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Red Clocks

Leni Zumas (Goodreads Author)

3.71 · Rating details · 11,763 ratings · 2,047 reviews

Five women. One question. What is a woman for?

In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers alongside age-old questions surround ...more

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Hardcover, 356 pages

Published January 16th 2018 by Little, Brown and Company

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3.71 ·

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· 11,763 ratings · 2,047 reviews

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Nov 17, 2017 Emily May rated it it was ok

Shelves: feminism, dystopia-utopia, 2017, arc, mma-2018

I guess we can probably expect more of these weird feminist(?) dystopias in the wake of The Handmaid's Tale's Hulu series. Between this and the superhero-movie-turned-superhero-book trend, you can pretty much predict the new book trends based on what's popular on the big and small screens.

Here, Zumas imagines a United States where the Personhood Amendment gives rights to unborn embryos, outlawing abortion and IVF (because said embryos cannot give consent). The Canadian government assist by erect ...more

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May 26, 2018 Emily (Books with Emily Fox) rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: dnf

DNFed at 20%.

I just couldn't get into it!

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Jun 10, 2017 Lotte rated it it was amazing

Shelves: a-fiction, ge-dystopian-fiction, o-sent-by-publisher-author, t-feminist-dystopia, 2018-release, read-in-2017

Red Clocks can be described as a dystopian novel, but it feels entirely contemporary. Instead of creating a far-off dystopian society, Leni Zumas picks up on trends in our current political climate and thinks them through. What are the consequences of making abortion illegal in the US? How does a woman trying to have a baby on her own navigate a world in which in vitro fertilization is banned and only married couples are allowed to adopt? Where do larger concepts of woman- and motherhood come in ...more

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Jan 21, 2018 Jenna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: botm-club-selection, favorite-reads-of-2018, 2018-reading-challenge, favorite-novels-of-all-time, gender-and-sexuality, nature, made-me-cry, dystopia

Just wanted to recommend this book to people struggling with recent political events. I pretty much ONLY feel like reading feminist dystopian fiction at this point, but this is a rare example of a book in that genre that retains a sliver of ever-more elusive hope. This book is also, in comparison to other recent examples in the genre, compellingly down to earth and credible - now even more so - as the author based its premise on actual legislation proposed by the likes of those currently empower Just wanted to recommend this book to people struggling with recent political events. I pretty much ONLY feel like reading feminist dystopian fiction at this point, but this is a rare example of a book in that genre that retains a sliver of ever-more elusive hope. This book is also, in comparison to other recent examples in the genre, compellingly down to earth and credible - now even more so - as the author based its premise on actual legislation proposed by the likes of those currently empowered to help make legal decisions about and for women for probably the next thirty years. The book proposes a future in which, lacking the assistance of either state or church and in the wake of the ultimate ineffectiveness of public activism and demonstration, women turn increasingly toward the more personal aspects of the political, and toward one another, going underground if necessary, to survive and sustain and maintain some level of empowerment.
Also, I just want to comment that so many reviews of recent feminist dystopian fictions basically say something along the lines of “Ho hum, not another one of these, we already have The Handmaid’s Tale and it was perfect” - I really hope you’ve changed your minds now. Clearly we can’t have enough books about systemic oppression of women, normalization of sexual assault, slaughter of people of color through mechanisms of institutionalized racism, just to name a few. We can’t stop speaking on it, and to suggest we should, even for aesthetic reasons, seems like a symptom of internalized misogyny and/or racism. And sorry if you had your feelings hurt because you think you’re a good person who doesn’t deserve to have any aspect of your life questioned much less criticized, but these books are NOT “dangerous” either. Not any more, at least, than watching the daily news is for the sexual assault survivors with whom I work as a therapist. To not understand that is to lack a very basic understanding of the invisible privilege you enjoy. After all, it’s not the very (scientifically proven) functioning of YOUR traumatized brain that your current leader is ridiculing to crowds of great applause and acclaim.

