About the Book: Silence can be deafening.
Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just one hundred words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins.
Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you’re a woman.
Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and seventy million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.
For herself, her daughter, and for every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. This is only the beginning…
My Review: Imagine a world where women can’t speak more than 100 words a day, men are in charge of every decision made within a household, adultery results in banishment, homosexuality is considered a lifestyle choice that must be reversed. Welcome to America!
I’m not a huge reader or fan of dystopian and fantasy books but this book intrigued me from the description above. The idea that men take back control and make all women subservient and basically glorified home makers is both horrifying and ridiculous at the same time, however there were parts of the story which could be frighteningly plausible and that made this story even more interesting to me.
Dr Jean McClennan, a renowned and respected doctor has spent the past year silent, unemployed, raising her 3 sons and young daughter in this new Pure world with her husband. Unable to speak more than 100 words, forbidden from even opening the post, Jean is struggling to accept this new life.
Vox is a powerful and utterly thought provoking story which I read in a day and thoroughly recommend.
About the Author: Christina Dalcher earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University. She specializes in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects and has taught at universities in the United States, England, and the United Arab Emirates.
Her short stories and flash fiction appear in over one hundred journals worldwide. Recognitions include the Bath Flash Award’s Short List; nominations for The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions; and multiple other awards. She teaches flash fiction as a member of the faculty at The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency represents Dalcher’s novels.
After spending several years abroad, most recently in Sri Lanka, Dalcher and her husband now split their time between the American South and Naples, Italy.
Her debut novel, VOX, will be published in August 2018 by Berkley (an imprint of Penguin Random House)
