I devoured this after midnight in a Newark hotel. Great and, as others have noted, a necessary story in this moment. Not a dystopian novel — currently we’re only one heartbeat away from this reality. My only disappointment? I don’t think we’re going to get the complete Minervudottir biography. Spin-off?? ( )

Synopsis: The tale of 5 women struggling with different aspects of womanhood. This story is set in a world where laws are much more right leaning than present day America. It follows a woman in a historical setting who is an explorer, a woman going through fertility treatments, a unconventional healer, a teenager, and a struggling mother.

Rating
3 out of 5 stars

I expected to really love this book but unfortunately I didn't.

I thought the message of the book was interesting and the ideas presented were valuable but it is a very literary novel which made it semi inaccessible. The main character in each chapter is denoted by their role rather than a name. We only learn their names when other characters interact with them.

My favorite character was the one who was struggling with her fertility. I didn't really connect with the rest. I wasn't entirely sure what we were supposed to be learning from the explorer or the struggling mom. The healer was very odd. I assume she is meant to be neurodivergent but a few things about her character were really off putting to me. The teenager was the only other character I cared about.

I felt like the author had a lot to say about womanhood but I just felt like I wasn't getting a lot of her messaging.

I think this book could really work for people who are more used to literary works. This book could also create awesome discussions in a book group or class room. I just didn't enjoy it in my personal reading experience. ( )

Through the lives of four modern women and one forgotten explorer, Red Clocks examines what it means to be female in a patriarchal society, the struggle to control your own destiny as one, and the eternal accusations we face when we dare to breakaway from the social restrictions placed on us. This softly disturbing, near-future dystopia is so utterly contemporary in its feel and the single, devastating change to law so realistic that it leaves you unsettled as does the quiet sound in the night that you aren't quite sure you really heard but can't stop listening for. ( )

Red Clocks follows the lives of four women: the biographer, the wife, the mender, and the daughter shortly after a constitutional amendment has passed that has made abortion and IVF illegal and is about to make adoption by a single parent illegal as well.

While Red Clocks presumably focuses on the current "hot button" issue of abortion, for me this book provides more of a retrospective on the many ways in which women have been relegated, in times past, to a role of "less than" in society. The characterization of one woman (the mender) as a "witch" and another (the wife) as an unhappy housewife I believe to be examples of how women have been trapped and persecuted in the past. The biographer struggles with an all consuming desire to have a child while writing a book about a female polar explorer who is again, limited by pre-defined gender roles. There's an irony to the biographer's desire to be a mother as she writes a book about a woman trying to shake off the traditional female role in favor of exploration and adventure.

It's also interesting to look at the tension between the women themselves. The women intersect in interesting ways, torn between their own desires, judgements, and experiences and empathy for their fellow women. The biographer wants a child and the daughter is going to bear one, but the biographer can't decide whether to support the daughter's desire to end her pregnancy (illegally) or beg her to permit the biographer to adopt the baby. The wife, saddled with two fairly typical children and a stifling marriage of her own, judges the biographer for taking every available avenue to become pregnant. The mender is falsely accused by her lover; herself an abused wife. .

For me, all of this interplay was very interesting and the dystopian premise was probably the weakest part. The subtleties of the story where the true nature of feminism is revealed made the book more meaningful. I loved the structure and the writing itself. I think there is an underlying message here that we women are oftentimes our own worst enemies and not as united in our collective feminist drives as we might think we are.

The ending of the book is beautifully done - - a capstone on writing that felt fresh to me:

"She wants more than one thing."

Does that not summarize the entire truth of the female human experience in the most simple possible way? ( )

The hype on this book was pretty exciting. People were calling it the spiritual successor to The Handmaid’s Tale, so I was naturally excited. It was one of the Book of the Month selections the month after I had stopped subscribing to the service, so I knew it should be on my radar. After reading it, while I would not compare it to Handmaid’s, it is an incredible work of women’s lit on motherhood and loss.

The chapters are told from different perspectives and are named by what the woman represents- Daughter, Mother, Biographer, and Mender. What we know is abortion is illegal in the US and a new law is about to take effect requiring two (a man and a woman) to raise one child. It is sometime in the near future.

The Daughter has been having sex with a boy in her class who quickly moves on from her when he gets bored with her. He leaves her not knowing she is pregnant. The daughter does not want to keep the child and now must figure out what to do.

The Mother is the mother of two in a marriage which is failing. Her children continue to get on her nerves and are growing into this world where clearly males are in charge. She longs to get out of her family, but is completely stuck.

The Biographer is a teacher and a writer. She has been trying to become pregnant by in vitro fertilization and other methods, but is beginning to run out of time and money. The law is changing and if she does not get pregnant, she will be out of time to be a single mother. She longs to be a mom.

The Mender has been labeled the town witch. She performs natural abortions for those seeking her help. Recently, she has given a drink to induce labor to the local principal’s wife, who died shortly after she drank the tea. The Mender will have to fight for her life in a court which has banned any type of abortion.

As the story goes on, the 4 women’s lives will become intertwined with one another as they live their lives within this town.

There are parts of this book which are slow moving, but at the conclusion of the book, I found those parts to be more deliberately slow to draw out relationships or struggles within the women. Their characters become more and more alive as the story progresses and as the world becomes fuller. We see there are no easy answers or black and white answers within this world, even though the country has decided to make the abortion issue black or white.

As much as this is about motherhood and children, it is also very much about the loss of children/family. I will not give too much away as some of it lies in spoiler territory, but I can safely talk about the Biographer. She longs for motherhood and we see her heartbreak as her chances for such become slimmer and slimmer. She begins to get desperate and makes some questionable decisions. She is recognizing though that the family she longs for will not be, so she must wrestle with that loss of the child that never was.

This is overall an incredible book. I can see some being turned off by it because it approaches abortion directly and does not give a quick or easy answer. These women struggle and their world is very much against them, with the Mender, quite literally. There cannot be a happy ending for these women in this world and we recognize that from the very beginning of the book.

I gave this one 4 stars. ( )