Member Reviews

"Welcome! You have entered a horny dystopian world where your skin crawls from culture shock" would be the city sign for Eleven Percent. This might sound negative, but honestly I found it fascinating. Put on your seatbelt for the giant snake (euphemism intended), menstrual blood, and unhinged witchcraft.

From an anthropological lens it is fascinating to imagine a society in which society is only made up of a single sex where the opposite sex (denote the imperative biological implications of sex vs. gender) is locked up for reproductive use and treated as breeding stock. However, this novel is a far cry from the Handmaids Tale, it is not a story of rebellion, overcoming an unfair system, or a political warning. The story is really about human nature and the impact of society, regardless of what the governing political body may be.

None of these characters are people you would want to be. Each of them is uniquely deeply scarred by the rigidity of the social structure and simply trying to live the best life they can scrape together. Maren gives us uniquely human moments in the story that incite our empathy despite the foreign, almost wrong, world. She makes a commentary that regardless of "progress" there are people that chafe against society and that doesn't mean they are BAD.

*SLIGHT SPOILER* By the end you don't see any major dissent against the system or strong statement against the social structure. If that's what you're looking for, you'll be frustrated and disappointed.

I saw many DNFs for the english version of this book in the reviews, I personally didn't have any issues with the writing style, but I read transliterated texts with ease. I didn't experience any disruptive sentence structure or major issues with pace. The only spot I felt the novel dragged a bit was in Eva's perspective. You've already put the pieces of her story together, had the whole creepy theology experience, and seen living in the slums away from society. Felt redundant. Overall rating 3.5/5 - rounded up for star purposes.

Appreciation to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for access to this digital ARC in return for an honest review.

Was this review helpful?

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Eleven Percent by Maren Uthaug is a third person multi-POV Danish speculative novel in the vein of The Handmaid's Tale. For the most part, men have been removed from society and many are kept in a Center for the purposes of procreation. Medea is a pagan witch who protests the Centers but there has been little in the way of change. When the boy who lives with Medea's found family goes missing, a lot more comes to light than just who his unnamed mother was.

My review style for this book is far more of an analysis than how I usually do reviews, which is more based on what I liked and what different aspects of the text made me think. I struggle to say whether or not I like Eleven Percent but it's in the same way I wonder if I like Handmaid's Tale or 1984; these books make me think deeper about the themes and whether or not I enjoy them is way down the ladder in what's going through my head.

The number one thing that had me thinking was how there is such emphasis on gender essentialism and how removing men has improved the world and yet there's still problems. When it is brought up that violent crimes, including SA, have gone down, there's always this caveat of ‘by men’ which indicates to me that violent crimes is very much still happening but it's either rare or it's swept under the rug. I'm genuinely inclined to believe that it could be the latter because there's some evidence that certain aspects of toxic femininity have remained in this society. Men are kept pliant for the pleasure of women and the way men are talked about calls right back to the way I remember hearing men talk about women on TV as a kid. The reader is supposed to empathize with the men and pay attention to how the POV characters express disgust toward male bodies.

The other thing that got me thinking was gender in relation to trans identities. I'm Nonbinary and, for me, gender is a performance and a social construct I'm asked to play a part in, but I have trans friends who I know that isn't the case at all. Gender is something very different for them. I bring this up because we have two characters, Lars and Eva, who for all intents and purposes are transgender but might not present how the reader is familiar with trans characters. There's ideas presented that I'm familiar with but are done in new ways, especially in relation to Lars, who is referred to as a ‘manlady’ (a term that feels like it's meant to be derogatory). Lars has silicone genitalia and uses ‘he/him’ pronouns but also breastfeeds as a business. And then there's Eva who had to hide that she is AMAB in this world that is very hostile to men. Lars is presented as more socially acceptable than Eva in the book even though Eva is a child.

