The world has changed. War rages in South America and China, and Britain - now entirely dependent on the US for food and energy - is run by an omnipresent dictatorship known simply as The Authority. Assets and weapons have been seized, and women are compulsorily fitted with contraceptive devices.
This is Sister's story of her attempt to escape the repressive regime. From the confines of her Lancaster prison cell she tells of her search for The Carhullan Army, a quasi-mythical commune of 'unofficial' women rumoured to be living in a remote part of Cumbria . . .
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Sarah Hall took a degree in English and Art History at Aberystwyth University, and began to take writing seriously from the age of twenty, first as a poet, several of her poems appearing in poetry magazines, then as a fiction-writer. She took an M Litt in Creative Writing at St Andrew's University and stayed on for a year afterwards to teach on the undergraduate Creative Writing programme.
Her first novel, Haweswater, was published in 2002. It is set in the 1930s, focuses on one family - the Lightburns - and is a rural tragedy about the disintegration of a community of Cumbrian hill-framers, due to the building of a reservoir. It won several awards, including the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book).
Sarah Hall currently lives in North Carolina. Her second book, The Electric Michelangelo (2004), set in the turn-of-the-century seaside resorts of Morecambe Bay and Coney Island, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).
The Carhullan Army (2007), won the 2007 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction.
Her latest novel is How to Paint a Dead Man (2009).
I am tempted to begin by saying that this is the kind of book that Margaret Atwood would to have loved to have written instead of The Handmaid's Tale, but if I were so unwise as to say that then no doubt she would track me down, tie me by one foot to a high branch of a tree, and leave me for the squirrels to eat. But perhaps it is safe to say that this is a near future dystopian novel set in Cumbria. Perhaps if Golding's Lord of the Flies and The Handmaid's Tale were married then this book might be their troubled child, but in truth I think Sarah Hall's novel has a more complex ancestry than that.
Reading this book in 2021, after the Financial crisis, after further extreme weather events, summer fires lasting weeks on Northern peat uplands, Corona Virus, political and economic shocks, this book seemed more prescient to me than I imagine it might have seen when it was published in 2007.
It is set in a near future Britain, things are a little grimmer than actual contemporary Britain
The story is a found text, the confessional narrative of a woman who has escaped a town in Cumbria for a Women's collective based at Carhullan, a hill farm up in the fells by the Lake District.
The first third of the book deals with the narrator's Day One of her Year Zero when she makes the journey to Carhullen and the reception that she receives there. During her journey she reflects on why she is doing this and this gives the author an opportunity to sketch out the miserable shape of future Britain. The narrator knew of Carhullen as a girl when she would see the women from there in the town's market. Then they had established something between a women's refuge and an ecologically sustainable communal farm headed by Jackie Nixon - I think possibly the only character in the story to have both a first and a last name; and what a name, now I notice the surname, in the book this is said to be, like Armstrong, a border revier surname, but it might be worthwhile bearing the former US President in mind too. Jackie, or should I say Jackie! Is a perfect choice - that was the title of a magazine targeted at teenaged British girls featuring enthusiastic coverage of the latest six day wonder pop-star sensation and that kind of thing . The narrator has several press clipping about Jackie! Nixon that she has carried around with her for her whole life from one home to another, and this evidence of a teenager's fandom is a nice warning about the narrator's stance towards this mysterious woman who takes uncertain shape in the text long before we actually meet her.
Carhullen represents to the narrator a Utopia and we might be reminded of Herland - I think this is explicitly nodded to on the farm, the narrator tells Jackie that she doesn't eat red meat - a life style choice that is instantly dismissed by Jackie.
We might also think of books like Robinson Crusoe and Lord of Flies which ask (among other things) what kind of society we re-create when we get the chance - and as always the answer reminds us of Tocqueville; “They took over from the old order not only most of its customs, conventions, and modes of thought, but even those ideas which prompted our revolutionaries to destroy it; that, in fact, though nothing was further from their intentions, they used the debris of the old order for building up the new.” the new order is built from the bricks of the old, the malign influence of the choir boys will determine the development of the boy's society in Golding's fable, in this case Jackie Nixon is a former British Army, special services soldier (of unknown rank), perhaps she doesn't habitually execute Irish people but possibly you can guess at the kind of society that such a woman might create, particularly if surrounded by adoring fans in an increasingly hostile political environment . The first indication is the language that the women at Carhullen use, this is coarse and blunt, soldierly and sweary, which I guess will limit the books appeal to school teachers looking for an alternative to the ubiquitous Lord of the Flies
The conceit of the book is that it is a found text, which allows the author to pretend that parts of it have been lost, I think if I had been her editor, I would have pushed her to make the text more fragmentary than it is, suffice it to say this makes the narrative jump in places, some readers looking at other reviews didn't like it, I thought it passing clever to avoid having to spell out everything that happened and I've got enough grey hairs that I don't feel the need to read every detail anymore - you can kill a story too by over telling it.
In several of the stories in her collection Madame Zero, Sarah Hall imagined eco-catastrophe futures and abandoned civilisations, and this novel develops that idea. Like her novel the wolf border this a story set in Cumbria, the landscape is an important character. In this story remoteness is resistance, and there is a sense of Cumbria as it's own place before there was an England or a Scotland.
Landscape is a measure of the Narrator too, at first the Fells are a landscape of dreamy escape, remoteness is resistance, later landscape becomes a pragmatic challenge, something you clash against flesh and bone against stone and soil, finally the landscape becomes spiritual again, a way to measure personal transformation and rebirth - the narrator is repeatedly reborn in the story until she reaches her final iteration.
So this is also a novel about Nature and nurture, what you were and what you can become in the right circumstances, and along that line I was reminded of Animal farm and 1984 while reading. In a side note about nature the use of gorse reminded me of a childhood favourite The Silver Branch . There is an emphasis on bodies and physicality. We see a woman in the town, smoking, suffering, whipped by that old TB, knowing that she is going to die, who we can contrast with the honed bodies of the women at Carhullen, or those of the men at their satellite settlement amazons again emaciated and hollow eyed. The narrator sees herself in the mirror towards the close of the book - and she no longer recognises herself, her nature has been nurtured through tough mothering into something foreign to her, she has become her own anima.
I read steadily, fingers climbing upwards through the pages. I find Sarah Hall a meditative author, she has a careful, distanced, measured pace, the narrator can feel quite remote even while passionately and centrally committed. For me her interweaving of Nature definitely with a capital letter into her plot raises her story about the other novels that I have referred to above, but I'm easily impressed, after all I'm a fan of Casper David Friedrich and I love a suggestively symbolic landscape or seascape, I'm not so fussy. Sadly for me her novels don't seem so easy to come across. This one has a perfect last sentence - but it takes the whole novel to make it worthwhile.