Original review: This novel about very different women making hard personal choices and finding ways to persevere on their own terms, whatever those may be, is maybe the most healing and hopeful thing I've read since the election. ...more

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Apr 05, 2018 Elyse Walters rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I have mixed feelings about
“Red Clocks”....
...disturbing issues ...
...disturbing ‘choice’ vagina dialogues
...yet all in the context of brilliance- timely & important.

My review reflects my thoughts and feelings which came from reading “Red Clocks”.

I admire the creative writing style: seriously I do, but it was challenging for me to feel a close intimate connection to the women and their stories. I wanted to feel them deeper in my gut - not just intellectualize their situations. I did a few ...more

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Feb 25, 2018 ☘Misericordia☘ ~ The Serendipity Aegis ~ ⚡ϟ⚡ϟ⚡⛈ ✺❂❤❣ rated it did not like it

Shelves: books-i-won-t-finish, 2018-gr-choice

All sorts of things are all over the place. I'm supposed to decipher it? Really? Overall this didn't feel like a readable material. At all. DNF. I don't want to torture myself with it anymore. It's probably very forward and front-looking and experimental and feminist and corresponds to a bunch of other buzz-words, still it's incomprehensible. It's like a bunch of books got intermixed along with some other material, probably (including oversized to-do lists, random thoughts and all sorts of note ...more

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Jan 16, 2018 Ron Charles rated it really liked it

Shelves: apocalyptic, political-fiction

“Red Clocks” might sound like a dystopian novel, but plenty of conservative politicians are plotting to make it a work of nonfiction. In fact, the author, Leni Zumas, has said that she drew the most frightening details of her story’s misogynistic world from “actual proposals” by men who are currently in control of our government.

Such is the state of affairs in the early 21st century. Feminist writers of speculative fiction don’t need the bizarre rituals of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 classic, “The Ha ...more

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Apr 09, 2018 Cheri rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia, american-fiction, 2018, library-book, literary-fiction, political-cultural-commentary

”The sea does not ask permission or wait for instruction. It doesn’t suffer from not knowing what on earth, exactly, it is meant to do. Today its walls are high, white lather torn, crashing hard at the sea stacks. ‘Angry sea,’ people say, but to the biographer the ascribing of human feeling to a body so inhumanly itself is wrong. The water heaves up for reasons they don’t have names for.”

”She was just quietly teaching history when it happened. Woke up one morning to a president-elect she had ”The sea does not ask permission or wait for instruction. It doesn’t suffer from not knowing what on earth, exactly, it is meant to do. Today its walls are high, white lather torn, crashing hard at the sea stacks. ‘Angry sea,’ people say, but to the biographer the ascribing of human feeling to a body so inhumanly itself is wrong. The water heaves up for reasons they don’t have names for.”

”She was just quietly teaching history when it happened. Woke up one morning to a president-elect she hadn’t voted for.”

”The Personhood Amendment happened.

“One of the ripples in its wake: Public Law 116-72.

“On January fifteenth—in less than three months—this law, also known as Every Child Needs Two, take effect. Its mission: to restore dignity, strength, and prosperity to American families.

Unmarried persons will be legally prohibited from adopting children. In addition to valid marriage licenses, all adoptions will require approval through a federally regulated agency, rendering private transactions criminal.”

We see this story unfold through the eyes of four women, The Biographer – Ro, who is writing a book about Eivør Mínervudottír, The Daughter – Mattie, a student, adopted, with dreams of attending an esteemed math school finds herself pregnant around the time her boyfriend has moved on to another girl, The Wife – Susan, whose thoughts are about her dissatisfaction with her life, her marriage, the distance she feels between what she has and what she wants, and The Mender – Gin, a woman who the townspeople think of as a bit of a hermit who might be a witch, a woman who lives alone in the forest and provides “cures” for ailments and assorted other troubles, for those who come seeking.

