Set in an America where half the population has been silenced, VOX is the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one woman will do to protect herself and her daughter.
On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than 100 words daily, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial—this can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her.
This is just the beginning.
Soon women can no longer hold jobs. Girls are no longer taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words a day, but now women only have one hundred to make themselves heard.
But this is not the end.
For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice.
* * *
CW: misogyny, homophobia, & suicide
I picked this up because the premise had me intrigued. I don't typically get too political when it comes to my blog because I don't read books that are heavy on politics, but it isn't a secret that I am pretty liberal. So reading the synopsis above had me hooked immediately and I knew I had to read this book.
The only characters I really cared about were our main character, Jean, and her daughter Sonia. But I don't think that's a bad thing because a lot of the characters aren't supposed to be super likeable, at least I don't believe so. Besides Sonia, Jean and her husband Patrick have three other kids, two twin boys that almost make no appearances, and an older son, Steven, who has been taught to be incredibly misogynistic and cruel to women, including his mother. I wanted to reach into the book and strangle Steven, he was so awful. Patrick drove me insane because of how complacent he was with everything. Working for the President, he tried to stop the movement of suppressing women's voices but he was too passive. I could see why Jean was frustrated with him all the time. I didn't care to much about any of the other characters because we didn't really get any chances to know them. And I super had no interest in the whole plot with Lorenzo.
"Think about waking up one morning and finding you don't have a voice in anything."
The overall plot was scary and realistic. The gradual transition from the world we know to the dystopian world we see in Vox seemed to feel natural and probable. I don't think we are on the precipice of this being our reality but I do think that this future isn't as far off as I would like it. The absolute helplessness Jean feels when it comes to trying to teach her daughter vocabulary (with both of them only having 100 words each a day) is incredibly frustrating to read. This kind of dystopian story is so much scarier to me than my normal zombie or children fighting to death in an arena dystopians because this feels like something that isn't a sci-fi or fantasy story. It feels like a warning. It makes me even more ready to speak out and to vote for the changes I want to see in this world.
The average woman speaks about 20,000 words a day. The thought of that being cut to 100 words a day and the punishment being pain and humiliation is haunting. The women are seen as housemaids, cooks, baby makers. They punish anyone in the LGBTQ+ community and women are basically not allowed to have dreams or careers that do not involve their families. Their money is wired into their husband's bank accounts. This is all super terrifying. The book briefly talks about intersectional feminism and how important it is to have even more support for women of color. There is a biracial couple and the woman talks about her fear of being taken away from her white husband. Jean's privilege of not having that extra fear of being treated poorly for her skin color on top of being female was a really good conversation.
"You can't protest what you don't see coming."
However, there is a sudden hard genre shift. The tone gives you complete whiplash as the reader goes through a good half of the book where we are getting this story of what would happen in society if women lost their voices. Then because of a job offer Jean gets in return for her and her daughter being able to speak the genre goes into a very scientific and clinical storyline that I honestly had almost no interest in. I skimmed every time she was in the lab because otherwise I think I would have just DNFed it. And then, we go from this scientific tone to this action tone that seems to come out of no where. I think I would have not minded that if I hadn't lost so much interest earlier on. I think it really affected my enjoyment of the book and by the end I didn't care.
I do think this is a good debut novel. It brings up a lot of interesting topics and discussions. Vox is a great book for a book club or a Women and Gender Studies or Feminism classes. Depending on what Christina Dalcher writes next I could see myself reading another book of hers. I found myself genuinely affected, whether I felt anger, fear, sadness, when it came to the topics and discussions mentioned in this story. It made me see things in ways I maybe hadn't considered. I felt the emotions [I assume] the author wanted me to feel and at times it was blinding.
"'There's a resistance?' The word sounds sweet as I say it.
'Honey, there's always a resistance.'"
Overall, I recommend this book to anyone who advocates for women's rights. If you liked The book/show of The Handmaid's Tale, this is definitely something to pick up. I may not loved this book as a whole but the parts I did love I really loved. Like I said, it made me want to speak up more about the things I believe in, and it definitely makes me even more motivated to vote. Also: talking about voting, if you live in America please vote this November 6th!
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