Sarah Hall's The Carhullan Army takes place in northern Britain in the future, after an unnamed environmental catastrophe has totally changed the island's weather and replaced it with a climate that's almost tropical. Along the way, civil society has disintegrated and democracy has been replaced by a totalitarian regime known only as the Authority, which has imposed strict control on the population under the disguise of a recovery plan - population is made to live in communal housing in isolated communities, where electricity and food are rationed; women are forced to wear coils to prevent reproduction.
The protagonist, known only as Sister, has had enough of this treatment and decided to escape to a remote farm in Carhullan n the far north of Cumbria. In the once beautiful Lake District a group of determined and rebellious women have established their own settlement and militia, defying the regime of the Authority - but the nature of the community and its inhabitants might not be the one that Sister has expected.
The Carhullan Army's main point - would a society composed only of women turn to violence and savagery? - is interesting, but the rest of the novel drags it down. The book suffers from poor pacing - despite its short length it can be a real slog at times - and never manages to properly develop its characters; they're never more than stand-ins for the author's ideas and concepts that she wanted to present. World building - something I find essential in dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction - is minimal; the ending is abrupt and reads like a cop out. As a whole the novel doesn't say anything that hasn't been said before and better by other authors, and just isn't a particularly interesting and valuable addition to the genre.
My problem with this book was threefold. First, I felt that compared to the other characters, Sister lacked characterisation and the book suffered from the lack of a clear, strong voice. Jackie and Shruti were fairly well characterised, and Sister's wishy-washy characterisation made her an unconvincing narrator. Second, I found the structural device of the [DATA LOST] very annoying. It was employed just infrequently enough to make it clear that the author had problems with time transitions. A device like that needs to appear more than twice, or not at all. In addition, losing the entire narrative of what happens between Chloe and Martyn's murder and Sister's capture following the deaths of all of the others was very annoying. They spend the whole book planning for this event, and then the event is summed up in a paragraph at the end. No, please. Third, I found the government and political backstory very unconvincing. It was poorly fleshed out, and just made little sense. There seemed to be no philosophy beyond 'evil authoritarian government' in the Authority, which was a problem.
The general standard of the prose was poor and inconsistent, the characterisation was very spotty and lacking in all of the important places, and the plot and background were unconvincing at best. Not even in the top five feminist science fiction books I've read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
In the dystopian future of Carhullan, the greatest injustice inflicted on the people by The Authority is that women are forced to have contraceptive implants to prevent population growth due to the extreme food shortages. I suppose back in 2007 this might have seemed like a far-fetched dystopian idea, but nowadays an end to human reproduction is a policy enthusiastically supported by many activists who caper around our streets, glue themselves to trains, and wotnot.
Forced contraception is the main reason 'Sister' abandons the city of Rith and goes off to join the renegade band of women in Carhullan. She doesn't like children and neither wants nor has any herself, it's the principle of the thing. But it makes you think: why are there so few men escaping the Authority like the women of Carhullan? Since having families is forbidden, you'd expect a lot of the people escaping to be couples who want children, no?
There's no effort at plausible world-building, and it can't really be overlooked because a large part of the story is all about rebelling against the unjust Authority. How can the reader take any interest in a rebellion when there's so little information about what the hell is going on and who they're even fighting against? How can you find the narrator plausible when she's supposed to be politically-engaged but hasn't the slightest notion how her society functions?
What we can see of the Authority is that they're wildly incompetent on a level to rival the Soviets. They've banned farming in favour of eating entirely imported tinned food (how are they paying for it?) and have the entire population working hard on industrial parts that are completely useless. They're deeply engaged in overseas wars. Clearly this is a regime tettering on collapse; and yet it doesn't. There are hints of more - there's some kind of religion backing the Authority (or being used by it? Or co-operating with it?) Is it Anglican? Or is it just American, since the religious slogans are printed on the tinned food? There's no evidence any of the population believe in it - not Sister, not her husband, not the woman next door. Is it here simply because religion is one of those oppressive things that every good dystopia ought to have, or did this book begin as a fanfiction of The Handmaid's Tale: What happened in the UK during the Gilead years?
Almost everything else that Sister is running away from, she finds waiting for her at Carhullan. She leaves her husband as he no longer shares her political views (there is some attempt to insinuate that being in a dying relationship is a form of patriarchal oppression) and ends up in a relationship with a woman who doesn't share her political views. She hates the city because of the crowded living quarters, but so are Carhullan's. She hates being the subject of the Authority, but she willing becomes the subject of Jackie. I suppose if one were a reactionary one could argue that being oppressed by a faceless bureaucracy in an industrial wasteland is worse that being oppressed in a rural setting by a feudal lordlandlordmad woman rebel leader. The food is better, I suppose.
It is the community at Carhullan itself that made me dislike this book so much. I struggled strongly against the sensation that the book wanted me to find Carhullan admirable - not perfect, not an ideal, but a realistic community of strong, independent women living on their own terms. And they just weren't. Half of them were a bunch of extremist nutjobs who liked to mess about in the mountains playing commando and eventually spunked their lives away on a pointless gesture of defiance.
The other half were worse, a bunch of conformists tagging along, letting Jackie tell them what to do. When Jackie told them the farm was closing and they were all going back to Authority why did they so meekly (if weepily) comply? Why not tell her they had every right to be peaceful farmers if they wanted and stay at Carhullan? Why not just amble along the mountainside to next abandoned farm and start over? Sister describes with some pride their custom of regular meetings so that everyone can talk over issues in the community - and yet the resolution of these issues is always exactly what Jackie wants it to be. The women who wanted their sons to stay with them talked and talked and talked about it and Jackie never budged. There's a reason why the suffragists made their motto 'Deeds not Words', ladies.
And every so often I wondered if perhaps I was just reading extremely badly. Was this actually a very clever book showing a young naive acolyte being indoctrinated by a psychopath? Was the inconsistent world-building supposed to highlight Sister's unreliability as a narrator? Was the hothouse conformism of Carhullan supposed to be the real dystopia? Perhaps I wasn't subtle enough as a reader - but I would've given the book more credit for being layered if the writing were better. The language was occasionally pretentious and the pacing jumped about wildly - long slow stretches (far too long in such a short book) about journeying into the mountains or how to farm in a dystopia, and then vital plot points skipped over. A better book would've told the story it was trying to tell.
If you think this looks interesting, I suggest just reading The Handmaid's Tale instead. It's a better comprised, better written, basically same idea (basically) and doesn't read like a vat of slow-moving concrete.