”Start from the beginning. Except there is no beginning. Can the biographer remember first thinking, feeling, or deciding she wanted to be someone’s mother? The original moment of longing to let a bulb of lichen grow in her until it came out human? The longing is widely endorsed. Legislators, aunts, and advertisers approve. Which makes the longing, she thinks, a little suspicious.

“Babies once were abstractions. They were Maybe I do, but not now. The biographer used to sneer at talk of biological deadlines, believing the topic of baby craziness to be crap for lifestyle magazines. Women who worried about ticking clocks were the same women who traded salmon-loaf recipes and asked their husbands to clean the gutters. She was not and never would be one of them.

“Then suddenly, she was one of them. Not the gutters, but the clock.”

This is a dystopian story, but more than anything it seems to be a story that reminds us what can happen when we aren’t actively engaged, voicing our opinions in ways that matter regarding the decisions made by those in power.

But… while this has a powerful message, and occasionally beautiful writing, connecting to the characters and the story wasn’t always easy. This wasn’t so much an “enjoyable” read as one I appreciated the reminder of the ultimate cost of complacency.

”If wrecked in this vessel, we wreck together.”

Many thanks, once again, to the Public Library system, and the many Librarians that manage, organize and keep it running, for the loan of this book! ...more

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Jan 18, 2018 Emily rated it it was amazing

Shelves: absolute-favorites, favorites

I could go on, and on, and on, and on about this book, but really the most important thing I can say is that this is now an all-time favorite. It is absolutely brilliant, and I expect to see it not only on "Best Books of the Year" lists, but also "Best Books of the Decade." It's that good.

We follow five different women whose lives interweave in a small coastal town in Oregon. Their world, though very similar to our own, has passed a "Personhood Amendment" recognizing fetuses as full citizens. Th I could go on, and on, and on, and on about this book, but really the most important thing I can say is that this is now an all-time favorite. It is absolutely brilliant, and I expect to see it not only on "Best Books of the Year" lists, but also "Best Books of the Decade." It's that good.

We follow five different women whose lives interweave in a small coastal town in Oregon. Their world, though very similar to our own, has passed a "Personhood Amendment" recognizing fetuses as full citizens. The most obvious repercussion of this is that abortion is now illegal, but Zumas dives deep into the actual implications of such an amendment. Women and girls who seek abortion are tried with conspiracy to commit murder. In vitro fertilization is also illegal. International relations are affected as women cross borders with the goals of both ending pregnancies and becoming pregnant. Through the lens of the five women we follow, Zumas examines the repercussions what becomes of human nature when you deny women agency over their own bodies. As a backdrop for the rest of the narrative, it's perfectly executed.

Zumas's writing is a bit experimental, and it works so, so well. It took me a while to pick up on exactly what Zumas is doing, but she often omits the subjects of sentences and writes using fragments. In every case I could see, the grammatical subject was also the subject of that particular chapter, which is to say one of the five women. Much of the book is dedicated to the varied ways in which these women don't have control over their own lives, don't have agency, and by removing them as the subjects of sentences, Zumas creates a beautiful syntactical construction that mirrors the themes of the book. Little things like this, small but brilliant writing choices, are scattered throughout the novel.

I started this review by saying I could go on basically forever about how much I love this book. I'll cut myself off, and just say that Red Clocks is gorgeously, boldly written. It's timely. It's powerful. It's one of the best books I've ever read. ...more

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Feb 23, 2018 Emma rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley

I can see why this is getting so much coverage after the recent tv success of The Handmaid's Tale coinciding with a veritable flood of news coverage that has highlighted the position of women as second class citizens all over the world. Inevitably, books which use this kind of near-future/dystopia to address contemporary issues, eg The Power, are going to be the next big thing.

