagine living in a society where women would be relegated back to taking care of the home and then being allowed to speak 100 words. We talked about how some of us would handle that. I couldn't even pretend I could work with 100 words, i'd be in trouble really quickly.

We also had our first virtual meeting and I really enjoyed it. So grateful for the ability to still meet and discuss the books we are reading and check in on each other!

Extremely thought provoking.. imagine only being able to say 100 words a day. No sign language, writing or any alternatives allowed. Quick and easy read. Somewhat rushed ending, but overall got me thinking outside the box about basic everyday rights. Would recommend to anyone with the above disclaimers. Look forward to the authors next book.

The author's note states that she wrote this in two months, and I wish she had taken longer. The book starts with an interesting premise, but devolves into a confusing, nonsensical mess. There are no likable characters - the main protagonist seems to only like one of her 4 children, and risks her family for a lover. The last third of the book is written with absolute lack of clarity - why do we have the main character mauled by an ape and never mention it again? Were there several serums? I was confused and not for a lack of trying to understand. The premise was good, the execution poor. What started as a 4-star book quickly devolved into 2 stars.

I was surprised that I enjoyed this book. I was feeling optimistic since this isn’t a genre of book I typically like. When I started reading it it felt a little bit like Handmaid’s Tale.

It may have been the comparison to The Handmaid’s Tale or perhaps the current political climate in the United States that first interested me in Christina Dalcher’s Vox. I knew I had to read it. Set in a not so far future, women in the US are now required to wear bracelets that send debilitating shocks to the wearer if they go over their 100 word a day allotment. Dr. Jean McClellan had a successful career before, but women are no longer allowed to work nor are girls taught to read or write. I spent a lot of this book angry. Angry at the government and religious extremists. Angry at men like Jean's husband who was complicit in what how his wife and daughter were forced to live. Angry at all the people who sat by and let this happen.

Jean is given an opportunity to regain her voice because the government needs her specialized skills, and she hopes to use that opportunity to give her daughter the gift of words via bartering—at least for a short time. As a mother of a daughter myself, I felt Jean’s frustration and grief that her daughter was not given the same rights as her sons, and was learning that her place was in the background, to do as she was told and not use her voice. I felt Jean’s anguish as she watched her oldest son embrace this new Pure Movement. And I could understand how her relationship with her husband changed given how their life was before and how they live now. Jean is flawed, and I did not always agree with her choices, but there was much about her I could relate to. This book is full of emotion—sadness and rage and fear. It was hard to feel any sense of hope, at least initially.

This novel is part social commentary and part thriller. The first part of the novel introduces the reader to the characters and world they live in, along with their struggles and relationships with one another. As the novel progresses, however, the novel takes a turn into thriller territory, which added a different flavor to the novel than I initially expected. Suddenly there is hope for the future. Throughout, Vox was tense and thought provoking. While it did not rise to Atwood’s The Handmaid Tale level (is there a book out there that can, at least for me?), I liked Vox overall.

Another reviewer wrote that Vox is an anti-Christianity pamphlet, but that Christian people are too “kind” to pursue such an intolerant and extreme agenda. This book is not anti something, it’s pro-freedom of speech, -free press, -civil rights, particularly women’s and LGBT's. It’s also a warning about what could happen if we underestimate the dangers.

Ms. Dalcher doesn’t mention Trump in her book, but “Vox” opens during the administration of a totalitarian leader elected after the term of America’s first black president.

Before beginning with the book itself, here are a few quotes demonstrating how American human rights and democracy are sliding on a downward slope.

Alabama amendment allows display of Ten Commandments: Where you might see them, by Julius L Lasin, Montgomery Advertiser
https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/...

“A recent bipartisan poll commissioned by the George W Bush Institute, the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center, and Freedom House found that 80% of Americans are either 'very' or 'somewhat' concerned about the condition of democracy in the US. Half of Americans fear that we are in 'real danger of becoming an undemocratic, authoritarian country', with 55% believing our democracy is 'weak' and 68% worried it’s 'getting weaker'.”
Quote from “Trump's opponents have the moral high-ground. Let's not squander it” by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...

“But given his past conduct [Trump’s], expressed attitudes, and bomb-throwing advisors, I think there are valid reasons to think the constitutional order that has prevailed in the United States for more than two centuries could be in jeopardy.”
Quote from “10 Ways to Tell if Your President Is a Dictator” by Stephen M. Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/23/...



