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Gather the Daughters
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Gather the Daughters - Jennie Melamed 2/5
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Ha! Your mom’s review sums it up nicely.
I know, I was so upset I had to rant.
Oh my gosh, your mom takes after you in review quality of bad books. I cracked up.I read the spoiler. A big part of me wished I had not, but it was great for reading prevention.
Glad I didn't miss one of your glorious two star reviews though.
Can I just send you horrible books to read and review? Please.
My poor mother.
The author is a psychiatric nurse practitioner who specializes in working with traumatized children. This is important.
Some time, some place, what amounts to a cult of people move to an Island to live a very simple life. Worship of God is replaced with the worship of the "ancestors" the first settlers of the Island. The 10 commandments are expanded to multiple commandments called the "thou shalts." There are a lot of rules. Insert the plot of any dystopian book here. Repressed, oppressed, led by one strong girl, eventually rebel. Sort of.
There's a LOT wrong with this book, but it took a while to figure it out. Unfortunately we were well deep into the story before we realized the full extent of what was going on, and were hoping for a Katniss Everdeen moment to redeem it, so we finished. For a time, it was engrossing and the storytelling was good; the story wasn't.
Here's mom's review: If you like incest, death and disease you will love this book.
I'm going to completely spoil the book here, so if you have any interest in this book, don't read this part.
(view spoiler)[I don't understand the point of this society. Here's what happens - two and only two children are allowed per family and there is no birth control. Parents are only allowed to live until their children have children, at which time they "take the final draft." They are considered "old" at like 30.
When girls get their periods they go into their "summer of fruition" at the end of which they end up married to an older boy from the Island. So if a girl gets her period at 12, then she's married at 12. Summer of fruition all the boys and girls are thrown together and they have sex all summer and at the end of the summer they have to choose a spouse and many of them are pregnant. Reproduction is critical for no reason I could ascertain.
Until the girls get their periods, they essentially function as birth control. How you might wonder? Since the wives can't take a chance on getting pregnant, the children become "little wives" for their fathers, meaning that they spend their entire childhoods being sexually abused by their fathers. I saw a review where somebody said that the sex wasn't described. As if that makes it acceptable? Just because the sex scenes weren't described doesn't make the incest in this book any more palatable.
There is never any discussion on who the father releases his sexual frustration with if he only has boys.
There is literally no point in this society. (hide spoiler)]
The society is harsh, awful, abusive; a girl leads a rebellion; a horrible disease ravages the island.
I kept trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody sexually abused to try to understand if there was something empowering in this story, and I just couldn't find anything. It felt so hopeless. Many people really loved this book. I'd like Jen to read it from her psychological POV and Nicole to avoid it because she'd hate it. I'm baffled and really sad because clearly the reality of the authors job birthed this story.
Started strong and promising, disturbing middle, ended horribly.
A note on the audio: The narrator was TERRIBLE. She was so bad at men's voices is was ridiculous. They were all caricatures. I would never listen to anything narrated by her again. Also, she pronounced the word amalgam - TWICE - amul gam.