VOX

by Christina Dalcher

‘This book will blow your mind’ PRIMA

‘Disturbing’ LEE CHILD

‘A petrifying reimagining of The Handmaid’s Tale’ ELLE

‘Left me speechless’ DAILY MAIL

‘Terrifying’ RED

‘A novel ripe for the #MeToo era’ VANITY FAIR

‘Extraordinary’ LOUISE O’NEILL

‘The book of the moment!’ MARIE CLAIRE‘

A dazzling debut’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

‘Truly compulsive’ STYLIST

‘Thrilling. I was left speechless’ WOMAN & HOME

‘Set to dominate dinner party chats’ COSMOPOLITAN

‘Terrifying in its relevance’ GRAZIA

‘The Handmaid’s Tale 2.0’ EVENING STANDARD

Silence can be deafening.

Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just one hundred words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins.

Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you’re a woman.

Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and seventy million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.

For herself, her daughter, and for every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. This is only the beginning…

[100 WORD LIMIT REACHED]

• ISBN13: 9780008300630
• Publish Date: 23 August 2018 (first published 21 August 2018)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 27 April 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: HQ
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 400
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

Unfortunately, there were some dual standards about sexism in this book.
I thought it started out extremely strong, but around half way, it introduced way too many unnecessary subplots. And the ending was... weird. I don’t agree with the opinion of some people that it is ridiculous that a man had to save the day at all. That’s fine, but the whole part before that felt... absurd.

Also, while I do think love can change people, I will never believe it in this book.

[ibeforem]

I had mixed feelings about this book. It's certainly a horrifying scenario -- after the election of a very conservative president, the rights of all women have slowly been eroded away. As the story opens, they are not allowed to work, not allowed to read, and not allowed to speak more than 100 words a day. Even children are subject to these rules, with schools segregated by not only gender but by what they are allowed to learn.

Unless you have something they want, which is the situation Jean finds herself in. Jean, an accomplished doctor and researcher in how the brain processes speech, would love to fight back. Except her husband works for the president and she's afraid of the repercussions for her young daughter. Then the president's right-hand man comes to her with an offer -- come work for us, and you will again be able to speak.

There's a lot going on here -- oppression, resistance, infidelity, hope, terror -- with little glimpses of how they ended up in that situation peppered in along the way. But while I found the scenario very scary, I didn't find it to be very believable. Mostly because I don't believe, in a million years, that the wives of those (presumably Southern and Christian) bible-thumping men who made the laws would ever go along with it. Those proper Southern ladies may look "obedient" in public, but we all know who rules the roost at home. And I also thought the pacing of the story was off. Things move along quite slowly until bam! Everything happens at once. I would have rather had some of the middle compressed in favor of elaborating on what happens in the end.

All-in-all, this wasn't a bad book, just could have been better. If you liked The Handmaid's Tale, you will likely appreciate Vox as the dystopian nightmare it tries to be.

[elvinagb]

I loved the premise of this story. And there was a lot about what happens is so disturbing. I found some of the plot points a bit distracting (Lorenzo mainly) but over all a great story and a somewhat great ending. I wish we had of actually learned about what happened in Patrick's final meeting at the end.

[ktshpd]

Interesting story. Wouldn't have minded more. Made me angry to read the misogynistic dialog (that doesn't seem too out of place on, say, twitter right now) and that anger stayed with me. Great illustration of the concept of privilege in the male characters and Jean. Wrapped up a little too neatly, but this is a patriarchal dystopia & thriller so I understand the thriller genre expectations. I wanted more Jackie and Sharon (I ship it).

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight

2.5*

I have another case of the mixed feelings! This book is likened to The Handmaid's Tale, and I suppose that's accurate, in the fact that it's maybe a little too much like it? The society seemed almost identical- especially the way the society became as it did, seemed to mimic Handmaid's a lot. But certainly, there are differences. At any rate, there are things I liked and things I did not so much, so I suppose we might as well get to it.

The Things I Liked:

• It's definitely thought provoking. It's interesting to see this happening in "real time", if you will. And of course, just as The Handmaid's Tale (and other such dystopian nightmares) makes you think about what you'd do, how you'd react to these situations, so too does this book. The concept of silencing women is rather terrifying, obviously. The irony that they end up requiring a woman's voice is quite fun, too.



• The exploration of family dynamics was great. In a plotline akin to realizing your loved one voted for Trump, Jean has to deal with her son buying into the "values" of the Pure movement to silence women. Even her husband, who seems sympathetic, still has no real grasp of how this horror affects Jean or their daughter. And Jean's relationship with said daughter is probably one of my favorite aspects of the book.



• It was certainly the sort of book that propelled me to keep reading. Sort of in the sense that the world was so awful that I had to figure out what happened, I was motivated to continue reading. And it was a rather quick read.

The Things I Didn't:

• Jean is kind of The Worst™. Oh, Jean, it was hard to feel sorry for you sometimes. Now- no woman should be shocked for saying more than one hundred words of course, but Jean is definitely not a sympathetic main character. She makes some questionable choices throughout the book, which okay, I can understand- it is a dystopian nightmare after all. And honestly, I don't even think I was mad that she didn't really care a ton about her husband anymore? Jean didn't vote, and actually seemed to think that it absolved her because she didn't vote for the "bad guy". Like no honey, you're part of the damn problem. She's not a great advocate for other women; in fact she's often really judgy. I also didn't even mind that she cheated (though some of you might, so I'll throw that out there) since I kind of assume if you can't even speak, you can't file for divorce either. But what gets me is the way her other priorities (like being a mother) fell by the wayside. This is spoilery, so I'll hide it but when Jean became pregnant, she was willing to run away with her lover, despite the fact that she had a daughter already who was being subjected to this horror! Like hey Jean, what about HER?!)



• It portrays religion (namely Christianity) as a villain, but without any context of how or why it became such. Look, I am not religious, so it didn't offend me on any kind of personal level. I do feel though, that when singling out a group of people, you'd probably need to have a good reason to do so. In The Handmaid's Tale, which I am going to keep referencing since this is an idea it clearly contains, Gilead blossoms from a Christian sect. But it's much more developed, and the reasons, the method, are more clear. This is just... a couple dudes, from the sound of it? I might have been able to buy it if it were more developed, but it wasn't, so I didn't.



• The end was just so rushed and easy. I won't go into it much because again, spoilers, but I didn't love how it ended on quite a few levels. Not only did it seem way too quick, considering how deep into the whole mess they were, but it rubbed me the wrong way in general. This reverts back a bit to Jean being The Worst™, but it also just didn't satisfy me in general.

Bottom Line: Certainly a horrifying and thought provoking premise, but it comes up a bit short on development and execution.

[lovelybookshelf]

A dystopian novel is exciting thanks to its plausibility, which comes through a light hand: not too preachy or over-the-top. This book misses the mark, completely. Also, it seems to call out white feminism, but where's the intersectionality? Far too many problematic moments go unaddressed: trans/enby erasure, cisnormativity, racism, ableism. The revolution will be intersectional. Why center a character who is the ultimate white feminist?