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/p...

“The president is trying to construct an alternate reality where he alone tells the truth.”
Quote from “Donald Trump’s attacks on the press are an attack on democracy” by The Nation
https://www.thenation.com/article/don...

Comment: Tell often enough that bullsh*t is roses, and weak-minded people will begin to think it smells good.

“Now, the Trump administration proposes to dramatically limit the right to demonstrate near the White House and on the National Mall, including in ways that would violate court orders that have stood for decades.”
Quote from “Trump Administration Seeks to Stifle Protests Near White House and on National Mall” by Arthur Spitzer, Legal Co-Director, ACLU of D.C.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech...

“If the first 100 days are any indication of what is in store, women’s progress is in peril.”

“President Trump reveals his fundamental lack of understanding of the myriad challenges women face and how they are interrelated. When taken together, the actions highlighted in this issue brief reveal an aggressive assault on women’s rights and equality.”
Quote from “100 Days, 100 Ways the Trump Administration Is Harming Women and Families” by Sunny Frothingham and Shilpa Phadke
https://www.americanprogress.org/issu...

"If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?"
Quote from “28 years of Donald Trump insulting women”
https://apps.voxmedia.com/graphics/vo...





“Donald Trump stood on the national stage and proudly declared that alpha males can “grab women” whenever—and wherever—they want to, and affirmed that white men have been denied their shot at the American dream thanks to growing gender and racial diversity.”
Quote from “Trump and the Red Pill” by Dayton Uttinger
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2017/08/16...

“Doctors, lawyers, and adoption agencies, among others, are now licensed to discriminate on the basis of sexual and gender identity.”
Quote from “How Trump Uses ‘Religious Liberty’ to Attack L.G.B.T. Rights” by Masha Gessen
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-d...

“From Trump’s ban on transgender military service to his failure to acknowledge Pride Month, his administration now has a long anti-LGBTQ record.”
Quote from “Trump promised to be LGBTQ-friendly. His first year in office proved it was a giant con” in Vox by German Lopez
https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/1...

“This week the White House announced 19 new judicial nominees, and — like President Trump’s previous nominees — the overwhelming majority are white. [...] Trump’s regression on judicial diversity could take decades to reverse.”
“Trump’s white nominees [for judgeships] from Texas have included judges with radical ideologies and lawyers with a history of fighting against equal rights for LGBT people and women.”
Quotes from “Trump Is Erasing Racial Diversity From the South’s Federal Courts”
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-i...

*** These are just a few of the articles I found on the Web. There are many, many more that tell the same thing: Trump is endangering American democracy and civil rights.

I've seen this paper lately. If you don't read in French, right-click in the text, then choose Translate and next select English :
http://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/e6d70...

----

Now about the book. I had a hard time reading this book, at least the first 100 pages. It made me soooo angry! If the average person speaks 16,000 words each day, imagine being forced to speak only 100 words per day! Even little girls have no right to speak more than that. Imagine seeing your daughter being electrocuted each time she speak one more word even in her nightmares...

I was angry against all the people who read this book but are blind or not willing to see the parallel with the present situation (see quotes above). They want to believe that if the future will go well or not, it’s just a matter of being kind or unkind citizens!!! My skin is crawling just reading their comment! As if politics worked that way! That’s so naive that I find hard to believe that someone apparently intelligent can’t understand that things are much more complex and can go wrong in a billion ways.

But sadly, after the first 100 pages, when the book becomes a not so thrilling a thriller, it grows sketchy and less interesting. The pastor, for instance, is so villain and creepy that he’s cartoonish. The ending is pretty much like a fairy tale. And Jean, the MC, isn’t safe until a powerful man rides in and saves her, the damsel in distress. Sorry, but it’s a counterproductive ending. This is as if the author said that the horror of the situation lived by the women at the beginning of her story was just a blip, a tiny and easily removable grain of sand in the great democratic machine.



As everybody else, I saw a similarity with The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Atwood is a better writer than Ms. Dalcher though. But this is the first book by this author. And what this book says is important for us all, not only women.

Anyway, this book is really good. It makes you think about your life and how lucky we are to have so much freedom. Women fought hard to get the same rights than men, and it could be easy to lose everything if we don’t stay vigilant.

