Red Clocks

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Such is the state of affairs in the early 21st century. Feminist writers of speculative fiction don’t need the bizarre rituals of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 classic, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” or even the fantastical elements of Naomi Alderman’s terrific recent novel, “The Power.” Bridles designed for women’s bodies are already hanging in legislators’ barns, just waiting for Ruth Bader Ginsburg to die.

I received an arc of this book courtesy of NetGalley and HarperCollins UK in exchange for an honest review. All this makes this book sound like a polemic on reproductive rights but the experience of reading it is much more nuanced character study. It presents the interlinked stories of five very different woman in a world where reproductive choice is restricted. The politics of this is deftly referenced almost as an aside. It is never suggested that one particular path is easier or of less consequence than another but the book does an exceptional job of highlighting the importance of individual choice.Other areas of personal interest that the author explores in the text (not always successfully) include:

does the desire come from some creaturely place, pre-civilised, some biological throb that floods her bloodways with the message Make more of yourself! To repeat, not to improve. The lesson he just learned,” says the wife, “is that if he screams long enough, he’ll get what he wants.”Thirdly in being at heart more about relationships between women explored within a patriarchal/misogynistic world rather than just exploring the structure of that patriarchy; Damn, I really wanted to love this book. The premise is obviously timely and appropriate, and the book had a lot of hype. But I just didn't care for it. The effects of complacency and selfishness -Our own selfish wants or being caught up in our own lives can cause us to betray or forget our values. So much of what happened in this story happened not because most wanted it it, but because the majority was disengaged. Remain steadfast meaningful action. retreat into our own lives To adopt from China, your body-mass index must be under 35, your annual household income over eighty thousand. Dollars. Leni Zumas’s fierce, well-formed, hilarious, and blisteringly intelligent novel [is] squarely a piece of Trump-era art."

In this dystopian world Vitro fertilization is banned...and a Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and and property to every embryo. As the author has also remarked in interviews “There’s so much … cultural, familial or actual policy regulation around women’s bodies” and the book brings this out – for example much of the pressure Ro faces is from her father and from her friends. Suddenly, a broad swath of people—both people who want to be parents and those who don't—have criminal inclinations or at very least are treated as an underclasss. This device of labelling the characters can feel both artificial and also in some ways counter productive and anti-feminist – implying that the characters are one-dimensional and largely defined by their family status. 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).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. The unnamed character thing seemed unnecessary. It reminded me of Annihilation - four women characters, all unnamed (I can hear the conversation now: "Hey! Instead of a BIOLOGIST, let's have your main character be a BIOGRAPHER!") and I really hope having a bunch of unnamed women characters is not going to become a trend in near-future dystopian lit. And actually, the characters did have names, but only sometimes were they referred to by them - which caused me confusion when suddenly someone was "Susan" and I was like "Susan? Who?" There must be some symbolism here that I'm missing as to why they were referred to by name at some parts but not others, but I can't figure it out. Her husband stomps in, lifts the dustcover, sets the needle on the record, unleashes a bouncy guitar.

Dirt and decay: Susan is obsessed with a plastic bag she sees which she thinks might be a dying animal; when Susan has her final argument with her husband she falls to the floor and eats dirt; her husband is obsessed with (but not prepared to contribute to) cleaning hairs from the toilet passed in California. We voted against Gay Marriage. I had been watching this poll early on and was worried. I kept telling Paul... “I’m concerned”. And like most liberals in California.. Paul was complacent in the beginning as in: “don’t be silly, nothing to be concerned about -this is the Bay Area of Gay Pride”.Keep collections to yourself or inspire other shoppers! Keep in mind that anyone can view public collections - they may also appear in recommendations and other places.