There's just so much to unpack here in regards to gender essentialism and feminism and the major theme is that gender essentialism doesn't help anyone. It harms children, it harms the genders in the traditional binary, it creates little room for those outside the binary like Enbies, and it doesn't create a utopia no matter which way you slice it. The men are treated like animals in a zoo so the glimpses that we get show them acting docile, almost like dolls, and their role in society is essentially to help keep humanity going and not much else. I'm gonna have to wait for the book to be officially released to start talking about it and it's gonna be really hard because I do want to talk to people about all the thoughts swirling in my head right now as an AFAB Enby

Content warning for mentions of SA and anti-trans attitudes

I would recommend this to readers who got a lot out of discussing The Handmaid's Tale and 1984 and those looking for their next book club read that discusses gender essentialism

Was this review helpful?

Eleven Percent takes place in a world where only women are allowed to live freely. Men are locked up in “spas” where the women can go to either make a baby or get pleasure from a man. Eleven Percent shares the point of views of 4 women, Medea (a witch and snake whisperer who thinks the spas are awful), Wicca (a Christian priest who has lost her lover), Silence (a woman who doesn’t talk after an incident with telling a friend’s secret) and Eva (a woman who is a doctor at one of the spas.) Their lives intertwine in ways you could never imagine.

I found Eleven Percent to be super interesting and really messed up. Some parts were super good and kept me on my toes, while other parts felt irrelevant to the story. Each character was unique. I love how they were all connected in some way or another.

Thank you NetGalley and Maren Uthaug for the opportunity to read this ARC. All opinions are my own

Was this review helpful?

Unfortunately, I DNF'd this book by around 15%. I find the premise super interesting, but I kept rereading the setup and just couldn't keep track of the plot and couldn't really get into the worldbuilding. I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't get into it. The writing is interesting, but I just couldn't keep getting through the book.

Was this review helpful?

This was a little out of my comfort zone, specifically all the talk about pregnancy and babies and stuff. I didn't finish but the writing was great. The content just wasn't for me.

Was this review helpful?

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for am honest review. Although the blurb and cover attracted me to this book, I found it really difficult to get into and decided to DNF it around the 20% mark. The writing style was good but I found the structure difficult to follow and felt confused about what was going on. I might try to pick this up again sometime. Give it another go.

Was this review helpful?

absolutely chaotic. in the best way possible. it freaked me out in a way that i liked. this story really made me sit and think for a little bit after i finished reading. all i can say is : men

Was this review helpful?

review on goodreads: If you like weird you’ll like this dystopian land where only 11 percent of the population are men. It’s definitely an interesting take on a world ran entirely by woman and it’s as weird as they come with blood and snake worshipping and man ladies. It’s also definitely what I’d expect to be the outcome of extremely religious fanatic woman if they were to take over the world.

Was this review helpful?

DNF

I started off with no clue what was happening, no clue of its relevance to the plotline. It was the initial description that intrigued me however, I'm about 10% of the way through and have completely lost interest.
How does caring for snakes and lack of money contribute to the world? I have no interest in chores, I want the story.
I'm not sure if it's just not my cup of tea, the blurb grabbed me but there was nothing to make me want to keep going.
Ages 16+ due to mature themes.

Was this review helpful?

I DNF this book. After about a week of trying to force myself to read it, I couldn’t do it. I really wanted to like the storyline but the way it was written was hard to read, I don’t know if it was translation or what, but nothing about the writing flowed. Also the transphobia was hard to get over to enjoy the book as a whole. Then they started mentioning getting sperm from a minor child to mix with menstrual blood and I was out. Great concept.

Was this review helpful?

Unfortunately, I just really could not get into this book. The premise sounded really cool but if a book does not hook me from the beginning I have a hard time enjoying it.

Was this review helpful?

I . . . very much wanted to enjoy this. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t for me. From page one, I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but I immediately felt unsettled. While I recognize that this is the intention behind the thematics of the novel itself, an unsettling vibe does little when a reader can’t completely comprehend what’s occurring on the page to make them unsettled. Even after reading several pages multiple times over, I found myself garnering bits and pieces of what was happening, but not enough to fully grasp the allure that Eleven Percent claims to have.

In further research of the book proper, I can see that its original version was in Danish, and I wonder if some things were lost in translation when converting the book to the English language. This is further exemplified by particular word choices that seemed out of place and sentence structures that didn’t quite make sense, no matter how many times you read them. More often than not, these issues arise when things are translated literally, rather than restructured to accommodate its destination language.

