Dalcher is especially effective on how language contorts and confuses, and how certain words and ideas delivered by an adult to a young person can leave a lasting and immovable impression. When we first meet Jean, she’s the mother of four children in the suburbs – three boys and a progressively quiet girl – still demonstrating her own domestic resistance. In response to the steady rise of women’s voices, and particularly the honesty and force of these voices throughout the #MeToo movement, Dalcher is asking: what if we were silenced? And how long would it necessarily take to be starved of language? They are kept in check by bracelets that deliver electric shocks if they step out of line, a nightmare dystopia for any woman who's ever been told to not get lippy by a man. Set in a present just like our own, with a president who enjoys being on television, women have been reduced to speaking just 100 words a day.

In Vox, however, words matter and none can be wasted. Maybe a few thousand.' She concludes that the words are 'semantically vacuous', meaningless, throwaway. Miranda discovers just how the all-women community is capable of enduring, and it leads her to question how far her mother went to create this perfect, thriving, horrifying society.Late in Vox, Christina Dalcher's debut novel, the narrator reflects: 'I don't know how many times I've said 'I could kill him' in my 40-odd years. There are no men allowed in the colony, but babies are being born-and they’re all girls.

And so they set off to Femlandia, the women-only colony Miranda’s mother, Win Somers, established decades ago.Īlthough Win is no longer in the spotlight, her protégé Jen Jones has taken Femlandia to new heights: The off-grid colonies are secluded, self-sufficient, and thriving-and Emma is instantly enchanted by this idea of a safe haven. The streets are full of looting, robbing, and killing, and Miranda and Emma no longer have much choice-either starve and risk getting murdered, or find safety. But that was before the country sank into total economic collapse and her husband walked out in the harshest, most permanent way, leaving her and her sixteen-year-old daughter with nothing. Miranda Reynolds always thought she would rather die than live in Femlandia.

Christina dalcher vox