The problem is that that's how this book feels, like it was written as an experiment to fill a publishing hole- while t ...more

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Apr 01, 2018 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read2018, post-apocalypse-and-dystopia, newest-literary-fiction-group, botm, own, 2018-laser

I circled around this book for a long time, not wanting to read another dystopian breeder novel. But I eventually decided to try it, and I'm glad I did. Told through multiple perspectives (all female), this is a near future dystopia with very probably legislation that outlaws abortion, IVF, and adoption outside of straight married couples for the entire country. The female characters are known first as these new archetypes - the Mender, the Wife, the Biographer, the Daughter, etc. As the story u ...more

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Jun 18, 2018 Hannah rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, dystopia

My thoughts on this are all jumbled up; I thought I would adore this and it is not a bad book by any means but it took me three months to finish this. I could just not get on board and I am not quite sure where my problems lie.

I love the plausibility of the world Leni Zumas has created here, it feels organic in a way that is scary and frustrating. Set in the not so distant future, reproductive rights have been severely limited: abortion is illegal in all and every circumstances (and in fact cons ...more

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Nov 20, 2018 Bradley rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-shelf, traditional-fiction

Sorry, SF fans, this one isn't SF no matter how it might be billed that way. There is ONE alteration to reality and it's only a legal one. Abortions are outlawed. The rest is, as they say, history.

Enter into a novel about vaginas. Names are missing because it's popular to write about real people as only their roles.

Other than that, it feels like popular fiction, complete with disgruntled housewives, teachers who dream of having children but are denied, little girls who get pregnant and must suf ...more

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Jan 15, 2018 Janelle • She Reads with Cats rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction-dystopia, 2018, favorites, from-publisher

RED CLOCKS by Leni Zumas - Thank you so much to Little, Brown and Company for providing my free copy - all opinions are my own.

This novel is outstanding! I have not read another book like this. Yes, it’s feminist—in the sense that these women rule their own lives within the confines of the law. Yes, it’s dystopian—in the sense that these same laws are not in effect in the United States today. But, this story was the most realistic dystopian novel I’ve ever read.

Red Clocks takes place in the ne RED CLOCKS by Leni Zumas - Thank you so much to Little, Brown and Company for providing my free copy - all opinions are my own.

This novel is outstanding! I have not read another book like this. Yes, it’s feminist—in the sense that these women rule their own lives within the confines of the law. Yes, it’s dystopian—in the sense that these same laws are not in effect in the United States today. But, this story was the most realistic dystopian novel I’ve ever read.

Red Clocks takes place in the near future in the fictional town of Newville, near Salem Oregon. It is written from four main female perspectives: the biographer, the mender, the daughter, and the wife. The Personhood Amendment had just been passed, granting constitutional rights to a fertilized egg at the time of conception. Because of this law, abortions and in vitro fertilization have been banned as the fetus cannot give consent to such procedures. Also, a new law will soon go into effect called Every Child Needs Two, which only allows couples to adopt. As you read, you observe how these women deal with these laws as they apply to their own lives.

I enjoyed reading about each of these women as they led their very different lives. The biographer is one of my favorite characters; she is witty but at the same time very sad and I was able to empathize with her greatly. The mender (aka “The Witch”), was another favorite of mine, as she uses her herbal remedies to help women that sought medical help. The daughter, a teenager in high school, and the wife, who has two children but feels trapped in an unhappy marriage, were very fleshed out and added to the overall story.

I enjoyed the novel’s unique structure including the interludes of the biographer’s novel. The character development is excellent. The more I read, slowly but surely, the more I became invested in each character. I love that you start out just knowing these women’s roles in society rather than their names, but over the course of the story, you learn who they are and how they connect to one another.

To me, Red Clocks has a very Atwoodian feel only because it seems so well researched. I got the same eerie feeling when I read books like The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake: the feeling, if you really thought about it, that THIS COULD HAPPEN. Zumas definitely did her homework.