Das Positive zuerst: Alle Sätze waren schön, dafür ist der dritte Stern. Inhaltlich habe ich mich von Anfang bis Ende geärgert. Die Protagonistin flieht aus einer blöden Dystopie in eine noch blödere Utopie. Die Dystopie besteht vor allem daraus, dass man leben muss wie in einem britischen Roman aus dem frühen 20. Jahrhundert, in dem Die Massen verachtet werden: Sie leben wie die Kaninchen in engen Mietskasernen! Sie essen aus Konservendosen! Sie arbeiten in der Fabrik! (einer komplett unspezifischen Fabrik, Hauptsache Fabrik). Die Utopie ist Das Ehrliche, Authentische Landleben™, bei dem man nach einem langen Tag beim Torfstechen erst so richtig merkt, wie verkehrt das andere Leben mit den Konservendosen war. Die Nachteile dieses postapokalyptischen Landlebens werden nur am Rande gestreift, ok, es ist also nicht so gut geheizt und man kann immer nur kurz und lauwarm duschen, aber sonst ist alles bestens, keine Kindersterblichkeit, reichlich zu essen, gute Laune. 65 Frauen leben auf engstem Raum zusammen und sind dabei allzeit kooperativ. Nebenbei handelt es sich um einen gewalttätigen Prepper-Kult, der in jedem anderen Kontext als Utopie extrem erklärungsbedürftig wäre (dazu mehr in dieser Rezension). 90% des Buchs sind worldbuilding, 10% sind so was Ähnliches wie Handlung, wobei die Haupthandlung immer übersprungen wird. Ich fürchte, die Autorin ist mal zu Fuß zu einem von Frauen bewirtschafteten Bauernhof im Lake District gegangen und hat dort selbstgemachtes Lavendeleis gegessen, und das ist jetzt die Folge.
Pointless. Waste of time. "Sister" fled what she perceived as an oppressive, restricted and controlling environment just to exchange it for a violent, cold and equally oppressive commune-like community run by a crazy lady. She wanted to be free; I think she ended up in a more horrible environment.
I walked into Hares and Hyenas wishing I could find a well-written lesbian book I hadn't read, but knowing it was unlikely.
I picked up The Carhullan Army tentatively - I don't usually like science fiction - bought it a little reluctantly, and then sat up last night way too late because I couldn't bear to stop reading.
Sarah Hall won the 2006/2007 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for this book. This is what Suzi Feay, chair of judges, said: “Sarah Hall's fierce, uncomfortable story of a radical dissident group holed up in the far north after the total breakdown of society seemed to all the judges to be the book that tackled the most urgent and alarming questions of today. The quality of The Carhullan Army was simply unignorable. We need writers with Hall's humanity and insight.”
The only disappointing thing about having read it is that I can't look forward to reading it.
I vacillated between 3 and 4 stars for this book, because although I thought it was well-crafted and thought-provoking, after considering it, I didn't really like it. I couldn't identify with the protagonist, and I didn't agree with her views. For a while, I thought that the author was intentionally creating a very problematic situation, but (I could be wrong) I think she actually agrees with her protagonist's perspective. (The interview with her at the end of the book turned me toward that point of view.) However, regardless of the author's opinions, she's still created an interesting scenario. It's a near-future England. After severe socio-economic collapse, the government is struggling to manage its population. The first major issue with the book occurs here. Although the government is shown as being restrictive, cracking down on personal freedoms, we see nothing to indicate that it is actually abusive. Rather, it seems to be going out of its way to maintain order, provide people with food, etc. Our protagonist is traumatized and resentful about being required to wear an IUD (this seems to be her main reason to rebel‚ - but at the same time we see that people are living in crowded conditions and that there is barely enough food and resources to go around. I can't really disagree with the government's decision, although the program (as portrayed) could have been carried out with more sensitivity. Our protagonist leaves her husband secretly and without warning. At first I assumed he was abusive or otherwise horrific. But no, it is later revealed that the two had been in love and then they grew apart because he was able to adjust and make do in his new life, and she refused to, insisting on hanging on to anger and resentment. She was angry at him for not maintaining the revolutionary political ideals that he held as a college student - basically, for growing up. Maybe this means I have become old and stodgy (I prefer to think of myself as adaptable), but I identified more with the husband than with her. Then, hitchhiking, our protagonist has an encounter with a man in a van. Basically, he makes a pass at her. He doesn't threaten her with rape - but she acts like he does. The whole thing is a little weird. Our protagonist reaches her goal, and after some tribulation, joins the female survivalist group she was intending on joining up with. The narrator makes a big deal out of insisting that the group is not a cult and that its leader, Jackie, is not crazy. However, it is more than clear that (at least by my definitions) it IS a cult, and Jackie IS crazy. The behaviors of the women in the group are horribly disturbing. Personally, anyone that beat me up, broke my bones and imprisoned me till I was on the verge of death would NEVER be getting called "Sister" by me. Under Jackie's crazed leadership, the cult gradually gets more militarily inclined, and things come to a head when Jackie decides to morph it into a true terrorist group. Some women are shown as seeing this for what it is, and they leave. Jackie then murders a couple of people who take off - something that is accepted as "necessary" by our protagonist. Jackie has absolutely no plan about how to improve the lot of England (except maybe that farming is good?), but decides to incite armed rebellion. After that, I really thought that the author was trying to talk about how people can be led to accept horrible, unethical actions; led into violence... It is true that the women of Carhullan did make a better life for themselves (well, at least they had better food... they still had an awful lot of rules and hierarchy going on). But then in the author interview she was talking about "strong, capable women.. shaking off oppression.." and I'm like "What?! That's not the book I just read, Ms. Hall!" It is still an interesting book though, because it leads the reader to consider the two different societies posited here - the repressive, crowded welfare state that still clings to traditional values that "Sister" runs from, and the repressive, hardworking, sex-segregated (it's mostly women, with a few men down the road) military-style camp that she runs to. Neither are shown as lovely options. But I think that Hall sees a lot more value in the latter than I do. I would prefer the first, with the option of working from the inside to demand more personal freedoms & rights from the 'Authority' - maybe not a goal that would be likely to succeed - but one with far more chance of succeeding than armed rebellion ending in mass bloodshed.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
It's a near-future or parallel-present dystopia. A surprising number of reviews I've read dismiss it as derivative of, and adding nothing to the dystopian/post-apocalyptic genre, but I've read lots of books in that space and I must say that I don't think it was a rehash. The narrative is vivid and gripping, one of those short, intense novels you stay up late to finish. Although I felt a little uncomfortable when a girl of Indian origin is described as having 'placid' eyes and given a certain calm wisdom which feels a bit too close to stereotype, the characters are by and large interesting and in one case fascinating enough to be unforgettable.
