Staff Pick
Carefully revealing the stark realities of losing personal freedoms, Red Clocks is a story that fits exactly into its time. Following the lives of the biographer, the wife, the daughter, the mender, and the explorer, Zumas exposes the danger of fringe ideals becoming mainstream. Quiet, spare, and skillfully written, Red Clocks feels important, urgent, and terrifying. It is the nightmare you dread; you feel it hovering over you and pressing down. One of the best books of 2018, this novel is excellent. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A Popsugar most anticipated book of Fall A Ploughshares most anticipated book of Fall
One of Publishers Weekly's most anticipated titles of Fall 2017
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 Eivor, 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 herbalist, or "mender," who brings all their fates together when she's arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt.
RED CLOCKS is at once a riveting drama, whose mysteries unfold with magnetic energy, and a shattering novel of ideas. In the vein of Margaret Atwood and Eileen Myles, Leni Zumas fearlessly explores the contours of female experience, evoking THE HANDMAID'S TALE for a new millennium. This is a story of resilience, transformation, and hope in tumultuous-even frightening-times.
Synopsis
In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, 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. Red Clocks is at once a riveting drama and a shattering novel of ideas.