I really appreciated the complexity of the story; it not only focused on women’s rights but also motherhood, identity, and fertility issues. This novel is brilliant and extremely relevant in today’s world. I recommend this book to everyone but especially people who love dystopia, feminist reads, or who are just curious how the world would look if women lost their reproductive rights. You NEED to read this!
...more

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Mar 26, 2018 Trudie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star-reads, best-of-2018, dystopia, powells-indiespensible, politics, read-2018, indiebuddyreads, tob-19

Well, I am going to admit I was a little skeptical of this book going in. Any book that draws comparisons to The Handmaids Tale is bound to come off second best in my experience. Last years "female dystopia" de jour The Power just didn't do it for me, so I was a little worried for Red Clocks.

However, I needn't have worried, Red Clocks is a beautifully written, gloriously weird and at times funny character study of five women. This world that Zumas has created feels very much like the world we li Well, I am going to admit I was a little skeptical of this book going in. Any book that draws comparisons to The Handmaids Tale is bound to come off second best in my experience. Last years "female dystopia" de jour The Power just didn't do it for me, so I was a little worried for Red Clocks.

However, I needn't have worried, Red Clocks is a beautifully written, gloriously weird and at times funny character study of five women. This world that Zumas has created feels very much like the world we live in. In fact it was a good few chapters before I recognised anything obviously speculative.
Even a cursory look through the news reveals Zumas didn't have to imagine too hard to find the antecedents to the Personhood Amendment and The Every Child Needs Two campaign that form the background politics to this novel. This book is so good precisely because it is not dismissible science fiction but rather feels more like a cautionary tale of what could happen tomorrow if we don't keep a close watch on things. Just read this recent chilling opinion piece from the NY Times to see just how close to reality this novel actually is.

All this makes this book sound like a polemic on reproductive rights but the experience of reading it is much more nuanced character study. It presents the interlinked stories of five very different woman in a world where reproductive choice is restricted. The politics of this is deftly referenced almost as an aside. It is never suggested that one particular path is easier or of less consequence than another but the book does an exceptional job of highlighting the importance of individual choice.

You may not like all these woman or agree with their actions but it is hard not to love how Zumas wrote these characters. She has a fantastic way with description and voice, its at once humorous and deeply despairing. The writing is quite lyrical and the way the story is told may not be to everyone's taste, it is quite an eclectic mixture of reproductive biology, herbal remedies, polar exploration, boiled puffin recipes and one too many pubic hairs.
However, I thought it was just perfect and I spent two days with it unable to put it down.

Don't dismiss this as a dystopia, this is a book that is begging you to pay attention to what is going on in the here and now. ...more

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Apr 01, 2018 Lark Benobi rated it liked it

Shelves: 2018

Zumas creates women with lovely endearing individuality and humaneness. I was concerned for their welfare and wanted them to turn out to have happy lives, almost to the degree that I feel about characters in Kent Haruf's novels. On the downside the characters's story arcs were not particularly interesting and their reactions to menstrual-related events never strayed much beyond the obvious, with the exception of the mender, whom I adored. Too bad her dramatic arc was wrapped up in a B movie plot ...more

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Jan 13, 2018 Katie rated it really liked it

Red Clocks is a quietly dystopian novel. There has been no war, no plague, no machine gunning down of the senate. Instead, the world Zumas creates is eerily similar to our own. All that has changed is a pro-life government signed a bill into law while the majority of the country sat at home and thought it could never happen. Sound familiar? Uncomfortable yet? Red Clocks feels eerily possible and that possibility is the novel’s strength. Speculative fiction is best when you believe we could take ...more

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Jan 18, 2018 Jessica rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

How weird to be reading this book on my least-favorite commuting day of the year, when the annual March for Life is held in DC and I have to resist the urge to yell at people to get the eff out of my way on the Metro.

This is getting billed as a dystopian novel to cash in on Handmaid hysteria, but it's really not that much of a stretch from our current environment, given that abortion access is being so severely curtailed in many states. The leaders of Zumas' world, though, have taken it a step How weird to be reading this book on my least-favorite commuting day of the year, when the annual March for Life is held in DC and I have to resist the urge to yell at people to get the eff out of my way on the Metro.

