Vox

I felt like I was reading a horror novel instead of a dystopia. The first third of the book, specifically, was enraging. It's the setup - the explanation of how the world is now, and how it came to be that way - that made me have to set the book down twice and walk away to calm down.

The book is the story of Dr. Jean McClellan, cognitive linguist. The forced silence is particularly painful for her, a former scientist who was working on a cure for people who had brain injuries or strokes affecting the Wernicke area of the brain, where we process language. She was about to start restoring language to people who had lost it, only to have it stolen from her and every other woman in the country.

The book opens on Dr. McClellan being asked to return to her work, because the President's brother suffered a brain injury while skiing and can no longer understand language. As one of the most important advisors to the president, the government needs him. In return for the removal of both her bracelet and her daughter's, she agrees, hoping to find some way to sabotage the work.

Vox sets out a sequence of events that seems far too feasible for comfort. The religious right extends its foothold from the Bible Belt to more and more of the country, pushing a return to “traditional family values” while methodically stripping freedoms from women and LGBT people. Women's passports are surreptitiously cancelled, schools are split and classes on Christian theology introduced to the boys' schools. Girls' schools consist of very basic math (so they can continue to do the grocery shopping and cooking!) and a ton of home ec. Sewing, Cooking, Housekeeping. LGBT people are sent to prisons/camps unless they marry someone of the opposite sex and produce kids. Basically, it's the right wing's dream world.

It's a horrifying scenario. Even given all the dystopia I've read, this book rocked me. It definitely belongs in the league of The Handmaid's Tale and The Power. My only complaint is I wish the ending had been a little more drawn out, and explained the fallout in a bit more detail. Other than that, though, amazing book.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

Pros: very fast paced, emotional punch, thought-provoking

Cons: minor things, slightly rushed ending

A year ago life changed for 50% of the US population. Women were kicked out of the workforce and made to wear bracelets that counted their words. When they reached their cap of 100 words, they received an electric jolts of increasing intensity until they stopped talking. Members of the LGBT community were shipped off to ‘camps'.

A year ago Dr. Jean McClellan was a top cognitive linguist researching Wernicke's aphasia, an ailment that makes it difficult to form coherent sentences. Now she's a stay at home wife, slowly watching her marriage crumble, her daughter suffer under the word restrictions, and her oldest son become a misogynist.

When the President's brother has an accident that affects the Wernicke area of the brain, she's asked to help find a cure, little knowing that there's another reason the government wants her work.

The book is very fast paced and only look me 2 days to whip through. It's first person narrative makes the world immediate and the clever use of flashbacks fleshes out the characters and how the US changed so quickly.

Loss of freedom is always an interesting plot device, and this book touches on real fears American women have during the present political climate. The book joins other US dystopian novels that focus on how women could be repressed like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Veracity by Laura Bynum, and When She Woke by Hilary Jordan.

There are some powerfully emotional scenes, some of which were rage inducing, while others made me want to cry. While I often didn't agree with Jean's choices, I could understand why she made those decisions and sympathized with her plight.

While the book explained that Wernicke's aphasia impairs the ability to speak coherently, it would have been good to point out that it doesn't always impair cognitive abilities outside of communication. I was left wondering if people who had it would be able to function or if they would have to be put into care homes.

There were a few minor issues that annoyed me, like cookbooks being banned when you would expect they would be needed. You can't remember every recipe or learn new ones without some sort of help. There's also a scene where Jean had just under 40 words remaining in her day and she had to make a phone call. She prepared her message in advance but used her whole allotment, even though several of the words she used were unnecessary. What if she'd had to respond to a question afterwards? She'd have had to stay silent.

The ending felt a bit rushed in that I would have liked a more complete telling of what happened. I understand why it wasn't comprehensive, but it felt like the author could have provided an alternate viewpoint or arranged to have a witness describe the event in more detail.

It's hard to call a book that does so many horrible things a pleasant read, but it was. Normally dystopian novels leave me horrified by how things could go in the real world while this one left me feeling energized, and feeling that the resistance can succeed if good people fight for their rights.

