Author: Christina Dalcher
ISBN: 978-0-008-30064-7
RRP: $32.99
Publication Date: 20 August 2018
Publisher: HQ Fiction
Copy: Courtesy of the Publisher
I have been totally immersed in Vox for the last couple of days and it’s a book that has stayed with me long after the book has been put down. I finished reading late last night and it has still been rolling around in my head. This was one of the most disturbing books that I have read in a while.
The front cover of my copy has a quote from Prima “This book will blow your mind” and I completely agree. There is also a quote from Elle “A petrifying re-imagining of The Handmaid’s Tale” and that is one that I can’t comment on because I haven’t read (or watched) The Handmaid’s Tale.
Vox is a near future dystopian novel that disturbed me in a way that many have not. I think that dystopian is quite a disturbing genre, it’s a genre that looks into the future and re-imagines the world a little – and never in a good way. Vox most definitely does that and I’m not sure if I find it so disturbing because I am one who would be directly affected by the world Dalcher has created or if it’s a more general fear. I also think that it’s not so hard to imagine that this could happen.
The America in which Vox is set hasn’t been hit by some undisclosed bio-weapon, there’s been no war, no sickness, no alien invasion. The America in which Vox is set had an election and the new President took society back centuries using new technologies. It was a move that some saw coming but their voices weren’t loud enough to effect change while everyone else thought it was impossible.
Jean McLellan is a wife and mother of four, now living almost wordlessly to ensure she doesn’t exceed her daily 100 word limit and subject herself to the electric ‘shock’ she will receive if she goes over. The shocks start small but the more you go over the bigger the shocks become.
It wasn’t always like this, less than two years ago she was a leading expert in her field of neurolinguistics. Now she and her daughter wear counters on their wrist, but not the highly interchangeable step counters that are the rage now; the ones we connect to our smartphones that help us reach health targets and can become an extension of our smartphones. The counters Jean and Sophia, and all the females in America, wear are word counters and instead of a happy vibration when the daily limit is reached it’s an electric shock that builds in intensity. Learning to avoid the shocks comes quickly, and seemingly easier to the young who are still learning language.
The spoken word isn’t all that is being limited; it’s also the written word, the signed word, the heard word. Females are being cut-off from language in as many forms as possible. Education is changing and the girls aren’t being given a full education, they are only taught what they will need to know to run a household; back to cooking, sewing, a little gardening and some basic arithmetic.
Vox is a book that just disturbed me on so many levels. The ‘Bible Belt’ of America expanded greatly until an evangelical preacher got ‘big’ enough to get the ear of a presidential candidate and promised he could deliver votes which birthed a partnership that set society on a fast train to the past. Preaching of the sanctity of family, or his version of family anyway. In short order women were stripped of all their independence and their identity. They were removed from the workforce, their passports cancelled, their bank accounts frozen and transferred to their husbands.
I didn’t read Vox as an anti-Christian fearmongering tale, it wasn’t Christians as a whole that engineered this shift in society. I found it to be a tale that cautioned us not to get complacent. Don’t believe that anything is impossible, don’t sit back and hope that someone else will stand up and effect change.
This is a story that explored how easily it can be for a minority to take over when people sit back and do nothing. There is a wondering about whether this is how it happened in other places at other times in history, like Nazi Germany for instance.
Jean McLellan’s eldest son is in his late teens and has been raised in a household of equality with two highly intelligent working parents. He learned to pitch in and help out, it was an expected part of being a family. The Pure Movement tells him that this shouldn’t be his role, it’s the role of the female in the house to do all the household chores. Steven is young and impressionable and easily falls under the spell of the Pure Movement.
For every oppressive movement there is a resistance, history tells us there is always a resistance.
I was captivated, I was disturbed but I was gripped and I did absolutely love this book though I was totally uncomfortable with the contents.
Dr Jean McLellan was a leading expert in the field of neurolinguistics and her research, along with some other leading scientists, was very close to a cure for aphasia in stroke victims. They were nearly ready to be able to restore speech to stroke victims, depending on where the damage was. There was a lot of medical and research information, lots of terminology to get your head around and lots of scary ways that the research could be twisted and put to less admirable uses. (I think I’ve reached my daily word limit…. the one I wanted in that sentence just refuses to come.)
