Leni Zumas

FIVE WOMEN. ONE QUESTION: What is a woman for? In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers. Ro, a single high-school teacher, is trying to have a baby on her own, while also writing a biography of Eivor, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer. Susan is a frustrated mother of two, trapped in a crumbling marriage. Mattie is the adopted daughter of doting parents and one of Ro's best students, who finds herself pregnant with nowhere to turn. And Gin is the gifted, forest-dwelling homeopath, or "mender," who brings all their fates together when she's arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt. RED CLOCKS is at once a riveting drama whose mysteries unfold with magnetic energy, and a shattering novel of ideas. With the verve of Naomi Alderman's THE POWER and the prescient brilliance of THE HANDMAID'S TALE, Leni Zumas' incredible new novel is fierce, fearless and frighteningly plausible.

This is a work of fiction. Keep telling yourself that. America has changed. For women, it has changed for the worse. Ro, a single high-school teacher, is desperate to become a mother. But with IVF now illegal - along with abortion and other reproductive rights - parenthood looks increasingly unlikely for her. Her best friend Susan is trapped in a failing marriage with two children, her star student Mattie is unwillingly pregnant and Gin, an outcast offering other women natural remedies, has become the centre of a modern-day witch-hunt. With warmth, wit and ferocious inventiveness, Red Clocks shows us an all-too plausible near-future: like The Handmaid's Tale, it is a call to arms, set to become a modern classic.