Title: Red Clocks
Author: Leni Zumas
Genre: dystopian
Finally, not a celebrity memoir! And this one was from my favorite genre- dystopia. And although I’ve read better ones, this one was really interesting. You follow five different women who all live in the same town in Oregon. They all live in a world where abortion is illegal, and the Personhood Amendment rules the land. Sound familiar?? Ugh. These women are tangentially related, which becomes more prevalent as the book progresses.
From Goodreads: 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.
I’m not sure how this book would be on audio because it has a stream-of-consciousness feel to it. The characters insert random internal thoughts into their conversations, which is easy to follow since they are italicized but in audio would be a nightmare. I really enjoyed this book, though. I loved seeing how the women all came together and helped each other out. The world they live in is terrifying but very real. There is no reason to think we aren’t headed on that same path.
Pleasant Nights 