This is getting billed as a dystopian novel to cash in on Handmaid hysteria, but it's really not that much of a stretch from our current environment, given that abortion access is being so severely curtailed in many states. The leaders of Zumas' world, though, have taken it a step farther and banned in-vitro fertilization and are about to ban adoption by single parents. These three laws complicate the lives of four women in rural Oregon: Ro, an unmarried biographer and high school teacher desperate to have a child despite her potential infertility; Mattie, a teenager who is stunned and frightened to realize that she is pregnant; Susan, the unhappy housewife and mother of two ill-behaved young children; and Gin, a natural healer who is looked at with skepticism by the townspeople who think of her as a witch.

For the most part, this is a thoughtful novel that examines the concept of motherhood and women's identity from several perspectives. I really liked the central conceit, especially that Zumas added in several unexpected wrinkles, such as in-vitro and adoption bans, and that she was willing to explore these wrinkles from so many angles. While the idea that abortion has been outlawed is dystopian might elicit a knee-jerk negative response from readers on the more conservative side of the spectrum, there are moments in this book that acknowledge the other side, particularly when it comes to Ro's fertility struggles: she, for example, angrily ruminates on how unfair it is that Mattie has this thing she wants (a pregnancy) and is willing to destroy it.

There's a lot going on in this book, though, and not all of it works. While I liked the detached, disjointed writing style that Zumas employs, referring to her female protagonists by their title -- The Biographer, The Wife, The Daughter, and The Mender -- to highlight how difficult it can be for women to define themselves as individuals, I do think Zumas could have leaned into this theme a little harder and plumbed the women's stories with a little more depth. There are so many books that do lean in that way, including The Handmaid's Tale, of course, but also, more recently, Forty Rooms and Hausfrau. In comparison, Red Clocks feels more about playing with experimental writing styles as opposed to trying to make a strong statement on the topics. So I enjoyed this book, but it didn't leave me feeling overly engaged or enthusiastic about it. 3.5 stars. ...more

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Apr 03, 2018 Heather rated it really liked it

It took me a bit to figure out how this book worked. But once I did, I liked it. It's a story about a VERY possible near future where single women can't adopt, or get in vitro, and no one can get safe abortions because they're illegal. So basically, it's the US pre-1973. And that is frightening.

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Feb 03, 2018 megs_bookrack rated it it was amazing

Bold, topical and completely riveting!

This book took hold of me from the very beginning and never let up. It is honestly like nothing I have ever read before and is hard to describe.

The novel follows the perspectives of four different women (plus a historical 5th) who are all connected to each other through community and womanhood; these characters all grapple with difficult choices based on their sex/sexuality.

I went into this book thinking that it was set in a futuristic, dystopian world bu ...more

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Apr 04, 2018 Colleen Fauchelle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-books

This is a story of 5 woman there day to day life, their dreams and goals, there desires and struggles. The chapter headings are The Daughter, The Mender, The Wife, The Biographer, The explorer, It shows what they are seems more important that who they are. You only find out their names by other characters in the book using them.
It's a book about what makes a family and it is saying you need two adults to have a child. It also talks about the rights of the ity bity baby in its first few weeks of ...more

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May 31, 2018 Gumble's Yard rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018

“Red Clocks” by Leni Zumas

I had heard about this novel as part of the speculation leading up to the 2018 Women’s Prize – and was surprised not to see it longlisted. My perception was that it was a dystopian and political novel – very much in the spirit of The Handmaid's Tale (or The Power).

In fact the book surprised me in a number of ways:

Firstly in how little a “stretch” there was to the alternative world portrayed;
Secondly by how autobiographical it was;
Thirdly in being at heart more about r ...more

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Jan 01, 2018 Book of the Month added it

The Handmaid's Tale for Our Generation
By Judge Cristina Arreola

Don’t let the pink and red cover fool you. Red Clocks is no romance or “beach read.” Instead, it is a frightening dystopian novel about what happens when politicians successfully manage to push back on women’s reproductive rights little by little, until none are left at all.

