Goodreads Summary:
Five women. One question. What is a woman for?
In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers alongside age-old questions surrounding motherhood, identity, and freedom.
Ro, a single high-school teacher, is trying to have a baby on her own, while also writing a biography of Eivør, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer. Susan is a frustrated mother of two, trapped in a crumbling marriage. Mattie is the adopted daughter of doting parents and one of Ro's best students, who finds herself pregnant with nowhere to turn. And Gin is the gifted, forest-dwelling homeopath, or "mender," who brings all their fates together when she's arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt.
My Review:
Ever since I read The Handmaid's Tale years ago I've been drawn to dystopian feminist novels. The recent political climate and the Hulu series of The Handmaid's Tale has lead to more novels in the genre. When I first saw Red Clocks was releasing I reached out to the publisher to get an advanced reading copy. Unfortunately, I wasn't impressed--I was depressed. The storyline wasn't dystopian, it was too realistic. I appreciated the attempt but this was a story of what's already happening.
4 comments
Oh dear. Sadly, I'm afraid you are right.
Deb, I am on the lookout for other dystopian feminist novels releasing in 2018 so let me know if you come across any!
I like your review. Sometimes the current troubles people are going through are the worst. I read a lot of old novels from the 20th century because of a research project I am doing. Today I realized something, kind of obvious I guess, but there are historical novels, there are novels about current affairs, and there are speculative novels about what might be coming. Even as far back as the 1950s there were authors writing about possible future scenarios. What is freaky is that many, if not most, of those scenarios are with us now! I want to read a futuristic, speculative novel called The Power, about what it might be like if women ran things. It won some awards and all my reading group ladies feel that should be the way of the future. We will see, right?
Judy, I want to read The Power too! And Sleeping Beauties by Owen and Stephen King.
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