The Carhullan Army are a group of renegade women who live in a self-sustaining farm, far beyond the reach of the totalitarian Authority that has taken over the UK. They decide the time has come to fight the enemy, before they are crushed, and the violence and uncompromising insistence on loyalty among them makes one wonder whether the lengths they go to are justified. The book also explores the extent of a woman's potential for violence if social conditioning for traditional gender roles is done away with. And whether a flawed alternative to a flawed system is worth the effort, because the Carhullan community, for all its good points, seems as deeply flawed as the society it rejects, and just as predicated on undercurrents of power and intimidation.
It's not new territory but Hall mixes it in with telling details that comment on contemporary politics, and a picture of life in a sort of all (or mostly) female society that is not strictly unprecedented but absorbing. I really liked Hall's style and the way she patterns her concerns and concepts into the narrative fabric and hope she dabbles in borderline SF territory again.
Lots of pretty writing propping up a bunch of very familiar dystopic tropes. The last paragraph is really good though (intentional echoes of Inigo Montoya? ... probably not). Ending well is always a plus.
Ugh. 1.5 stars. I gave it 2 stars to be kind, because the author has decent technical skills.
The writing on the page was generally good. It was neither amazing nor horrendous.
The story itself was missing. It was about a woman trapped in a dystopian society without any freedoms. It was her tale of escape, and how she found herself again. I think the ending was supposed to be profound but it missed the mark.
The woman escape to Carhullan, a group of woman living up in the mountains. They were rumoured to be a cult, but actually were just a group of women dedicated to ensuring that their life was free from tyranny. In the earlier times it was a refuge for broken and down-trodden women, and now it was an escape from society.
Where this went downhill for me was the feminist taint over everything. This was strictly a women-only affair. A small group of men lived down the hill. They were mal-nourished and really only existed so the few hetero-sexual women could get a release (include one woman who was married to one). If a boy was born in the society he was sent away at age 11 to live with the group. It was horrendous, I don't know what the author was trying to do with that bit. It seemed extremist, and couple with the amount of homosexuality amongst the women, it all seemed like extreme-feminism.
It was at this point the story simply disappeared amidst bizarre torturous rituals (she was locked in a cramped dog-box for a few days before anyone even talked to her), gratuitous sex, and vulgar behaviour. Any of it may have been interesting if it were unpacked, but it was kind of rushing past so quickly that there was no time to emotionally connect. So the book just started to read like an overview of something that might be a story.
This was not the dystopian novel I was expecting. The dystopia is contrasted with a small utopian community, existing outside the official oppressions. And utopia here is short, hard, and messy. Resistance, how and why we choose it or don't, is central to the story. The protagonist gives up her name, and all that it symbolizes, when she arrives at Carhullan, fleeing the daily squashing of her soul and freedoms to join the women's community established before the social unraveling that is the backdrop to the story. The name of the dynamic and charismatic co-founder of the community holds much more meaning and power. Carhullan belongs to Jackie on so many levels, despite the communal tenor of the farm, and I appreciated the exploration of the dynamics of leadership and authority.
The writing style was rich and compelling, and I totally got sucked into the story. Carhullan's beauties and flaws are well painted and make the community very real. But there were a lot of threads that bothered me, which I guess is a good thing - makes me engage with the ideas a little deeper. Should definitely make for a good Think Galactic discussion.
Absolutely tremendous. Masterfully written, I was sucked in from the first page. Plot, characters, themes, just everything about this was wonderful. I don't know why more people haven't read this.
I seem to be trapped in a pattern of bad books. The latest, Sarah Hall’s Daughters of the North (also published under the title The Carhullan Army) is not a rewarding read. That’s unfortunate because it was my book of choice to read on the plane. The closer I got to my destination, the more annoyed I became with the book.
Daughters of the North is the story of an unnamed woman who escapes her existence as a citizen of the totalitarian-like government that now controls England (and maybe the UK?) and flees to northern England to join a group of rebel women known as “unofficials.” These women, with their leader Jackie Nixon, set up their farm in remote northern England well before the collapse of the government. When the main character was a child, she knew of them and idolized Jackie. The unnamed main character (who takes the name “Sister” when she is accepted at the Carhullan farm), didn’t want to live under the repressive government of the “the Authority” any longer but when she got to the farm, she realized that it wasn’t quite the haven she expected.
I had a lot of problems with this book and found it a slog to get through. Probably my number one biggest complaint is that this book reads like a first draft. The details of everything are murky: the plot is underdeveloped and unsatisfying, the dystopian world is unclear, how England collapsed and who now is in control is uncertain. The characters themselves are rather uninteresting and uninspiring. I’m not emotionally attached to any of them. I don’t buy into anything that happens in this novel nor do I see it the way the author intended I should—as a warning about the future.
England’s (again, is it the whole UK? I don’t know because it’s very unclear) government has collapsed due to a combination of climate change and the collapse of the oil industry/greater economic failures. It all happens rather abruptly. Those problems, along with (apparently) England turning into some kind of war-mongering nation (hey, isn’t that the USA’s role?!) causes England to be taken over by…not sure. I’m guessing it’s the good ole USA because England can no longer produce its own food and there are descriptions of canned food (usually fish) coming from America to feed the English people. These cans of food also have religious inscriptions on them and the author also describes religious pamphlets/circulars distributed to people. So was this some kind of quasi-religious military take-over? By America? Who the hell knows. I’m not sure the author knows, but let’s move on.
“The Authority” is what the government is referred to in this novel. The Authority is not defined. Is it ideological? Is it military? What are its guiding principles? I have no idea. What I know is, the Authority eventually took over, herded England’s population into cities, and citizens are assigned jobs. Sister works at a factory that makes wind turbines…wind turbines no one needs/wants. So the factory exists to just keep people employed? Turning out products that are not sold or used, just stacked in warehouses? That doesn’t appear to be a sound economic plan, Authority. Due to overpopulation and lack of resources, women’s reproductive abilities are controlled by contraceptive devices (similar to IUDs) that are forcibly implanted into their uteruses. If they want to be pregnant, they have to be lucky enough to win a “baby lottery.” So, a word about this. I get that as dystopian/pseudo-woman-power novel it’s obligatory to have women controlled via their uteruses, but I don’t think a baby lottery would be how the Authority would allow pregnancies. If resources are scarce, wouldn’t you allow only the best genetic representations of your country/race to reproduce? You wouldn’t leave that to chance. Course, since the author put so little thought into the Authority, you have no idea where the seat of power is, the identity of the people in control, and what their endgame is. So, yeah, maybe this Authority (which seems rather half-assed and not all that repressive or scary—if the setting is bleak, it’s due to climate change and the economic collapse, not the Authority per se) hasn’t thought this through.
