Offered Books:
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
As Bright As Heaven by Susan Meissner
The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna
Selected:
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
Also Purchased Read:
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
Red Clocks, by Leni Zumas, follows four women in a small Oregon town. In this fictional United States, the Personhood Amendment has been passed: granting full rights to embryos, thus outlawing abortion and IVF and affecting all of the women in some way.
This is a hard book to start. While each of the women being followed (The Biographer, The Wife, The Mender, and The Daughter) have their stories intersect with the other women, it takes awhile to get to that point and the 'setting the stage' part of the book can feel choppy. I didn't find this part hard to get through, but numerous others have, so fair warning to those interested in reading this.
The characters are all well-written, though I wish a bit more was done with The Mender than what we eventually get, but I feel that none of them are standout characters that will draw the reader back to this book. They're all believable, but are missing that big cathartic moment in their stories that satisfies the average reader. To me, the best character is the Biographer, and I almost wish that the book had focused on her exclusively while still allowing the intersection with the other characters.
The plot is a good one, if slightly underdeveloped. Zumas gives the readers enough information to explain the state of the world, but not enough of how it happened and how it has been maintained despite affecting all women in the United States. There is even enough pressure to force Canada to assist the US in preventing women from traveling there for access to abortion/IVF without a thorough explanation of why the country feels the need to do so.
This book doesn't quite fall into the 'could've done more' that The Power does, but it does feel like a large part of it has been left out - and that lost part is what keeps the book from being great.
I'd recommend it, but it's not a novel I see many going back to.
3 out of 5
The Woman in the Window follows Anna Fox, a woman who recently underwent a traumatic event and now suffers from severe agoraphobia. While stuck in her home she witnesses a crime happen in one of her neighbor's houses, but isn't sure she can even believe her own recollection of what happened and desperately tries to figure out what she witnessed.
I'll get this out of the way: I don't understand why this book became the hit that it did. It's not a terrible novel by any means, but I fail to see what made it so exceptional to so many. While the character of Anna Fox is great - I eagerly await the movie to see how Amy Adams portrays the character - so much of what happens requires more than just the suspension of belief. I won't go into details to avoid spoilers, but the 'reveal' was only a surprise because of how implausible it was for them to do what they did.
Which is a shame, because the character of Anna Fox is great. There's so much character there, and the way Finn writes her is amazing. However, this leaves almost every other character either underdeveloped or barely developed enough. The neighbors who house she witnessed the event in are the best off, but not enough for them to linger.
Structurally, the story does something that I absolutely hate: hides a major detail of a character (in this case, Anna) that we should know far earlier than we do. There's no reason to deprive the reader of this information - anyone with the slightest bit of intelligence knows the Something Important happened that we aren't privy to - other than for one of several 'reveals' that only serve to prolong the story.
Despite all these criticisms, it is a solid book, just not a great one.
3.5 out of 5
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