Another grievance experienced is that the books overall synopsis does little to convey the truly unsettling horrors that will occur within the book. Despite it’s tagline relating it to something akin to a reverse Handmaid’s Tale, the lack of trigger warnings and the overall blasé way in which concepts and themes are dropped into the synopsis do a disservice to readers who may need to tread carefully when delving into some heavier topic’d books. Particularly so when the subject matter is thought-provoking and enticing enough to attract readers of all kinds. These ideologies of the dangers of testosterone (specifically from male-identifying individuals), the separation between the heretical pagan magics and the witchcraft practiced by Christian Priestesses (another aspect of the story that feels lost in translation, as the dichotomy between the two magic systems doesn’t quite exist in its English form)

There was further an undeniable notion that there were far more words and sentences used then necessary. For instance, within the first few pages alone, things were conveyed with five or six additional sentences, despite the point being made (semi) clear with the first one. This repetitive nature further made the trudge through the book a slog that further contributed to an unenjoyable reading experience.

The novel separated the narrative between four points of view, which sought to break up the repetitive monotony, but the overall experience was very much something akin to asking oneself “What did I just read?” or “What just happened?”.

The overall novel felt unfleshed out, disjointed and cobbled together, to the point where I found myself going back and rereading chapters and pages, as I felt like I had missed something only to discover that it wasn’t me, but the book.

I’m rating this a 2.5, rounded down to 2, purely for its potential, as the thought behind the book is clearly someone impassioned about the speculative fiction of a women-ran world, but it fails to deliver anything other than a confusing and unsettling reading experience.

I don’t feel it’s fair to rate this book 1-star, as there is a greater part of me that does truly feel like it makes far more sense in its source language.

Was this review helpful?

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

This was strange! The writing had a really unique style to it, but I couldn't quite commit to the tone or premise. Some of the wording was a little awkward too. All in all an interesting story

Was this review helpful?

While I was hesitant to share a review, the initial “WTH did I just read” has worn off. The misleading synopsis and lack of trigger warnings didn’t properly prepare me for some of the very disturbing aspects that lie within.

Describing this book as “an inverse to The Handmaid’s Tale” is a stretch as it isn’t even a minor subplot. This book contains many LGBTQ+ themes that parallel what this community continues to experience today along with inverse bigotry and misogyny throughout.

I’m not sure if it’s the writing style, or error in translation, but there are portions of the book that don’t make sense. For example, Christian “priestesses” practice witchcraft but look down on pagans whom practice similar “magic” and are referred to as witches. There were also points in the story where things didn’t progress naturally and I had to go back to see if I missed something. (I didn’t.)

Trigger warnings: Blood, Classism, Forced institutionalization/Slavery, Sexism, Dysphoria, Pregnancy, Transphobia, Animal death, Death during childbirth, Murder, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Hate crime and Outing

Was this review helpful?

This book is for someone who wants a very literary and almost fantasy dystopian novel about what would happen if women were in charge. I was not able to finish this book because I realized after about 10% that it just was not for me. I thought it was a little bit gross with all of the animal death and cooking with menstrual blood. I am not the person for this book!

Was this review helpful?

When I read something that is going to be taking on very complex ideas, I want to feel like the author is in control of what they're saying. There were elements here that made me deeply uncomfortable because they felt like genuine bad trans rep as opposed to a troubling of the gender binary that I would expect from a book with a dystopian matriarchy. I don't know if it was a translation issue, but I found myself doubting where the author was leading me and, in the end, didn't feel like I came away with anything I had not already considered. I think there's a real place for this type of book, but this one absolutely missed for me.

Was this review helpful?

“An inverse The Handmaid’s Tale that asks: What if women took over the world?”

The conceit on which 'Eleven Percent' is born; apt, then, that, eleven pages in, I was already overcome with the creeping sensation that the prose was using twice as many sentences as needed to convey the spirit.

Let me explain.

