Read the full review at http://www.karlajstrand.com/2018/01/27/a-review-of-red-clocks-by-leni-zumas/ !

What do a polar explorer, a teenage girl, an aging teacher and writer, an unfulfilled wife and mother, and an eccentric healer have in common? A lot, surprisingly enough. Their intertwining experiences are calculatingly uncovered in Red Clocks, the third book by Leni Zumas.

I say “calculatingly” because the uncovering of the relationships felt just as deliberate as the development of the individual characters themselves. On both counts, I was puzzled at first, trying to figure out what these seemingly disparate characters have to do with one another and what story Zumas was trying to tell through them. But it didn’t take long before all the pieces fell into place to make a mosaic of women’s lives that was poignant and honest. Zumas is unafraid to shine a light on the imperfections and complexities of women’s inner voices and relationships.

Zumas masterfully switches voices among the four main characters, who are referred to in chapter headings as The Daughter, The Biographer, The Wife, and The Mender. I appreciated the statement Zumas makes by referring to them by these labels, as so often women are relegated to simple characterizations that do not represent the depth and fullness of our lives.

So adept is Zumas at identifying the unique voices of her characters, that the reader is taken inside their thoughts, is privy to their secrets, and bears witness to the repetitive and often destructive tapes that most women have playing incessantly inside their heads. The characters really come to life and more than once or twice reminded me of my own inner critic, especially The Biographer.
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In the end, I found Red Clocks a call to action. “They started talking about this thing called the Personhood Amendment, which for years has been a fringe idea, a farce.” This is how these things can happen, right? We think that the threat will never actualize and we become complacent. We stop being shocked, we don’t take the threats seriously, we stop fighting, and we stop supporting one another. Red Clocks may be a work of fiction but its messages hit much too close to home to ignore. While each of us is stronger than we think, we are even stronger together. Red Clocks gives us a glimpse into what the near future could be like if we don’t stand together and resist the forces that attempt to disenfranchise and diminish us.

I was very excited by the premise of this story, but unfortunately, it was not for me. I had to put it down at about 25% complete because the writing style did not resonate with me.

I found the “titles” for the characters very interesting, but it made it hard to connect with them. I was spending a lot of time trying to remember who was connected to certain events, which took me out of the story. There were also some passages that I found vulgar or off putting, which also took me out of the world of the story.

I do think the storyline itself was overall interesting, and this could be an excellent read for someone who is more a fan of an experimental writing style.

This is not my usual genre but I heard a lot of buzz and decided to give it a try. I loved it! The story was very relevant in today's times!

Red Clocks is a delightful and harrowing read. In a not-so-distant future, if the incorrigible, trail-of-slime-leaving Mike Pence ever ascends to the presidency, we read about the goings on of a few women dealing with political machinations of those (read: men) who legislate reproductive-capable bodies. The believability and possibility of the plot is the scariest part. The likelihood of a 28th Amendment to scrap Roe v. Wade and anthropomorphize duplicating cells within wombs is as close to imminent as it is parodic.

One of the narrative threads I really enjoyed was through Ro, who is writing a biography of Eivør Mínervudóttir, a little-known 19th-century Icelandic female polar explorer. Zumas wrote about Mínervudóttir so well that I didn’t realize she was fictional until I’d finished the book. Her story is one of the many macro ideas scaled down into micro glimpses the book provides.

The comparisons to Handmaid’s Tale are expected, but the character arcs in Red Clocks reflect those of many women I know, so it’s likely I’d recommend reading Red Clocks before Atwood’s masterpiece.

This wasn't the book for me, but thank you for the opportunity to consider it!

2.5 Stars

I really liked the premise of this book when I read description. However, the reading of the book was so tedious and challenging that I had to give up on it at about 35% into it. There was not a story here, per se, IMO. It was filled with phrases just thrown in. No conversation or plots. The characters (the mender, the daughter, the wife, etc.) are called by their roles. Then every once in a while, their names are used. And you had better be paying attention to catch this.