That’s why I give this book 4 5 stars.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and Berkley, the publisher, for providing me with an eArc of this thought-provoking book.

Vox by Christina Dalcher was one of the most uncomfortable reads that I have picked up in quite some time and I am so glad that I did. It is a stunning novel set in a dystopian near-future where women have been systematically stripped of their rights and their ability to speak. Now forced into a world where her every word is counted against a decreasing total and every interaction is monitored, Dr. Jean McClellan, former neurolinguistic researcher, can't understand how we got here. When she is offered an opportunity to temporarily relieve her restraints, she is hesitant to take it, even though it means going back to her research and gaining freedoms she hasn't experienced in over a year, because she knows something larger is brewing, and it will not be good for women. Told from the perspective of Dr. McClellan, a strong, educated woman who found herself disbelieving that such preposterous methods would ever become mainstream, even as her own son fell sway to the Pure Movement that was sweeping the nation. The story warns us of what could happen if we become too complacent. If we don't use our voices to stand up for what we believe in, someone may someday find a way to steal those voices from us, both literally and figuratively.

This book was an extremely thought-provoking worst-case-scenario of what can happen when religion and morality hold sway over political outcomes. While the connections between our current political climate aren't exactly subtle, the larger message is still one about a woman finding her own strength. Jean confronts horrific sexism with the knowledge that she is valuable and refuses to accept the idea that the world can function successfully without women or with women subjugated to second-class status. The story is told with a modern Western slant, but could easily be modified for any region of the world today. This novel is an important read in today's climate and I predict it will stand the test of time.

I'm a bit late in my review. Having read the other comments comparing this book to the Handmaid's Tale, I'd have to agree. For me. the book was okay - a bit predictable but timely. Thank you for the advanced copy.

As many other reviewers have noted, this is an excellent and timely novel! Reminds me of Handmaid's Tale...

If anyone is worried about the content here they need not. Sure, this is similar to the Handmaid’s Tale but Vox goes further, just without rape being a part of the story.

It’s dystopian as hell and an utterly terrifying world. Jean is a wonderful choice as a main character. She’s angry about the world she’s been put into. She hates that she can no longer speak, work, have an opinion, and she really hates that her daughter just earned an award for not speaking once at school.

When the president’s brother has an accident, Dr. Jean McClellan finally matters as a person again. As a windfall of sorts, her former research is exactly what they need to help heal him. The caveat? They are asking for her help as well.

How far will she push them to have a voice again?

How do you "shut up" a whole female portion of the population? Force them to wear taser bracelets that count their every word with a limit of 500 words per day. Take away their ability to speak, work, learn, and basically interact with many aspects of their own lives. Freedom is redefined and is no longer for everyone. Vox is the United States of America in worst-case scenario mode, and it's terrifying. As a female, this book scared me in it's realism. The Handmaid's Tale meets 1984 in a feminist nightmare that hits way to close to home. I was riveted from the start and horrified throughout. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves dystopian fiction and realistic fiction, and/or is frustrated with the current state of our sociopolitical culture. The only reason I didn't rate this title with five stars? The ending was too neatly wrapped up and the last few chapters felt rushed and missing important details readers might want to hear. As one of my book club friends pointed out, this book would have been better served as a series or having been left more open-ended.

In the not too distant future, fundamentalists have control of the government and women have been silenced. Not allowed to work, read, have an opinion independent of doctrine, or an equal education, women and girls in the United States are also required to wear a bracelet that counts how many words they have spoken in a day. With a limit of 100 words, women are unable to be heard in all spheres; home, social, policitial, economical. Jean, a former linguist at the top of her field, has been forced to comply with the new laws through threat of pain, torture, and enslavement. Suddenly, Jean is given the opportunity of escape her enforced domestication, but at the cost of helping the very government she abhors. Will she do it?
Christina Dalcher has created a realistic dystopia using all too familiar themes that can now be seen in the world as it exists now. The story is intriguing, but more importantly, it shows the reader what can happen by staying silent and complicit up until it is too late. This is a great book for individuals and bookclubs alike.

This is a very timely novel and I think fans of Handmaid's Tale will really enjoy.

I don't think as a novel, it is the best book I've read recently, but I did thoroughly enjoy reading it. There is so much to think about while reading, and for me that helped it overcome some structural flaws. Multiple times I found myself pausing to think about how I would react in the situation.