The Authority’s power is so not scary and absolute because Sister manages to easily escape and make her way to the Carhullan farm. Supposedly everyone is watched and “monitors” randomly check people for violations; women particularly are harassed and forced to undress so a monitor (usually male) can check to make sure her IUD implant is still in place—so yes, that sounds terrible, but these people basically volunteered to be counted in the “census” that rounded everyone up and placed them in the cities and subjected to this treatment. Anyone living outside Authority areas are considered “unofficials,” that is, not citizens and (apparently) left alone—like the women in Carhullan. But I never really felt that the Authority had all that much authority or were particularly oppressive because they allowed the Carhullan farm (which was in no way a secret) to exist and also let the monarchy continue. In fact, later in the book Jackie reveals that the King has died and there will be no succession to the throne. Because of this, the Authority is going to bring “unofficial” areas under their control and they have about a year and a half before this happens. Maybe it’s because I’m American, but I thought, so the King of England (who wields no real power anyway) is dead? So what? Why would the Authority be able to expand its power because the monarchy has essentially ended? Did the monarchy have more political/military power in this book? It’s all so damn vague that I can’t really be all that outraged by the Authority nor can I fully root for the Carhullan women because I can’t fully understand what exactly they’re fighting against—or fighting for. There’s a very telling scene on page 160 describing one of the meeting’s regular “meetings” in which women are allowed to speak about their situation at Carhullan and argue either for or against Jackie’s rules. At this meeting, Jackie asks the women for their ideas of what they should do now that they know (or suspect) the Authority will come for them (in a leisurely year and a half) and one woman, Chloe, says, well, everyone knows we’re here and this is our home. “We’ve surely got a right to stay, and to disagree with the government’s policy” (160). Helen agrees with her and says, “We could refuse to go. We could hold out long enough for them to lose interest in us. We’re no threat to anyone.” Based on these two sentences alone, I’d guess that the Authority isn’t all that repressive. These women still think they have rights? They think they can disagree with the Authority and decline to be moved from their farm? They think they aren’t a threat? How naïve are they? They have no rights and of course they’re a threat. If the Authority is a totalitarian government, even a half-assed one, anyone who resists is a threat. Even a farm in remote northern England with a bunch of rebel farmer women.
Carhullan, as a sort of female sanctuary and soldiers-in-training base is unrealistic. Well, the self-sustaining farm part of it is detailed enough and I can believe that these sixty-five women can live here successfully on their own. But the military training is completely ridiculous. Jackie, who is revealed to have some sort of commando/kick-ass military background, is training a smaller portion of the women to be some sort of equivalent to American Navy SEALs. She has them running around the countryside on endurance hikes, scrounging for food, conducting surprise raids on their own people and if a woman dies on these training missions (as one does), she tells them to look at the woman’s dead body (“This is what it looks like to be nothing. Don’t fucking forget it”) and then another woman shoots her now-dead compatriot in the head. Oh, and they kill a dog. Just to get in the practice of killing. It’s so stupid. I’m reading this macho-military bullshit and rolling my eyes. Really? What exactly is your group of maybe twenty women going to do, Jackie? Her plan is to sneak into Rith, the nearest town (and where Sister escaped from) to rally the citizens to overthrow Authority rule. If necessary, the women will take the town by force. On page 185, Jackie breaks the news to them that they may not survive this. No shit, Sherlock. If they are caught, they are to say only three things: their names, the name of their militia, and to state that they do not recognize the legality of the government. Say nothing else under interrogation. “There will be a time to tell them about us. But not yet.” So, what “us” is she speaking of? Tell who what? There isn’t anything to know. They don’t have any secrets, they aren’t part of a wider rebel alliance (which always makes me think of Luke Skywalker). I’m always in support of fighting the man, but wtf. The problem with Jackie is she’s nuts and has these grandiose ideas that don’t make sense. The reality of their situation (a small group of women rebelling against a totalitarian-like government) doesn’t match up to the grandiosity that Jackie gives it (don’t tell anyone about us, don’t bend under interrogation)—if they were one part of a greater network, okay, I see the need to keep your mouth shut, but they’re a pack of more-or-less self-trained women from Carhullan. The Authority will know this because Jackie and the farm are already known to them. Good grief.
The novel ends with a whimper—the whole book has been Sister’s confession to the Authority (so much for “don’t tell them about us”). Which is amusing (in a very bad way) because the last three sentences in the book are Sister’s Jackie-approved statements (name, militia, and “I do not recognize…”). Why bother, Sister? You already spilled the beans.
This whole book has the feeling of an author trying to explore some idea of women’s rights or civil rights or environmental concern but you never get a feeling for any of those issues because the story is so half-baked and underdeveloped. I don’t usually ask for books to be longer, but this book needed at least another hundred pages to fully develop the complex story she is trying to tell. The causes of England’s collapse are cliché, the examples of Authority abuse are cliché, and I’m never convinced of the horribleness of the Authority—it’s like, well, the author told me the Authority is bad, so I guess it’s bad. Nope, I need more than that. Especially if I have to swallow the idea of these sort of warrior/farmer women taking on the military power of the Authority. None of it is convincing. None of the characters is a fully developed person, including leader Jackie. She’s more of a bad ass Mary Sue who is worshipped by the author, certainly, and by Sister. It’s tiresome. The obligatory lesbo scene is not such a big deal, but it’s funny how quickly Sister (who is hetero and married to a man) is into it. There’s absolutely no thought about this at all, and when she switches back to men, no thought about that either. I guess Sister is too busy being a Jackie-worshipping bad ass wannabe to have thoughts about much of anything.
The book is readable enough, but the author does three things that irritate the fuck out of me. One, spell out “OK.” I hate the initials. It’s my personal pet peeve, but whatever. Spell out the word “okay” in a book. Damn. Two, she buries dialogue (what little there is of it) in large paragraphs of exposition. It’s difficult sometimes to know who’s talking and sometimes to even recognize the sentence as dialogue (damn the subtle British tradition of one set of quotation marks). Three, the author employs tricks to avoid writing difficult scenes/dialogue. Some sections in the book are titled “partial corruption” or “data lost.” As in, the author didn’t want to write all that stuff so she took the short cut of having the “file” lose some of its “data.” Sarah Hall, you’re not fooling me. In the scene in which Sister has to stand up and make an important speech supporting Jackie, the author didn’t know what to write so she wrote how Sister felt as she spoke: “I don’t remember what I said. The words were lost to me even as I spoke them. I felt Jackie’s arm on my shoulder, acknowledging my allegiance, binding me to her. I felt the flow of energy leaving her frame and filling mine, circulating with my own blood through the vessels of my body” (162). Yeah, not convinced.
If you’re looking for speculative fiction, dystopian fiction, women-fighting-against-the-man fiction, don’t read this. It’s not worth the effort, even if the effort is less than 200 pages. The book didn’t make me thoughtful, didn’t leave me with any impression deeper than annoyance and the resolution to never read this author again. The story ends the way it began, with a vague hopelessness and no hint of progress or change. It’s a complete waste of time. Instead, read Margaret Atwood’s classic The Handmaid’s Tale which this unworthy book is compared to many times. Atwood’s book is the real deal--Daughters of the North is merely a weak imitation.