Reading a selling sentence like “What if women took over the world” may have inversely set my expectations. The description goes on: “a time not so different from ours except that the men are gone”. Into which, one might conclude, that this is a world as imagined, extended from our own, rather than a ponderous re-write of how the world got started. This is supported in the stories of Medea, the slums witch, Wicca, the conflicted Christian priest, Silence, the tormented hanger-on, and Eva, doctor to the area’s remaining young men. Sentences describe not wanting to go back to a time of men, where straight-edged buildings, random street attacks, and death of the planet occurred. The core of these are delivered to the reader through the four individuals’ narratives, as they try to navigate their own place, and discover that each of their viewpoints may be shaken by their connections to one another.

Or? That is the intention? Because 'Eleven Percent' did not convince me that this was an inevitable way for women to go, after an overturn as hinted.

Right off the jump, our opening narrator is Medea. Already, Medea, a witch, is an outsider, on the fringes of society, practicing an alternative and frowned-upon religion. It’s essentially a non-entrance into the New World that Uthaug tempted us with in the sell. We don’t get to know what schooling is like now, what politics are like now, what general day-to-day life looks like; because Medea wasn’t brought up on any of that. Later, Wicca will provide a slight peek into a little more, but since she lives in an incredibly narrow framework, meeting very few people, and all encapsulated in the heavy influence of her religious upbringing, it still keeps the reader at a strange distance from really branching into what this world can be like now. Silence is another outsider, who even very purposefully avoids people. And the nature of Eva’s birth similarly prevents her from socializing for most of her chapters, which are heavily set in this past. If this is a New World for us to grasp, then why give us four loners who deliberately avoid it?

Not for any lack of Uthaug’s details. As mentioned, there are a lot of rich specifics about what Medea is doing on the daily. However, there are three sentences where the first one already conveyed the point — leading me to feel as though I’m trying to physically push on the text to make it move into a new topic. To bring the reader up to speed, Uthaug uses too many “had said”s — someone had said this or that when they first met, etc — a fine enough device once in a while, but, included with the dragging narration, it begins to feel like another way to avoid having anything happen in the present. The storyteller’s choice to start where they did in time is meant to represent that this was the most definitive set of events in their life; we’re starting exactly at the best place. So, when the prose feels like it wants to do anything but progress, and then we’re thrown into numerous flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, the actual plot you were looking for becomes the sliding boulder under which the Sisyphusian reader labors.

In this: 'Eleven Percent' is a very lovely character study of three people — yes, just three; Eva’s situation is kind of astonishingly problematic; especially when you remember it’s marketed as “not what she seems” — where their details, decisions, and deliberations on the past can let you luxuriate in that atmosphere and lazily wonder what you may have done if you lived in the same dystopia (and, yes, it is a dystopia these women have created). In a way, Uthaug describes it too well, as it leaves you hungering for the meat of society that the four chosen points-of-view can never reveal. While what is revealed gave me pause. There seem to be not entirely conscious contradictions. I might imagine that some of this haven of womanhood as society has made it is written as satire — as a send-up or the irony that all the ruling women did was put as back centuries. A couple of the paragraphs actually oozed with this suggestion of mocking the very beliefs it was describing. However, the rest of the text definitively did not give off that impression. And, when reading it straight, there were problems. Why was there a comment about how men demonized wise women by calling them witches, and yet Medea, as a witch, is scorned and looked down on without any inference of the hypocrisy? Why, in fact, is there usable magic in the first place? That has nothing to do with if women ruled instead, and greatly muddles how we’re supposed to view the presentation. Free love is essentially preached, and yet the schooling is oppressively sexual; the over-saturation of society’s emphasis on self-pleasure put me on edge, as an asexual person. Never even mind the other preferences and genders. There’s one throwaway line about how it’s kind of actually okay not to be interested in partnering and such, but also there are entire dozens of pages devoted to how your life means less if you haven’t reached climax. Thank you: no.

I do not have the life experience to really dive into it, but the concept of “manladies” made me feel extremely uncomfortable for what felt like honest transphobia. The label, the shaming of the profession (so, also, sex workers), the use of the male pronoun but also a character refers to them as not being “real men”. Extremely uncomfortable. If you have nothing to say about the failure of society to overturn these issues, then don’t include them, as they read very sincere otherwise.

