Signed
Red Clocks
Signed feminist dystopia, 2018
Red Clocks is set in a near-future United States where abortion has been criminalized, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and a Personhood Amendment extends legal rights to embryos. The story follows four women in a small Oregon coastal town, referred to throughout only by their roles: the Biographer, the Wife, the Daughter, and the Mender. Each is navigating the new legal landscape from a different position, and their stories gradually intersect. Zumas structures the novel as a rotating chorus of perspectives, a technique that keeps the political situation from reducing to any single experience or argument.
Signed copy. Signed by Zumas on the title page.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. New York: Little Brown, 2018. ISBN: 9780316434812. #10635.
Fine in fine dust jacket.
Signed copy. Signed by Zumas on the title page.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. New York: Little Brown, 2018. ISBN: 9780316434812. #10635.
Fine in fine dust jacket.
Additional Details
What separates Red Clocks from the wave of reproductive-rights dystopias that followed The Handmaid's Tale is its attention to the mundane and the ordinary. There are no uniforms or ceremonies. The restrictions arrive through legislation, bureaucratic procedure, and social pressure, woven into ordinary life in an Oregon town where it rains constantly and people still worry about school budgets and grocery prices. Zumas keeps the dystopia almost invisible at the surface level.
The four women of the novel are each facing very different situations. The Biographer is a single teacher trying to conceive through IUI before the government closes the window entirely. The Wife is a married mother contemplating escape from a life that is quietly suffocating her. The Daughter is a teenager facing an unwanted pregnancy with no legal options on her side of the border. The Mender is an herbalist who provides off-the-books reproductive care and becomes a target for prosecution. Together they illustrate how the same law can produce vastly different consequences depending on circumstance.
The novel was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and named one of the 100 Most Important Books of the 21st Century So Far by Vulture. Published in January 2018, it appeared before Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the scenarios Zumas meant as warning had, by 2022, moved considerably closer to reality.
The four women of the novel are each facing very different situations. The Biographer is a single teacher trying to conceive through IUI before the government closes the window entirely. The Wife is a married mother contemplating escape from a life that is quietly suffocating her. The Daughter is a teenager facing an unwanted pregnancy with no legal options on her side of the border. The Mender is an herbalist who provides off-the-books reproductive care and becomes a target for prosecution. Together they illustrate how the same law can produce vastly different consequences depending on circumstance.
The novel was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and named one of the 100 Most Important Books of the 21st Century So Far by Vulture. Published in January 2018, it appeared before Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the scenarios Zumas meant as warning had, by 2022, moved considerably closer to reality.