Un clima dal carattere sempre più tropicale, disastri ambientali, progressivo smantellamento dell’agricoltura, perdita del potere coloniale e guerre per le risorse energetiche con Stati emergenti trascinano l’Inghilterra in una grave crisi economica e sociale. Mentre l’Autorità detiene il potere assoluto e gli uomini sono costretti a lavorare per una stentata sopravvivenza, le donne sono relegate in ruoli subordinati. Tutti gli abitanti di sesso femminile in età riproduttiva devono sottoporsi all’impianto di un “regolatore” uterino, una sorta di spirale anticoncezionale: la maternità è ammessa soltanto per le donne che sono favorite dalla sorte in un’apposita lotteria nazionale. Coloro che vivono al di fuori dei centri urbani (e quelli che non sono censiti) sono privati di ogni diritto e assistenza: definiti “non-ufficiali”, sono considerati “stranieri”.
Le figlie del Nord è la storia di una giovane donna che, dopo la “messa a norma” chirurgica e il mancato sostegno morale da parte del compagno, decide di fuggire dalla città di Rith per la fattoria della comunità di Carhullan, una nota organizzazione femminile che da decenni – grazie all’agricoltura – sopravvive in autonomia sulle montagne del nord (Lake District). Il racconto di “Sorella”, come viene semplicemente chiamata dalle compagne (lei non rivelerà mai il suo vero nome) è contenuto nella deposizione resa al sistema carcerario dell’Autorità inglese; il memoriale, o confessione, consiste in sette documenti (files), due dei quali incompleti, che corrispondono ai sette capitoli del libro. La narrazione in prima persona e l’assenza di una voce narrante giustificano lo scarso approfondimento di molti personaggi, mentre le parti mancanti delle deposizioni permettono di evitare deviazioni e sconfinamenti in antefatti, ulteriori spiegazioni o inutili scene d’azione.
Il soggetto è forse poco originale e lo svolgimento può risultare poco appassionante, ma ciò che di ordinario e straordinario succede a Carhullan (una convivenza in un ambiente naturale povero di risorse, un addestramento in condizioni estreme) è sufficiente a mantenere vivo l’interesse; inoltre il romanzo è soprattutto una storia di ribellione, di discussioni e divisioni su quanto sia ammissibile o lecito reagire a un potere autoritario e repressivo anche con atti violenti. Il finale, lasciando in sospeso alcune questioni (chi ha recuperato i file con la deposizione di “Sorella”, perché sono stati rinvenuti parzialmente “danneggiati” nel centro di detenzione?), permette al lettore di formulare varie ipotesi e, magari, intravedere un po’ di speranza.
I got to know about Sarah Hall when I read reviews of her book ‘How to Paint a Dead Man’. Most of the reviews raved about the author and this book. I went and got the book, but postponed reading it for later. Then I discovered that one her novels ‘The Electric Michelangelo’ was shortlisted for the Booker and so I went and got that too. During one of my subsequent visits to the bookshop, I saw ‘The Carhullan Army’ and I didn’t want to leave that, and so got that too. Unfortunately, all the books ended up on my bookshelf, unread. You might think that I am crazy for getting so many books by the same writer and not reading them immediately, but I was in one of those book acquiring sprees those days – if I discovered a new writer who I thought I might like, I went and got many books by the same writer. Those book acquiring sprees were crazy. I am glad I am out of them now. This week when I was looking for a new book to read and I wasn’t happy with any of the choices that were available, I thought I will read ‘The Carhullan Army’. It had all the things I was looking for at that point – a comfortable size which is not very long (207 pages), comfortable font-size and an attractive first paragraph. I read the first page and it was gripping and before I knew I had dived deep into the book and came out only after I had finished it. Here is what I think.
‘The Carhullan Army’ is set in a dystopian world in the future. England is ruled by a totalitarian government headed by the ‘Authority’, elections have been suspended, freedom has been curtailed, people are sharing apartments and are in meaningless jobs, women are fitted with contraceptive devices, wars are waged across the world and the country is falling apart. An unnamed woman narrates her story as it happened at this time. She calls herself Sister and refuses to reveal her real name. She seems to be in prison and the story seems to be her confession. Sister has one of the meaningless jobs in a nearby factory. Her husband Andrew works at the refinery. Their marriage is falling apart. One day the government decides that all women should wear contraceptive devices. Sister tries postponing her turn, but she is not able to do it for long. She feels violated. She thinks about all this for a while. She wants to escape from her situation – from the meaningless job, from the restrictive life, from her joyless marriage. She has heard of a place called Carhullan where there is a commune of women who have managed to create a self-sustaining way of life. This community at Carhullan is outside the confines of the official system and they are treated as ‘Unofficials’. Sister yearns to go away from home and join this commune. One day she gets up early, leaves her home and journeys towards Carhullan. When she reaches there, she doesn’t get a warm welcome. She is treated as an enemy and she is put in isolation. But she survives that. When the women who run the commune at Carhullan discover that Sister has come there to join the commune, her isolation ends. She is warmly welcomed, is made to feel part of the commune and she finds something useful to do. She even falls in love – with another woman. But beautiful times don’t last for long. A dark cloud hovers over the horizon and the women of Carhullan have to decide how to handle the threat. What they do and whether this ideal community survives forms the rest of the story.
I liked ‘The Carhullan Army’ very much. I haven’t read many dystopian novels (I can’t remember reading any except ‘Matched’ by Allie Condie) and so it was interesting to read one. I liked the main character Sister and how the story describes her escape from the confines of her life into a new world and how it transforms her as a person. I also liked the way the love between her and another person in the commune, Shruti, is depicted. I loved Sarah Hall’s wonderful prose and the many beautiful passages in the book. The last sentence in the book gave me goose bumps.
One thing which comes to the top of my mind when I think of this book is that it was gripping from the beginning to the end. It was a real page-turner. I also felt another thing when I read the book. I don’t know whether I am generalizing this without any real evidence – it will be interesting to think about this as I continue reading books by more authors. One of the things I discovered about English women writers was that in their books, the plot always came first. There were no long monologues and philosophical passages unrelated to the story with the plot getting the short shrift. Of course, these books had their beautiful passages, but they were part of the plot and went along with the plot. It is a traditional way of storytelling and it works wonderfully. Whether I read 19th century writers like Jane Austen or George Eliot or modern writers like A.S.Byatt, I noticed this feature consistently in their books. Now I am happy to see that Sarah Hall belongs to the same school of writers who focus on sculpting a good plot. I don’t know when this accent on beautiful passages and philosophical monologues went up and the focus on the plot went down. Many of the literary prize winners these days have plots which can be written in two pages and the rest of the book (that is literally hundreds of pages) is filled up with beautiful passages. I think there is room for both kinds of books in the literary landscape and I hope more writers try to write gripping plots. As for me – I love myself a gripping plot and so I am happy that this book was very satisfying that way. I can’t wait to read more books by Sarah Hall now.