In this way, if it’s supposed to be a wink-nudge-nudge on the two-faced premise, it did not achieve its purpose. Because everyone’s lives and struggles are described as morbidly dramatic and our original viewpoint character, Medea, arguably ends the text in a worse place than she started and with nothing learned for it. The New World encourages nature to take over, damaging the important historical references, as well as wasting materials, but never provides any negative connotations for what they’re doing. Who are the law keepers? Religious leaders? Because, oh boy, that’s a whole handful that isn’t gone into enough then. What are the laws? Are there any laws? Everything is described as “tolerated” but then all of our main characters are persecuted. Is the only political discussion being had really just what sexual position you prefer? Where did all the technology go? Sure, everything man-made is supposed to be disgusting, but what about inventions women created? Breakthroughs in science led by women? Are we supposed to abandon those and decrease standards of living because a man breathed on it once? To these extremes, it is less ‘what if women took over OUR world’ as ‘women can also make things horrible’. This is where my lack of knowledge of The Handmaid’s Tale may have damaged my experience — but the homework should not be on the reader in these instances.

We get a couple delicious glimpses — I really, really enjoyed this idea of “nightwalker”. They are almost like murder tourists: women who take to walking late at night in sketchy areas, because, with men gone, now they can. That this can become a fad is exactly the kind of thing feels like direct commentary on our world, rather than veering awkwardly into magical fantasy. But… so is there… no crime? At all? The only punishable offense we see is, horrifically, being a “manlady” and utilizing “magic”. I’ll say it again: the magic should not be here. It’s a marvelous invention, that belongs in a different book. The slums, and Eva’s backstory, as written, don’t belong in anything this straight-forwardly written.

All to say: I think there is an incredible amount of solid world-building ideas and commentary speckled in little hidey-holes throughout 'Eleven Percent'. Since it did not succeed, for me, as a satire, in tone, a lot of the decisions of the setting never clicked and kept me at a disgruntled distance from the text and people. My main train of thought wasn’t about what will happen to these people, but — “HOW?”

In conclusion, if you enjoy the idea of a slice-of-life in a “could this have happened” world, you’ll get your fill to ruminate on after you’ve put the book down. Uthaug has perfectly descriptive sentences; the book is well-written, clear, and weaves the lives of these people together in a way that unfolds at a nice pace. You’ll certainly find there is a lot to pause and discuss - either with yourself or a fellow reader — so dig in and get at those uncomfortable truths, both meant and unmeant.

However, personally, I lamented the use of too much detail in areas that didn’t need it, and lack of detail in many places I couldn’t conceive not explaining more. There’s very concrete issues of transphobia, sexism (preferences), and body-shaming. I found myself constantly wanting for a momentum that never arrived.

All of the exciting discourse is going to be in your own head after you read, not within the pages here.

This is an honest review in trade for an download of the book provided by NetGalley.

Was this review helpful?

This book was just not for me. The writing was uncomfortably slow, dry, and overall boring. Nothing held my interest and I DNF'd about 30% in. I can see how this is a gender reversal of the Handmaid's Tale but that was all this book had going for it.

Was this review helpful?

This book doesn't take it easy on you. It doesn't ease you in gently into its world. But it is thought-provoking and emotional. You are left feeling uncomfortable, but in a way that feels like you're supposed to feel that way. Not for the faint of heart, but definitely for those with the courage to try it.

Was this review helpful?

Genuinely, I don’t know how to rate this. I read this in between romance books because it’s not the type of book you binge. I initially thought it was going to be like I Who Have Never Known Men and Handmaid’s Tale, but it was a bit different than those.

It wasn’t my favorite book, but it wasn’t bad. You definitely have to be in the mood to read this— it had all the makings of a weird girl litfic in conversation with the harm men cause, religion, and control.

I’m just not sure it was entirely for me. This is the second Scandinavian translated fiction book I’ve read and the first one also had a similar tone, so I’m beginning to think it’s regional.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free ARC!

Was this review helpful?