From Portland-based author Leni Zumas comes a captivating tale of four women who are impossibly linked as they navigate the dystopian future of America where abortion and invitro fertilization are criminal offenses and adoption is limited to married couples. A National Bestseller, Red Clocks was called “Chillingly Relevant” by People Magazine, and I have to say that I agree. A page-turner from start to finish, it’s not something to read right before bed, especially as we experience the deeply divisive culture that permeates our country today.
What I Liked:
This book is, simply put, incredibly important. It takes place in the not-so-distant future, in a time when the pro-life movement has won every possible legislative victory. It’s a felony to get or perform an abortion, and it’s criminal to help a woman receive one. Invitro fertilization is illegal, and every embryo is treated as a person. The implications of these things are completely devastating, both for a teenager who isn’t ready to be a mother and an unmarried biographer who wants to be one.
The book peels back the layers shrouding the pro-life, pro-choice debate, and in a format reminiscent of A Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood, the author builds a story that argues for the rights that make us human. Our rights, as women, to choose what happens to our bodies should be protected, and this story throws into stark reality what will happen if those rights are reversed.
Well written, yet in an unusual style, the flow of the book almost feels like it needs to be read in one sitting. I finished the 351 pages in five hours, over two-and-a-half days, and I had a hard time putting it down. I’m a fan of books that grab me and won’t let go, and this was definitely one of them. It would be the perfect book to read away a rainy afternoon.
As far as plot and content goes, nothing was missing. I found myself wanting to talk to the characters, to hold them while they cried, and to be their support in court. They felt like real people with real wants, needs, and fears, and I wanted to get to know them more fully.
What Was Missing:
I won’t lie, I didn’t like this book, but I don’t think the point is to like the book. The point is to have the book affect you, to have it change you, or at least change the way you think about reproductive rights. But I won’t be reading it through a second time. The writing, while descriptive and compelling, bordered on grotesque at some points, with details that will stay with me for far too long.
The style was also hard for me. The perspective of the book jumps between the lives of four women and often they are speaking in a train of thought manner. Every so often, there is a “page” from the biography that one of the characters is writing, and I’m still not sure why they are included. What the author does is very different and stunningly beautiful, but it wasn’t really for me.
Recommendation:
I can’t say this strongly enough: READ THIS BOOK, at least once. It’s a hard read and a good one — it’s both spellbinding and repulsive. It will make you feel like you’re flying and then will bring you crashing back down to frigid, abysmal reality. This book has the potential to shift the way that America looks at reproductive rights – if it gets into the right hands, and there’s a chance that the right hands will be yours.
Red Clocks was written by Leni Zumas. She lives in Oregon and teaches in the creative writing program at Portland State University. She is also the author of Farewell Navigator and Finalist for the Oregon Book Award, The Listeners. Red Clocks won the 2019 Oregon Book Award and was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. It was published by Back Bay Books, a Division of Hachette Book Group, in 2018.
By Kyra Young
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