In the future I could 100% see this becoming a TV show and think the premise would lend very well to that.

In this dystopian novel by Christina Dalcher, America is eerily similar to our own. However, in that world, women are only allowed 100 words a day, or else they are shocked by their wrist counters, the magnitude exponentially increasing with each additional unauthorized word. Jean, a cognitive linguist in another life, is given an opportunity after the president’s brother is gravely wounded. The government needs someone who can help him, someone who can reverse Wernicke’s aphasia. Helping the government will mean that she can go back to work, can get the abominable wrist counter off–for a while. But something doesn’t sit right with Jean. The government seems to be wanting her research for another reason… What price will the world pay after she finishes her research? What price will she and her family pay?

The story itself, of a sexist American society, simply an exaggerated form of our own current circumstances, is compelling. It reveals some of the dangers that we may be heading into if America continues through this downward spiral of judgment and isolationism. However, that is not really what the novel is about. Rather, it seems to be more directed towards attacking the government, which has become inherently evil. There is no humanity left in the system, nothing for us in present America, to relate to. Yes, politics can be “evil” and dehumanizing in our own current world, but not like this. Not how Dalcher is portraying it. The government in the dystopian America is pure evil, focused on impossible goals that would be more suited in an alien sci-fi novel. Rather than leaning on the idealistic concept of the 100 words, Dalcher moves to something completely unrelated and unrealistic. The novel is no longer a hyperbolic piece criticizing America’s current society and political climate, but a simple piece of fiction meant to entertain and nothing more.

Going along with this, the plot was too easy. At the end, it was rushed with almost no emotional triggers, narrated concisely and blandly. That was the worst of it. However, the plot line was also too easy leading up in the novel as well. The resistance seemed to just fall into Jean’s lap, random characters revealed to be a part of it whenever Jean’s need arose. She didn’t have to work for anything, it all just worked out in her favor. Steven’s whole arc was also super random, with no need for it whatsoever. The entire story seemed to just be filled with miscellaneous divergences that gave no benefit to the story itself, and only served to clutter it. Everything was too convenient, too easy, to random. Even Jean’s mother randomly suffered a stroke to give her Wernicke’s aphasia! Talk about coincidence.

The character-building was interesting in this novel, fully fleshing out the main character Jean, but only partially building up the side characters. Jean’s entire personality is on view for the readers to see, though with little to no dynamics. She is a relatively stagnant character, predictable and easily understood. The side characters, on the other hand, lend the novel a bit of mystery. Patrick is a bit of a conundrum, especially with the mixed views that we receive about him from Jean’s perspective. Lorenzo, Lin, and Jackie are all somewhat granted individual personalities, though all seem to come simply from how Jean perceives them. There is nothing for us readers to decode, but rather everything is laid out for us thanks to Jean’s thoughts and experiences. As for Jean’s children, Sonia and Steven are their own individuals, while the twins are inconsequential. In fact, I do not even know why they were included in this book. It would have been exactly the same without them.

The characters all have interesting relationships with each other. Jean has a weird obsession over Jackie, a woman she hadn’t seen or talked to in over a decade. Jackie may be a catalyst, but her character didn’t seem to be enough as is for Jean to constantly obsess over her practically every single day. And then Jean also had strangely mixed love/hate feelings about Patrick that battled each other each day. It made for an interesting read, as it kept me on my toes. I never knew which way she would lean. However, every relationship revolved around Jean. She was the pivot point for this novel, both for its characters as well as the plot. It cast a shadow upon the rest of the characters, making them shallower to lift Jean up.

Overall, the novel had great promise that it just did not quite live up to. It was definitely an entertaining read, and kept me on my toes with each page. However, I would caution taking this book a little too literally; some of it matches up nicely with our current political situation in the United States, but this is not our future. Perhaps some of the ideas can be given merit, but most would hold no water in our real world. Do not take this as an analysis of American society, but rather simply as entertainment fiction. It was a fun read, but that’s all it is.

Kudos to Dalcher for having the guts to publish a book revolving around such a hot topic right now. It even makes me nervous simply posting a review about it! Hopefully we readers won’t take it too seriously. In fact, it scares me to think that this novel could actually incite more hate and division within our own real America in our present time if taken the wrong way…