★★★
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.
It’s been a while since I closed the book on Red Clocks by Leni Zumas. Like, it’s been a whole month, while. This was meant to be posted weeks ago, but I just couldn’t find the right words to talk about in this review. So here we are. I’ve tweaked this review here and there, made some touch ups and decided it’s about time I posted this damn thing. Today’s the day.
I really flew through the last 200 pages of this book, but that shouldn’t be a testament to how good any book is. In the end I gave Red Clocks three out of five stars, because it’s just not the holy grail of feminist literature. It’s not riveting or challenging or bold. At best it’s tired. I talked about my initial problems with this book in an earlier post, which you can check out here. I’m not going to go into detail about that today, so if you’re interested in reading my thoughts you can pop on over to that post.
I was drawn to Red Clocks because of its summary and I think a lot of us were. It’s timely. Red Clocks owes its success for being so prophetic and uncanny. The feeling you get going into this book is anxiety because you know the topic at hand hits too close to home. You witness five characters dealing with the effects of this legislation that is a real threat under today’s administration, but your left feeling apathetic. What is ultimately so frustrating about Red Clocks is its false sense of urgency. Sure, there are high stakes threatening the lives of these five women, but ultimately nothing bad happens. The thing is, I anticipated Red Clocks to be a cautionary tale. I didn’t necessarily want bad things to happen to any of the characters, but I didn’t walk away from this book feeling any differently about their situations. What it comes down to for me was that their circumstances felt unchanged and I would have appreciated it if Zumas really delved into the ugliness and gave us a reason to panic and for God’s sake, care.
Even though this book didn’t live up to my expectations it wasn’t by any means a bad book. Yeah, all that stuff I’ve said before really did a number on this one. If it weren’t for all those things Red Clocks would be great and maybe, even, phenomenal. In the end, Red Clocks was just okay. I couldn’t have given this book a lower rating, because it has merit. Zumas is a great writer, I love her bizarre writing style, her imagery and her execution. This book had layers, good God did it have layers! The amount of time you could spend just picking apart and piecing together this book is what kept me invested and interested. Without it, I’m not sure I would have continued reading.
All in all, this is a good book. It’s definitely not the best in feminist literature, or the greatest in its execution but it is surprisingly complex, beautifully written and fun? What can I say? I had fun reading this book and I definitely will pick it up again.
Read my first impressions of Red Clocks by Leni Zumas here.
Comments