#BookReview-‘Vox’ by Christina Dalcher

Blogging on my birthday, and what a book to discuss!

I have read some really wonderful books so far this year, but ‘‘Vox’ By Christina Dalcher‘ has topped them all.

About the book…

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…

It’s not too hard to envisage a world where America has a president who is seen a joke by the rest of the world, yet manages to systematically take away the rights of the female population.

It starts slowly with the focus on the main character, Jean, a well regarded scientist who was advancing discoveries into cures for a particular strain of dementia. Since the ‘Pure’ movement ,however, women have been stripped of their jobs, their roles and their words.

Women ,and gay people, have been held accountable for the ills of society and in a attempt to return it to a time when women knew their place and being gay was considered an abomination,the president has eroded their rights and gained the backing of American men and female handmaidens .
Inevitable comparison with the ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ aside,it is sadly all too plausible to buy into the future reality that Christina Dalcher depicts. Gay people are forced into work camps and to share cells with the opposite sex until they ‘see sense’.

Women and girls are made to wear wristbands that count off every word they speak ,and after 100 words are used up,they cannot speak/read or write until sun rise on the next day.

If they do, the punishment is instant and brutal.

So there is no more reading, or writing, even the buying of envelopes is prohibited. No more opening the post-box, flicking through magazines, nor anything which encourages a woman to think freely.

Girls are separated from boys as there is no need to educate them beyond preparing them for wifely duties and motherhood. They cannot leave the country as their passports are invalid. Women and girls are nothing more than commodities to be done with as men wish.

Until the President’s brother has a terrible skiing accident that results in the particular dysphasia that she had been experimenting on.

Suddenly the chance to raise a voice is in Jean’s power.

This is a prescient and timely book that is sadly all too believable.

Many thanks to the publishers,Orion, and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this wonderful book.

About the author…

Christina Dalcher earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University. She specialized in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects and taught at universities in the United States, England, and the United Arab Emirates.

Her short stories and flash fiction appear in over one hundred journals worldwide. Recognitions include first prize in the Bath Flash Fiction Award as well as nominations for The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions.

Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency represents Dalcher’s novels.
After spending several years abroad, most recently in Sri Lanka, Dalcher and her husband now split their time between the American South and Andalucia, Spain.

Her debut novel, VOX, was published in August 2018 by Berkley (an imprint of Penguin Random House) and has been translated into twenty languages.

Links-http://www.christinadalcher.com/

Twitter @CVDalcher @orionbooks