This book was alright. I admit it took me a while to read because it was a little too relevant to today's times and the world is tough enough as it is.

That being said, my thoughts about the book:
- It was a cool premise. I like dystopian books in general, and the idea of women being limited and restricted sounded scary but cool.
- The story jumped around a LOT, to the point where it was kind of hard to keep up with at times.
- It felt like the twins' characters were kind of wasted. Stephen and Sonia got a LOT more development than they did.
- This gal really got away with her affair. When Patrick didn't react at all to finding out, I was just annoyed. The Lorenzo scenes felt like they were taking away from the larger story too. I kept saying, out loud, “okay calm down lady” every time there was a scene of him looking her up and down (for the 500th time).
- I liked Jacko's character, but I wish she had more “present” time rather than flashbacks. Same with Dell and his family.
- The author did a great job of making me want to also slap Stephen in the face.

I think overall I'll give the book a B/B-. It was a fun one to get through, even with my criticisms.

Where The Handmaid's Tale reads as a nuanced, almost-meditative dystopian tableau, Vox is a shinkansen barreling through character background and world-building at break-neck speeds. No time is wasted with establishing who Dr. Jean McClellan is and what's at stake—all future womankind's ability to achieve self-actualization. Exciting and satisfying read!

This book only popped up on my radar about a week ago when browsing Amazon and immediately when I read its description I knew I had to read it. It isn't until I've completed it and had a browse at some of the reviews out there that I've realised what a divisive book this is.

This is a dystopian fiction novel set in the United States in a world where a new highly moralistic and religious government have decided that the world was a better place before women's rights and therefore women have been removed from workplaces, denied the right to anything more than basic housekeeping and mathematical education in schools and have devices fitted to their wrists that electrically shock them if they speak more than 100 words per day. They are denied the right to read, make decisions for themselves medically, financially or educationally and they are punished if found to be adulterous or to be engaging in pre-marital sex.

Our main character Jean is a highly qualified neuroscientist who was working on a cure for people who have lost the ability to speak due to illness and who one year ago had her whole world change when the new rules regarding females came into force and suddenly she has found herself a forced housewife, unable to communicate, watching her only daughter denied the right to speak or be educated and wishing she'd done something when her friend warned her that things were going to change.

I loved this book. I ate it up in just under two days, I couldn't stop reading. It was such a thought-provoking read. As a mother of two daughters and two sons, I could absolutely empathise with the emotions Jean was experiencing watching her family live in this new world. The horror at watching as her daughters retreat further and further into themselves, unable to express simple things such as their needs, emotions, daily experiences or to create friendships. I also could see how living this way would lead to the conflicts she had with her eldest son whose constant indoctrination by the new regime leads to him believing he holds higher sway than her in the household, that she has a role she must fulfil and that is to be silent and obedient and cater to his needs.

There are so many ‘what if' questions throughout this novel that it is definitely one that is going to linger with me for quite some time to come. There are lots of sciencey bits at the end and that was my less favourite part of the book and if I'm honest I did feel the last 3 chapters were a little rushed and didn't fully take the time to explore the outcomes of the actions Jean took. I would have liked a little more than a 2-page chapter set months later to wrap up the whole book. I had to go back and re-read the last 3 chapters and reflect again as things were glossed over in a sentence where if you blinked you'd miss it and the first time I did.

Now, this is clearly a marmite book, people either love it or they hate it. Many Christians are stating how concerned they are by this book as it is very much stated that this dystopian world has come about by extreme religious views and only that. There are concerns that this book promotes that Christians are all extremists and that they are intolerant of people of other sexualities, cultures, sexes. I can understand their concerns and yes I empathise with why they feel that way however as a reader I am intelligent enough to know that all Christians are not like those portrayed in this book, reading a fiction novel like this is not going to make me think that suddenly every Christian I meet is planning to gag women around the world. I think you need to suspend reality whilst reading and enter into the fictional world the author is creating and this one was captivating for me.