In Lena Zumas’s near-future America, The Personhood Amendment has made both abortion and in-vitro fertilization illegal, and the Every Child Needs Two Act is abou The Handmaid's Tale for Our Generation
By Judge Cristina Arreola

Don’t let the pink and red cover fool you. Red Clocks is no romance or “beach read.” Instead, it is a frightening dystopian novel about what happens when politicians successfully manage to push back on women’s reproductive rights little by little, until none are left at all.

In Lena Zumas’s near-future America, The Personhood Amendment has made both abortion and in-vitro fertilization illegal, and the Every Child Needs Two Act is about to make it impossible for unmarried people to adopt children. The story is set in a small town in Oregon, where four women cope with the weight of these laws and the equally-crushing magnitude of societal expectations. There’s Ro, an unmarried writer and teacher desperate to have children but who cannot get pregnant. There’s Mattie, an adopted teenager who has accidentally become pregnant and is desperate for an abortion. Susan is a mother of two children who fantasizes about leaving her husband. And finally, Gin is a young “witch” who offers herbal cures to women in need of gynecological help, including abortions. Their four lives converge and intertwine in strange ways, especially when a heated trial breaks out in their town, forcing them all to grapple with this new world order.

The true power of Red Clocks lies in the distance the author creates between the women and the reader, in how she intentionally refrains from portraying their emotional states. But then, we don’t need the author to explain how they’re are feeling, do we? The things they feel—the desire to choose or postpone motherhood, the desire to seek fulfillment beyond motherhood, and the fear of realizing that these decisions are no longer yours—are endemic to all women. The takeaway from Zumas’s book is clear: There is no perfect way to be a woman, but it should every woman’s right to choose her own path.

As I flipped the final pages of this novel, I began to contemplate how I would describe it in this review—dystopian? That is the obvious choice, and it fits. But to me, it reads a bit like horror.

Read more at https://www.bookofthemonth.com/red-cl... ...more

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Feb 07, 2018 Shelby rated it it was amazing

A few months ago, I read about this upcoming title and had to have it immediately. Luckily through NetGalley I received an ARC. This book is definitely worth the hype and I hope its popularity continues to grow exponentially. Due to the subject matter, Red Clocks is reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale and other dystopian feminist works; male-supremacist legislation, reversal of Roe v. Wade, illegal abortions, etc. Yet, Zumas succeeds at writing an original, thought-provoking story that deeply res ...more

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Feb 22, 2018 Brierly added it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, reviewed

A note: I received my M.A. from Portland State (where Leni teaches) and while I do not know her personally, many of my M.F.A. colleagues speak highly of her.

Red Clocks is a dystopian novel, though I could see this future happening with a few wrong turns. Similar to The Handmaid's Tale, women find themselves in an inequitable society where the Personhood Amendment has granted rights to embryos, IVF is illegal, and of course, abortion is universally banned.

This novel features an experimental writ ...more

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Feb 21, 2018 Rachel rated it it was ok

Shelves: books-of-2018, tcf2018, women-only, women-2018, 2018-releases, science-fiction, thriller

Damn, I really wanted to love this book. The premise is obviously timely and appropriate, and the book had a lot of hype. But I just didn't care for it.

The unnamed character thing seemed unnecessary. It reminded me of Annihilation - four women characters, all unnamed (I can hear the conversation now: "Hey! Instead of a BIOLOGIST, let's have your main character be a BIOGRAPHER!") and I really hope having a bunch of unnamed women characters is not going to become a trend in near-future dystopian ...more

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Jun 26, 2018 Eric Anderson rated it it was amazing

When I recently heard that Leni Zumas’ new novel “Red Clocks” was partly inspired by Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves” I felt I had to read it. I love Woolf’s poetically-charged novel so much and it’s lived with me for so many years I feel like it’s a part of my body and soul. The plot of Zumas’ novel doesn’t directly relate to Woolf’s writing but it gives several nods to it and pays tribute to her predecessor so part of the great pleasure of reading this book was knowing I was in the company of a fe ...more

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Apr 29, 2018 Jessica Woodbury rated it really liked it

Shelves: best-2018-arcs, speculative

I have seen a significant uptick in the "feminist dystopia" genre in the last year, but RED CLOCKS is the first book to fall into this category that feels fully realized and fully successful to me.

