Red Clocks

There are five main female characters in this book, and I identify with four of them. Why did I pick up this book again?

Okay, for reals, this was not an easy book for me to read. The plot has five intertwined plots, a single woman who wants a child, an overachieving teen, a wife/mother in a relationship that isn't working, an arctic explorer/scientist, and a hippie / herbalist / off-the-grid non-conformist. Four of them live in costal Oregon, the explorer is the subject of the single woman's biography.

I do not know how this book ended up on my reading list. I suspect because it is a reasonable Handmaid's Tale-like near-future dystopian where Roe vs. Wade is repealed, and an eight-celled blastocyst is considered a full person in the eyes of the law, making even miscarriages suspect under the law, and women are aware that this near-future dystopian is much, much closer than we want to believe.

As far as I'm concerned, abortion can be illegal when we get the equivalent for men, something where they have no control over their own bodies, are shamed by society, forced to live with the consequences of a strongly personal and highly private decision made public decided by someone else, have to risk their lives, and have their bodies destroyed for the rest of their lives. Which is to say, no, abortion should never be illegal because it isn't your decision, it is the carrying woman's and only the woman's decision. The cells are not a person until they can sustain themselves outside of the womb. This book hits nearly every trigger I can imagine when it comes to women being lesser than men.

Anyway.

This book.

The single woman teacher who wants a kid. Fuck.

The overachiving high school student with all the same arguments I make. Fuck.

The wife / mother in a relationship that isn't working. Fuck.

The arctic explorer who needs a male peer to publish her work under his name to get it published. Fuck.

The non-confirming weird herbalist character? Didn't particular identify with her. 80% isn't too bad for an author, I'd argue.

Anyway, yes, this book is worth reading. I started it, couldn't put it done, was done with is in a day. Four books in four days, time to read something that'll take me a bit to finish.

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.
Location 204

These kids, after all, have not been lost yet. Staring up at her, jaws rimmed with baby fat, they are perched on the brink of not giving a shit. They still give a shit, but not, most of them, for long.
Location 216

Waiting on the hard little plastic chair, under elevator music and fluorescent glare, the biographer takes out her notebook. Everything in this notebook must be in list form, and any list is eligible.
Location 241

A book of lists. This intrigues me, but not enough to convert my journal to the format.

On the first night, the mender asked what that noise was and learned it was the ocean.

“But when does it stop?”

“Never,” said her aunt. “It’s perpetual, though impermanent.”

And the mender’s mother said, “Pretentious much?”
Location 292

The hard-sunk eyes the wife once found beguiling are not eyes she would wish upon her daughter. Bex’s will have purplish circles before long.

But who cares what the girl looks like, if she is happy?

The world will care.
Location 412

She’s one of those people who think they will understand something if they hear its name, when really they will only hear its name.
Location 667

“Let’s spend the taxpayers’ money to criminalize vulnerable women, shall we?” said Ro/ Miss in class, and somebody said, “But if they’re breaking the law, they are criminals,” and Ro/ Miss said, “Laws aren’t natural phenomena. They have particular and often horrific histories. Ever heard of the Nuremberg Laws? Ever heard of Jim Crow?”
Location 1009

Civil disobedience.

The border control can detain any woman or girl they “reasonably” suspect of crossing into Canada for the purpose of ending a pregnancy. Seekers are returned (by police escort) to their state of residence, where the district attorney can prosecute them for attempting a termination.
Location 1194

Or does the desire come from some creaturely place, pre-civilized, some biological throb that floods her bloodways with the message Make more of yourself! To repeat, not to improve.
Location 1241

Asking why she wants a kid.

Her eighth-grade social-studies class held a mock debate on abortion. The daughter prepared bullet points for the pro-choice team.

Her father proofread her work, as usual; but instead of his usual “This is top-notch!” he sat down beside her, rested a hand on her shoulder, and said he was concerned about the implications of her argument. “What if your bio mother had chosen to terminate?”

“Well, she didn’t, but other people should be able to.”

“Think of all the happy adopted families that wouldn’t exist.”

“But Dad, a lot of women would still give their babies up for adoption.”

“But what about the women who didn’t?”

“Why can’t everyone just decide for themselves?”

“When someone decides to murder a fellow human with a gun, we put them in jail, don’t we?”

“Not if they’re a cop.”

“Think of all the families waiting for a child. Think of me and your mom, how long we waited.”

“But—”

“An embryo is a living being.”

“So is a dandelion.”

“Well, I can’t imagine the world without you, pigeon, and neither can your mother.”
Location 1606

A hundred miles is too far for an unplanned pinch. She is thirty-seven years old and pines for her mother.
Location 1797

I understand this. Very much.

“Given your age, your FSH levels, and now this diagnosis, the chance of conception via IUI is little to none.”

“But if there’s a chance, at least—”

“By ‘little to none,’ I mean more like ‘none.’”

Taut pain at the back of her mouth. “Oh.”
Location 1940

I understand this. Very much.

This planet may be choking to death, bleeding from every hole, but still she would choose them, every time.
Location 2141

“Your shift now,” she says. “I’m going for a walk.”

“What about lunch?”

“I ate with the kids in town.”

“But I haven’t eaten.”

“So—eat.”

“I was waiting for you,” he says. “There’s nothing in the house.”

“Untrue.”

“What am I supposed to have, then?”

The wife starts for the kitchen, then stops. “Actually, it’s not my job to figure out what you’re having for lunch.”
Location 2153

I understand this. Very much.

The nurse has trouble, as usual, finding a vein. “They’re way buried.”

“The one closer to the elbow usually works better—?”

“First let’s see what we can get over here.”
Location 2235

F---ing hate this when it happens. Look, I know my body better than you do, if I say use this other place, use this other place.

... the biographer wrote emails to her representatives. Marched in protests in Salem and Portland. Donated to Planned Parenthood. But she wasn’t all that worried. It had to be political theater, she thought, a flexing of muscle by the conservative-controlled House ...
Location 2249

Because those in power don't listen to the people they represent.

A smart spinster. If the daughter were to say that word in front of Ro/ Miss, she’d get a sermon: What does the word “spinster” do that “bachelor” doesn’t do? Why do they carry different associations? These are language acts, people!
Location 2292

She is too chickenshit to leave her marriage. She wants Didier to leave it first.
Location 2458

Why do some walruses in Washington, DC, who’ve never met the daughter care what she does with the clump? They don’t seem bothered that baby wolves are shot to death from helicopters. Those babies were already breathing on their own, running and sleeping and eating on their own, whereas the clump is not even a baby yet. Couldn’t survive two seconds outside the daughter.
Location 2469

“Tell me what’s going on, Mattie.”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve never gotten a B minus on a quiz before.”
Location 2482

Apparently my junior high school experience wasn't special, other smart girls had similar ones with grades slipping, too.