Red Clocks by Leni Zumas- Book Review

The hype on this book was pretty exciting. People were calling it the spiritual successor to The Handmaid’s Tale, so I was naturally excited. It was one of the Book of the Month selections the month after I had stopped subscribing to the service, so I knew it should be on my radar. After reading it, while I would not compare it to Handmaid’s, it is an incredible work of women’s lit on motherhood and loss.

The chapters are told from different perspectives and are named by what the woman represents- Daughter, Mother, Biographer, and Mender. What we know is abortion is illegal in the US and a new law is about to take effect requiring two (a man and a woman) to raise one child. It is sometime in the near future.

The Daughter has been having sex with a boy in her class who quickly moves on from her when he gets bored with her. He leaves her not knowing she is pregnant. The daughter does not want to keep the child and now must figure out what to do.

The Mother is the mother of two in a marriage which is failing. Her children continue to get on her nerves and are growing into this world where clearly males are in charge. She longs to get out of her family, but is completely stuck.

The Biographer is a teacher and a writer. She has been trying to become pregnant by in vitro fertilization and other methods, but is beginning to run out of time and money. The law is changing and if she does not get pregnant, she will be out of time to be a single mother. She longs to be a mom.

The Mender has been labeled the town witch. She performs natural abortions for those seeking her help. Recently, she has given a drink to induce labor to the local principal’s wife, who died shortly after she drank the tea. The Mender will have to fight for her life in a court which has banned any type of abortion.

As the story goes on, the 4 women’s lives will become intertwined with one another as they live their lives within this town.

There are parts of this book which are slow moving, but at the conclusion of the book, I found those parts to be more deliberately slow to draw out relationships or struggles within the women. Their characters become more and more alive as the story progresses and as the world becomes fuller. We see there are no easy answers or black and white answers within this world, even though the country has decided to make the abortion issue black or white.

As much as this is about motherhood and children, it is also very much about the loss of children/family. I will not give too much away as some of it lies in spoiler territory, but I can safely talk about the Biographer. She longs for motherhood and we see her heartbreak as her chances for such become slimmer and slimmer. She begins to get desperate and makes some questionable decisions. She is recognizing though that the family she longs for will not be, so she must wrestle with that loss of the child that never was.

This is overall an incredible book. I can see some being turned off by it because it approaches abortion directly and does not give a quick or easy answer. These women struggle and their world is very much against them, with the Mender, quite literally. There cannot be a happy ending for these women in this world and we recognize that from the very beginning of the book.

I gave this one 4 stars.