Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

So, I'm not sure if it's because of how Dystopian novels have been utterly ruined for me in our current... predicament, but I was expecting to enjoy this Red Clocks much more than I actually did. Part of me thinks it was mis-marketed. There was a lot of talk surrounding the plot device of abortion being illegal and how that impacts the individual women in this story. However, in my opinion, this was such a small portion of the book and it ended up being more about the relationships in the story.

I feel like the Personhood Amendment could've been expanded on with a bigger impact and that this was a missed opportunity for a book that could've made a larger social impact.

With that being said, the writing was great and each character had a unique and strong internal voice. This book definitely hasn't turned me off from reading more from Leni Zumas... this book just didn't do it for me.

Synopsis:

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 Ginis 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.

My rating:

2 cups.