Red Clocks (Zumas) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Zumas has a perfectly tuned ear for the way measures to restrict women's lives and enforce social conformity are couched in the moralizing sentimentalism of children's imagined needs…Zumas is a skillful writer, expertly keeping each of her characters in balanced motion, never allowing one to dominate the rest. Her cunning device of not revealing the name of each character in the sections she narrates grants us a multidimensional perspective on all four women, highlighting their roles in one another's stories. It's a beautiful metaphor for the interdependence of women's lives—for the way that…the laws that imprison or criminalize one of us narrow the options for all of us.
Naomi Alderman - New York Times Book Review

[P]owerful…. [With her]…consistently engaging tone [Zumas] illustrates the extent to which the self-image of modern women is shaped by marriage, career, or motherhood. Dark humor further … [makes] this a thoroughly affecting and memorable political parable.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) [P]oetic and political…[with] characters who are strong and determined.… Zuma's work is not nearly as dystopic or futuristic [as The Handmaid's Tale], only serving to make it that much more believable. Highly recommended. —Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis
Library Journal


(Starred review) Shattering.… With its strong point of view … Zumas has raised [her novel] … to the level of literature, which readers will find deeply moving.… [B]eautifully realized…compulsively readable…. The result is powerful and timely.
Booklist


Following the current fashion for braided narratives, this story is told from five perspectives. [C]haracters are entangled in complicated …ways, as is usual in this type of fractured narrative.… A good story energized by a timely premise but perhaps a bit heavy on the literary effects.
Kirkus Reviews