I will leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.
But now I was safely away, beyond exposure and explanation. I was alone. Here in the empty Lakeland village I couldn’t have explained to anyone exactly how secure I felt, even if there had been someone around to listen to me. The village reverberated with silence, with human absence. There was not a soul to be found and I liked it. It had been so long since I had felt that. Even on the Beacon Hill above Rith I could see people moving in the streets and I knew they were close by. Here I was breathing air that no one else’s breath competed for. I was no longer complicit in a wrecked and regulated existence. I was not its sterile subject.
Sitting beside me she seemed too inanimate for her voltage, too kinetic under her restfulness. It was as if her skin could barely contain the essence of her.
Our company seemed defined by a gentle sadness now, as if we had never really had the opportunity to fall out of love, and everything begun had been curtailed instead of aborted. I might have walked away completely, avoided her around the farm, to make it all easier, for myself at least, attempting to convert the relationship into a mistake in my head. But she made a point of maintaining a bond. She offered to wash my clothes with hers, left flowers on the crate next to my bunk. There was more grace in her than I could have managed, and without hers I would have found none. It brought a gentle ache to my chest to have her hug me at the end of a dinner shift and then walk away to her bed, or rest a hand on my shoulder and ask if I was faring OK when she saw my cuts and bruises, my newly shaved head…Shruti held back, as I did. Instead, she offered me a quiet, spiritual friendship.
Have you read ‘The Carhullan Army’ by Sarah Hall? What do you think about it?
No termino de entender qué pasa con este libro. No me refiero al argumento; hablo de la razón de ser de este libro. La historia se resume en esto: se pudre todo en Inglaterra, la economía se va a la mierda, el gobierno es derrocado, hay una dictadura, el medio ambiente destruye todo y la gente se ve obligada a amucharse y vivir en condiciones deplorables, todos tienen que trabajar como esclavos y a las mujeres se les pone un DIU para que no tengan hijos. Eso es más o menos dos páginas.
Una mina se harta de ese estilo de vida. Sabe que en medio de las montañas hay una granja donde son todas mujeres y están por fuera del sistema. Un día se escapa de su casa y se va caminando a esa granja. Eso son 150 páginas.
En la granja se acostumbra a las tareas de granja, aprende a cocinar, a cultivar, a andar a caballo, se hace lesbiana, aprende lo bueno de la sociedad matriarcal. Eso son 100 páginas.
La jefa de la granja decide entrenar a un grupo de veinte minas para tomar el poder y derrocar el gobierno inglés. En ese grupo está la narradora. Entrenan como si fueran soldados que van a la guerra, en unas condiciones horribles. Eso son 50 páginas.
Van a derrocar el gobierno y empezar una guerra civil. Eso ni siquiera lo cuentan.
Entonces termina el libro y vos decís "Ajá. ¿Y? ¿Cuál es el punto de este libro? ¿Para qué fue escrito?". Porque en serio que no sabés cuál es el objetivo. Y si me vienen con el tema de que lo importante es el camino y no el punto de llegada, es que por eso le pongo tres estrellas, porque está re bien escrito. Pero como un todo, es más desabrido que el port salut sin sal.
A dystopian future that is terrifyingly easy to imagine. What’s fascinating about the story is the question of how a person might, if desperate enough, become a fanatic.
This won the 2007 Tiptree over Flora Segunda and Water Logic, so it had better be pretty awesome. Otherwise, I shall feel quite put out.
I haven't read this yet, but apparently environmental catastrophe hits and England is reduced to totalitarian camps. A much-mentioned feature of these camps is mandatory contraception for the women; a lottery is used to decide which few are allowed to bear children. Oh noes! Except, hang on--*bearing children is not an inaliable human right*, especially when there are not enough resources. I'm sure not having babies makes people sad, but starving to death feels a whole lot worse.
ETA: I hated the narrator and the book within the first five pages, and I didn't stop hating them until the very last sentence. The final page of the book has enough punch to it that, as expected and manipulative as it was, I couldn't help but feel a tad breathless.
The book follows an unnamed woman as she escapes the town in which she grew up, and finds a home instead at the Carhullan farm. Run by the charismatic ex-soldier Jackie, the farm is a women-only haven for those who want to live a more democratic, hands-on life. But the farm will provide the women with protection for only so long--so Jackie decides to take the fight to the Authority, rather than wait for destruction.
I had a lot of problems with this book. The world building sucked. There was no characterization or personality to anyone. The writing was clearly going for "literary" in a way that drove me batty. The plot has been done before, and better. The whole separatist thing felt so dated and unnecessary. There's pretty much no dialog. I have no idea why Hall felt the need to write this book--she didn't say anything about politics, or u/dystopias, or genders, or sexuality, or characters...the whole book feels unnecessary. If you liked this book but want more, read The Handmaid's Tale or (even better!) Joanna Russ.
Hoy sale a la venta esta distopía tan curiosa. Y es curiosa por bastantes motivos. Reconozco que hasta que no llegué a la última parte del libro era incapaz de responder a la pregunta “¿Te está gustando?”. El grueso de esta obra está compuesto por una descripción de entorno agradable de leer, pero ésta no terminaba de llegar a algún sitio más allá, por lo que se me hizo un poco cuesta arriba. Sin embargo tenía una cosa clara, entre mis manos había una narración altamente feminista y combatiente, además de una crítica política clara. ▫️ Sarah Hall ha creado un mundo que no se aleja en mucho del nuestro. Me horroriza cuando leo una distopía cruel y desesperanzadora, y me doy cuenta de que una realidad así podría llegar a existir. “(…) Ciudadanas de segunda y objetos sexuales. (…) No estás capacitada para un puesto de trabajo. A la mitad de las mujeres del mundo las estaban v.olando, y a la otra mitad, los fanáticos las obligaban a envolverse en telas negras. Nos pasábamos la vida discutiendo qué aspecto debían tener las mujeres y cómo debían vestir, pero nadie hablaba de sus derechos fundamentales”. ▫️ Agradezco la perspectiva de género tan acertada que tiene, pero me reconozco en la incomodidad de su lectura. En muchas ocasiones el libro es cruel y truculento, hasta un punto en el que siento próxima la pérdida de seres humanos que ha habido, está habiendo y habrá en la historia. En estas guerras y guerrillas donde todo el mundo cree tener la razón y se pelea en nombre de gobiernos y dioses, dejando a un lado la humanidad. ▫️ De base no soy fan de la ciencia ficción, y tampoco de los libros de terror. Con lo cual la suma hace que no haya sido mi libro. Pero a vosotras si os gustan esos géneros literarios no dudéis en leerlo. Os confieso que con ese final, no me ha dejado indiferente.
