Leni Zumas’ Red Clocks envisions a dystopian future that could happen tomorrow: A personhood law grants citizenship rights to fetuses, outlaws abortion, and bans in-vitro fertilization. Single adults will soon be banned from adoption and intrauterine insemination (IUI). Women seeking abortions in Canada are stopped at the border’s “Pink Wall.” Like the best dystopian fiction, Red Clocks is so close to reality that it feels almost prophetic; like the best fiction, it’s highly inventive; with sharp, stark prose; strong characterizations; and an undercurrent of humor and hope.
The red clocks of the title are uteruses belonging to Zumas’ five archetypal protagonists, all living in the same town on the Oregon coast: The biographer, Ro, is a teacher in her 40s trying to get pregnant through IUI before it becomes a crime. The daughter, Mattie, is a 15-year-old math genius who finds herself pregnant and terrified. The mother, Susan, is unhappily married to a man who rarely assists in caring for their two young children. The mender, Gin, descended from a witch and a pirate, lives off the grid in a cabin, where she provides illegal abortions. These women’s stories are interleaved with dispatches from a book Ro is writing about a polar explorer named Eivør Mínervudottír, lost to history after publishing her findings under a male colleague’s name. (“Otherwise the world will never know them.”)