It took me a little while to get going, to understand how the characters fit together, and to see how the structure of the book was going to work. But once I was oriented I found myself getting deeply absorbed. I read this book on the sidelines of t-ball practice, with people and kids running all arou I have seen a significant uptick in the "feminist dystopia" genre in the last year, but RED CLOCKS is the first book to fall into this category that feels fully realized and fully successful to me.

It took me a little while to get going, to understand how the characters fit together, and to see how the structure of the book was going to work. But once I was oriented I found myself getting deeply absorbed. I read this book on the sidelines of t-ball practice, with people and kids running all around me, working as hard as I could to tune it out because I wanted more time in it.

Sometimes in these near-future dystopias I find myself annoyed and rolling my eyes. Most of these books are societies where things suddenly turn on a dime, where the change happens so quickly, and where the real repercussions of that kind of change don't actually seem to penetrate. The new society is the kind of society where the current rules have always been the rules. It's not the most effective worldbuilding. Here, I felt regularly creeped out by Zumas's speculative leaps. They feel like the kind of thing that could happen, that could happen soon, that could happen even with the hurdles it would require. And more than that, the world she lives in is one where people remember the rules before, where not everyone likes them, where people are still figuring out what to do with the new cards they've been dealt. To me, that makes it much more scary and affecting than a book with a horrific patriarchal system that feels farther away from my own reality.

The structure of the novel is basically perfect. The four women in the book all have lives centered around the central system of the female sex: its ability to bear children. It is the thing that has made patriarchal culture what it is, but it is also something that women have reclaimed and found joy and identity in as feminism has evolved. The way these women relate to pregnancy, birth, abortion, and childrearing stands in stark contrast to one another, but they all felt real and personally relevant. That Zumas allows them to be so different, to envy and dislike each other for their differences, and leaves it all without comment, without choosing any one character to be a moral highground or an arbiter of what is good, is another thing I liked about it so much. The book stays zoomed in on these women's lives, letting us see how they intertwine and react. It doesn't try to make a bigger statement, which is why it makes such an effective statement.

Extra bonus points for the fantastic cover, get the actually physical book if you can and take it with you out in public because there is very little in the world that is better than a book with (basically) a vagina on the cover. ...more

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Jul 17, 2018 Alice Lippart rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2018

Incredibly interesting topic. Loved the characters and the writing style (although I see how not everyone would love it).

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Mar 31, 2018 ♥ Sandi ❣ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: closed-5000-books-2018, 4-library, fantasy-magical-realism, apocalyptic-dystopac

3.75 stars

This book so reminds me of When She Woke by Hillary Jordan.

Zumas takes a stab at a future world where abortion is illegal, IVF is banned and adoption is restricted to couples only. We follow 4 women, and a fifth only through an historical written narrative, in a small coastal town in Oregon.

Having passed a Personhood Amendment which recognizes embryos as full citizens, women who seek abortion are convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. Zumas tries to capture the essence of such an ...more

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75 Books...More o...: Red Clocks by Leni Zumas	25	15	Jan 27, 2019 07:27AM
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Play Book Tag: Red Clocks 2 stars	3	23	Nov 13, 2018 02:20AM
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Play Book Tag: (Decathlon) Red Clocks - Leni Zumas - 4 stars	3	18	Jul 17, 2018 02:16PM
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About Leni Zumas

Leni Zumas

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Leni Zumas is the author of RED CLOCKS (Little, Brown, 2018); THE LISTENERS (Tin House, 2012); and FAREWELL NAVIGATOR: STORIES (Open City, 2008). She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is Director of Creative Writing at Portland State University.