To see a book hailed as the “ dystopian feminist novel for a new generation” is encouraging, for surely such a lauded text would tackle some of these new angles. Joy Williams praises Red Clocks (Photo credit: Little, Brown and Company) Limitations on fostering and adoption would also be fruitful avenues to delve into, as would the gendered nature of how these conversations typically happen-usually the subjects of reproductive coercion are “women,” though texts about “women’s oppression” turn the trans community into a glaring lacuna. Yet, there’s still a lot of terrain to explore in reproductive dystopias, such as the heavily racialized nature of reproductive coercion and control, or the disability implications of a world in which access to parenting is tightly controlled. Even Louise Erdrich’s 2017 novel, Future Home of the Living God, revolves around a superstitious society controlling pregnant people. Sarah Hall explored reproductive coercion and control with Daughters of the North, a 2008 novel about people being forcibly implanted with IUDs and subjected to a lottery that determines who gets to become pregnant. The Handmaid’s Tale might be the most famous example, but Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke, published in 2011, served as a modern-day update. It’s set in a near-future world where conservative extremists have gained control of the government and passed a fetal personhood law that ushers in a host of other policies that commodify and control women’s bodies. Red Clocks revolves around the intersecting lives of Mattie, a pregnant teenager Ro, her teacher Susan, a housewife trapped in a dull marriage Gin, a mysterious woman of the forest and Eivør, a long-dead polar explorer.

However, Zumas’s third book doesn’t deliver-it teases and tantalizes what it could be before abruptly backing away. Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks is an extraordinarily frustrating book, though it seems destined to become a “feminist classic.” After being called “the book you’ve been waiting for in the wake of The Handmaid’s Tale,” “a thoroughly affecting and memorable political parable,” and “ nothing short of a miracle,” Red Clocks should be ripe with potential.

Novel red clocks