If you loved The Handmaid's Tale I have a feeling this one might just tickle your fancy. It is one of the standout books I've read this year and I have a feeling we might be hearing an awful lot more about this one in the months ahead.

Drawing comparisons with The Handmaid's Tale, this imagines a present day where in the course of a year, the right wing takes over America completely altering society. Dr. Jean McClellan has gone from a doctor specialising in neurolinguistics researching a cure from a brain condition to living as a bored housewife in an impossible situation. She remembers how a charismatic pastor takes over and forces women to leave work, to wear bracelets limiting their words to 100 a day (or else receive an electric shock), give up passports, money, bank accounts and all reading materials apart from the Bible. Even worse, Jean's children are affected - her daughter is not allowed to read or write or speak over 100 words and s therefore not learning to speak properly and her son has been brainwashed by the school to find all this perfectly normal and right. Her husband has a job at the government so they cannot rebel from this. Reproductive rights are nonexistent, homosexuality is outlawed and anyone caught doing something the state disapproves of is sent to a concentration camp or executed.


I thought this was brilliantly imagined and completely gut wrenching at times, so prescient. I listened to the audiobook and had to turn it off at times as it was making me angry on Jean's behalf and the plot was enthralling. I think that the central message was that we are all responsible for freedom, we can chose to turn a blind eye to injustice or take a stand. As recent events have shown in America, women's rights are being eroded now by the right, this is not just happening in fiction. The characters are very well drawn, particularly the family at the centre of it, and Jean's discussions with her brainwashed son are terrifying.

Vox is dystopian America where women can only use 100 words a day, and are heavily policed. Jean is an Italian-American woman whose life has been irrevocably tore in two by this law. Her life before was full as a neuro-linguist, married with four children. Now she feels adrift in life as she struggles to live her new life.

I'm not going to share anything else about the plot because I want you to pick this book up as I did, completely blind as to the details. I devoured the book in a day and I could not wait for the next chapter, the next clue as so what was going to happen. I don't think I really knew what was going to happen next at any point through the book. All of the chapters are short, and really kept me engaged with every page turn.

I didn't expect to love this, because it was similar in concept to The Power by Naomi Alderman. However, this book was executed in the way I expected The Power to be, so it suited me much more. I'd really like to read more of this type of story, so I will have to keep a lookout.

Imagine if, after the term of our first black President ended, a new totalitarian leader is elected.. Small changes are made, the Southern States, where religion rules, starts to grow and take over the country, converting all those in its path. News channels owned and fed by the government, women silenced, pushing our country back to the 50's as the rest of the world sits by and laughs at us. Sound eerily familiar? Can't imagine why... This book blew me away every step of the way. I raged, I cried, I doubted... An absolute must-read!!

I found this book very disturbing at first. I hated the idea of women and girls being subjected to this kind of torture. My heart went out to the mothers who were helpless raising their girls.

I also got mad with the eldest son and the way he was behaving. I loved the fact that there was a secret society of men rebelling in secret with their triple blinks and thank goodness for them.

To be fair I got a bit bored during the last section of the novel when they were in the lab and it became clear there were three teams working on different serums. And why oh why kill Patrick??? By getting rid of him it made Jean's decision to leave all the more easier, a bit too convenient of an ending for me.

Definitely a different sort of novel and very impressive the author to think up something quite so harrowing, fair play to her.

In a world dominated by men and a cult-style religion, women are no longer allowed to hold a job or allowed to speak more than 100 words PER DAY. If they do the repurcussions are swift and painful. Daughters are no longer taught how to read, but instead how to do math, make change for groceries and the importance of keeping house.

When the president's brother has an accident that affects his brain, Dr. Jean McClellan is called upon to continue her work (pre-male dominated society) to cure his ailment. Something bothers Jean about the situation and the readiness of the lab she's given access to.

There are other things at play and Jean is all-in with whatever it takes for her daughter, herself and women everywhere.

Well this was certainly not what I expected! It was slow to start but picked up in the middle through the end. The end did feel a tad rushed but I still enjoyed this overall. Definitely worth a read if you enjoy dystopian type books or are wanting to step into this genre.