Unfortunately, the book was not garnering all my attention, hardly any of it. Not only would I need a spreadsheet to keep up, but I would need a white board, as well. One that I could tie strings from person to person detailing relationships, etc.

For me, this was all too challenging with little entertainment provided. I am not a fan of this type of writing at all.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Handmaid's Tale has made a comeback, Naomi Alderman's The Power has become a bestseller, and I predict the same for Leni Zumas's book, if it gets the necessary publicity. If it doesn't, I hope people recommend it to other readers so that it becomes the phenomenon it deserves to be.

Zumas creates a dystopian future in which fetuses have been recognized as people. In a Jodi Picoult-esque way she explores what this means by presenting five women whose lives are affected in one way or another by the Personhood Amendment.

For all of Stephen King's monsters that he has created over the years, there is nothing as frightening as an oppressive, futuristic society that has a decent likelihood of coming true. Margaret Atwood understood this when writing her brilliant The Handmaid's Tale. Leni Zumas is just one more author to capitalize on this fact in her novel, Red Clocks. Whereas Ms. Atwood was writing a novel that could potentially come true, Ms. Zumas' novel is one that all but grabs its plot from current headlines as the conservative right continues to demean women and seek to destroy our right to take ownership of what happens to our body and when. The fact that there is yet another strong push to upend the Roe v. Wade decision and its pertinence to Ms. Zumas' story makes this the most terrifying story of all.

What may be even worse is the fact that stories like Ms. Zumas' only serve to remind readers that general sentiment towards women by a small but very powerful minority have not changed over the centuries. Women with strong personalities, like Eivør, or who exhibit expertise in an area, like Gin, have always been called witches and continue to be vilified for not expressing "more feminine" traits. Girls like Mattie continue to face societal scorn for getting pregnant out of wedlock, as if women are the sole instigators of pregnancy. Mothers like Susan will always face pressure from others for not appreciating their marriage and motherhood and experience doubts for wanting something more out of life. Yes, things are changing but at a glacial pace, which makes Red Clocks such a timely novel.

Moreover, unlike in Ms. Benjamin's latest novel, Ms. Zumas gets us to care about her characters. They are achingly real in their desires, their frustrations, and their mistakes. None of the women want to break the law; they do not set out to be criminals. What they do have is a desire to do with their body and their lives what THEY want and not what others dictate. Seeing all of the women struggle is heartbreaking, all the more so because you cannot help but feel that their stories are eerily prescient as well.

The recent political campaigns in the US (most spectacularly, the Presidential election of 2016) have sparked sales in many classic dystopian novels. One of my favorite books of all time is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, a dystopian novel that has seen a surge in purchases since the election.

It doesn't hurt that Handmaid's Tale was also turned into a TV show on Hulu. Elizabeth Moss, the show's star, has been quoted over and over about the current relevance of the show.

Basically, we are READY for some depressing books about a terrible future, right? I've seen a few other dystopian/postapocalyptic books come out (like this, and this, and this), but Red Clocks was the first one that I felt very compelled to read.

The women in Red Clocks are identified not by name, rather by what their primary role is in relation to others. The time is the future, the place is Oregon. Four women's lives intersect shortly after The Personhood Amendment is passed, and embryos are given rights as a human being. The ripple effect is full force: in-vitro fertilization is made illegal (as an embryo cannot consent to implantation), and abortion is equated with murder. Adoption, too, falls down the slippery political slope, and only two-person households may adopt.

It's kind of an intense read, and for me it was quite challenging to get through the first half. However, once I got through it, it was well-worth the struggle. I really enjoyed reading about the different characters. Their histories are not spelled out at first, almost like you have to "earn" their trust to learn more about them (like you would a with any stranger). It's for this reason that I don't want to give away too much information about the individual characters themselves.

Red Clocks reminded me a great deal of Han Kang's The Vegetarian, another complex and timely book. I recommend it for those who don't mind a cerebral read that will make them think twice about the complexity of personhood and womanhood.