England in der Zukunft ist nicht mehr so, wie wir es kennen. Die Menschen leben in einer Diktatur, nachdem das alte System an Umweltkatastrophen und Wirtschaftskrisen zerbrochen ist. Die Menschen werden streng kontrolliert, bis hin zur Familienplanung. Eine Gruppe Frauen hat sich dem entzogen ist in den Lake District gegangen, wo sie unter ihrer Führerin Jackie frei leben.
Die Geschichte wird von einer Frau erzählt, die sich selbst Schwester nennt. Ihren wahren Namen hat ihr Jackie genommen, als sie zur Gemeinschaft gekommen ist und sie hat ihn nie wieder zurückgefordert.
Ich hatte von Anfang an das Gefühl, als ob die Geschichte keinen glücklichen Ausgang nehmen würde, auch wenn das Leben auf der Farm zuerst positiv geschildert wurde. Als Außenstehende fand ich aber vieles von dem, was geschildert wurde, eher befremdlich. Mehr und mehr hatte ich den Eindruck, als ob Schwester eine Diktatur gegen eine andere eingetauscht hat. Die Gemeinschaft mag am Anfang anders gewesen sein, aber als sie dazu kam, hat die Veränderung schon begonnen und war nicht mehr aufzuhalten.
Manchmal hätte ich ihr gerne zugerufen, dass sie wieder gehen und woanders ein neues Leben aufbauen soll. Denn ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass die Frauen im Lake District die einzige Gemeinschaft ihrer Art war. Aber selbst wenn Schwester es gewollt hätte, auszusteigen war nicht erlaubt. Das haben sowohl die Dynamik in der Gruppe als auch die Persönlichkeit Jackies verhindert. So konnte ich nur zusehen, wie die Frauen auf den Abgrund zuliefen.
Die Geschichte konnte mich nicht so packen, wie ich es von der Inhaltsangabe her erwartet habe. Das lag hauptsächlich am Erzählstil, der auf mich kalt und emotionslos gewirkt hat. Fast so, als ob die Frauen Maschinen ohne Herz und Gefühle waren und das hat für mich nicht zusammengepasst.
This short, spare, and deceptively simple novel is a first person account of a dystopian post-Brexit future. I read quite a bit of dystopian fiction and neither writing nor characterisation struck me as outstanding here. The distinctive and interesting feature is the self-sufficient all-woman farm-commune that the narrator flees to. In particular, the militia that the commune trains up in response to an external threat. I think ‘The Carhullen Army’ would be interesting to read with The Power, which also radically challenges the assumption that women are inherently gentler and weaker than men. Both depict conditions under which women’s potential for violence is organised and unleashed. Here, the narrative is sparer and the world-building much less sophisticated than in The Power. Nonetheless, I found ‘The Carhullen Army’ a thought-provoking, moving, and timely read. It is one of those books that starts slowly then keeps accelerating to a powerful conclusion. My favourite chapter, page, and paragraph are each the last.
This is a little book (barely 200 pages) that packs a big punch. Hall tackles destructive changes in the environment, the legitimacy of governments and their leaders, and gender stereotypes, all in a riveting story.
The entire book is told as a series of tapes, dictated by a female prisoner detained under the "Insurgency Prevention (Unrestricted Powers) Act." So the reader knows from the beginning that Sister (as she chooses to be called) didn't completely succeed in her mission. Yet I found the ending surprisingly hopeful nonetheless.
Sister's statement describes her experience living under "the Authority," the oppressive regime that's taken power in England after a combination of natural and man-made disasters. She tells of running away, trying to find a group she'd known about in the past, where she hopes she can find a more humane place to live. What she finds, and how it changes her, lead up to a terrifying final conflict.
Also ich weiß nicht. Einerseits lässt es sich super weg lesen, andererseits fehlte mir bei dem Ganzen irgendwie der Sinn. Bei dem, was Klappentext und Marketing versprachen habe ich mir von der Lektüre etwas anderes erwartet. Etwa anderes bedeutet nicht zwangsläufig etwas besseres, in diesem Fall habe ich mir tatsächlich deutlich mehr erhofft. Dennoch bin ich froh, dass ich mir hierzu eine eigene Meinung bilden konnte.
Salvo por esa perdida de información del final, que me ha resultado innecesariamente forzada, me ha encantado. Una historia con fuerza, que invita a la reflexión y que engancha de principio a fin. Muy recomendable.
You had me at self-sustaining, ecofriendly farm up in the mountains far away from people but lost me at narrating a whole (dystopian!!) novel without any proper worldbuilding and writing a narrator that does not have a personality whatsoever.
Ho acquistato questo romanzo perchè mi piace il genere distopico, che in questo caso si accompagna in un certo senso al tema del femminismo. I nuclei portanti che muovono tutte le vicende sono in sostanza tre. All'inizio della storia viene descritto come il disfacimento sociale e la dittatura attuino quasi sempre una lotta con al centro il corpo delle donne (controllo delle nascite, stupri, radicale controllo dell'abbigliamento/comportamento femminile). Poi viene introddotta l'utopia di una società totalmente femminile, egualitaria ma che nasconde un sottofondo inquetante: la carismatica leader della comunità si interroga sulla natura delle donne. "Le donne possiedono l'istinto di combattere? Sono davvero il sesso debole? Quanto deve essere brutta una situazione perchè una donna reagisca?" Sono le domande che la protagonista, e il lettore con lei, si sente porre. Poi piano piano l'utopia svanisce, va in frantumi. Emerge lo spirito violento alla base della comunità ed è lì che per me la lettura è diventata un disagio. Continuavo a ripetermi "È tutto sbagliato, non posso essere d'accordo". Si arriva al terzo nucleo: "ci siamo abituate ad aspettare, a sperare di essere salvate, a sperare che chi comanda faccia le riforme e riformi anche noi. Nessuno ci aiuterà". Puó un piccolo nucleo dissidente scatenare una rivoluzione sociale e culturale? Il cambiamento deve avvenire sempre attraverso la guerra e la violenza? Ha senso difendersi o è meglio attaccare per primi? La protagonista sceglie di mettere da parte ogni riserva e si immola anima e corpo nella guerra, e chi non è d'accordo merita di essere eliminato. I temi affrontati sono importanti, ma ho trovato la seconda parte del romanzo troppo disturbante per poterlo apprezzare.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.