Read more here on Goodreads.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown Publishing for allowing me a chance to read an e-galley! All opinions are my own.

The second half was better than the first half - I didn't think the "biographer" and "mender" (etc) titles were particularly effective, to the point where it was difficult to get to know the characters early on. It was a good cautionary tale.

The premise seemed promising and I was initially excited to read this. After several false starts I finally read enough to know that I do not want to read another feminist dystopia about the lack of reproductive rights. I read the Handmaids Tale and would like for authors to stop trying to rewrite it.

With the renewed interest in The Handmaid's Tale because of the times in which we live, I expect we'll see an increasing number of novels that consider similar themes. Red Clocks will certainly get lumped in with any such group (Erdrich released a similar novel last year). One thing these books will have in common is that they'll be described as dystopian, and Red Clocks does fit that description. However, one significant difference from Atwood's classic and Erdrich's recent offering, is that Red Clocks often feels too real to adequately be labeled dystopian. Take for instance a law called the "every child deserves two" act that will end adoptions for anyone but two parent families. That sounds to me like something that would garner plenty of votes in D.C. today. At times the novel does move into classically dystopian territory, i.e. Canada supporting a total ban on abortion in the U.S. by arresting and extraditing abortion seekers who cross the border and attempt to have it done safely (and going to Nazi like lengths to do so). But generally, Red Clocks feels like much of it could actually happen not too far from now if not tomorrow.

An exploration of women, individual freedoms, misogyny and the patriarchy, Red Clocks is no worse than an interesting thought exercise and at best it is an empathy inducing, conversation starting, possibly prescient novel that while at times for me was an uncomfortable read (I may never look at holistic healers the same again), made for an overall positive experience. Positive specifically because I spent time with characters who thought about things that I've rarely if ever pondered.

This is a very thought provoking story. The author's style of telling the story made it hard to put down.

This could be a good book club book, but I am cautious about recommending to people looking for a Handmaid's Tale read-a-like or those looking for dystopian fiction in general. This is way more experimental than a typical dystopian fiction book.

Initially I found this a difficult book to get into because of the writer's style, but I quickly became engrossed in the story of five woman dealing with feminist issues in this "futuristic" society where abortion is illegal and the Every Child Needs Two act will prevent singles from adopting babies. I loved how the characters' lives were interconnected and how the ending didn't tie everything up with a neat little bow--because life rarely ever does that either! Although the language was often coarse, I appreciated the raw and gritty tone of the author as things that make us uncomfortable often make us think deeply about our belief systems and prejudices!

I was very excited about the premise for this book, it's certainly a very timely one. But I gave up about 25 percent in after finding it very disjoined — not just chapter to chapter as the narrators switch off but sometimes even paragraph to paragraph. Passages like the "elderly cheese" one also did nothing for me and often seemed pointlessly vulgar. It's about to come out so I assume it's about to be archived, or I might give it more time. But I've already been trying with it for a while (for me), and I just don't think it's something that's going to resonate with me.

I was interested in this one because of it's feminist themes and timeliness, but I honestly couldn't get past the first chapter. I found the writing difficult style to get into. Maybe if I just wasn't in the right frame of mind at the time to start reading it. Might try to pick up again another time.

I tried more than once and just could not get into this book. The writing seemed a bit confuising and the storyline was very hard to follow.

Described as dystopian, yet feeling very contemporary, a story of five women in America where suddenly abortion, in vitro fertilization, and adoption by single women are outlawed. The women’s stories are woven together giving a frightening look into a society where women lose control over their own bodies. The real grit here is in the women’s refusal to submit.

Zumas writes with gritty language and sometimes shocking word play. She is clearly not afraid of backlash, using coarse and often shocking language, to make her point. I love how brave she is.

Solid read but will be controversial due to subject matter and to those that prefer a more traditional writing style.

Thank you @littlebrown @netgalley and @lenizumas for the ARC.