Vox explores many themes relating to identity, oppression, the importance of language and also raises the question of how far you would be willing to go.
I found the character depth to vary, which is understandable because some characters needed to be left a little shady so that the suspense remained. If we know everyone intimately we can’t retain the mystery of the resistance. I did enjoy the character development and the pacing of the story, it certainly had me turning pages when I should have been shutting my eyes. It did wrap up a little too quickly for my liking though, with all the build up I would have liked a little more substance to the wrap-up. Having said that I did really enjoy this book, it sure made me think and it will stay with me for a while I think.
They say on average we speak 16,000 words a day; and I am pretty sure that my children had that done by 10am from the time they were about 4. To think that in Dalcher’s imagined America my daughter would be limited to 100 a day is unfathomable, and from such a young age when the language is developing that would stunt so much. We are left to question how long it would take to make the damage irreparable.
Vox is definitely worth the read, a gripping page turner that I would recommend to everyone. I think it’s an important read for it’s cautionary warning about sitting back when you should be standing up, before it’s too late.
An impressive debut that will have me watching out for more of Christina Dalcher as her career progresses.
Christina Dalcher can be found on her Website, Twitter and Facebook.
Vox is available through HQ Fiction, Angus and Robertson Bookworld, Booktopia and where all good books are sold.
Thanks to HQ Fiction 20 of our Beauty and Lace Club members are reading Vox so please be aware there may be spoilers in the comments below. I can’t wait to read what they thought.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!
Wow! VOX was mind blowing! This is certainly a read to remember. I enjoyed everything about it, the pace, the characters, the thought provoking glimpse into the future. Wow, how quickly things can escalate if not kept on top of (the government)… makes you think big time. Even though a lot of this read had me feeling uncomfortable, I’m so glad I got to review VOX, I’ve already been telling my book lover friends about it.
Thanks for the read xx 5/5 stars from me.
Vox was a thought-provoking, interesting & stimulating read. It centres around Jean, a woman living in America in the not too distant future.
An overzealous President and his cohort, including the opinionated Reverend Carl, have changed the law so females can only speak 100 words a day. Women & girls wear electric bracelets and if the rules are broken they get shocked.
Jean was formerly a highly respected researcher & doctor, so her new forced life as a housewife and stay-at-home Mum only causes her dismay & makes her angry and distant towards her husband Patrick, who ironically works for the government, the very people responsible for this predicament.
But the government suddenly needs Jean’s help & expertise, in exchange for some demands of her own. But do they really need her for the reasons they claim or do they have a hidden agenda?
Vox was brilliant in that it really got me thinking, with the Trump adminiatration in power is it really that far fetched? I couldn’t put it down, fascinating and different than your usual thriller.
“Vox” is a novel that’s quite uncomfortable to read at times – it’s both horrifying and terrifyingly believable – but is a powerful reading experience. I hope it’s not also a prescient one.
Jean McClellan lives in a world that will be familiar to readers or viewers of “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Fundamentalists have hauled America centuries into the past, with insistence that women belong in the home – and ONLY in the home. Men have all the rights and power. Women are brutally controlled; dissenting men are controlled by threats to their wives and daughters.
Dalcher makes strong use of technology. Cameras are used to monitor and shame the population. Women wear counters on their wrists that deliver increasingly painful electric shocks if they speak more than 100 words a day. Try to get around it with sign language, or writing, both of which are forbidden to women? A camera will surely see. You’ll be publicly shamed on national television and sent to a work camp for life. This use of technology, and the scientific sophistication that emerges in the plot, help to make the novel original rather than derivative.
Dr Jean McClellan was an expert in neurolingistics. She chafes under the language restrictions; perhaps she could have coped with the overnight loss of her job, her bank account, her passport, and most of her rights…but the loss of words? She sees how this world is being normalised for her sons and her daughter. She is desperately fearful for her six year old daughter and her future. She despises her husband; although he claims to disagree with much of this, he works in the White House and facilitates their actions.
But Jean will be given a chance to fight back. A chance to reclaim her voice. To subvert the administration. To uncover, and perhaps prevent, the even greater horror that is planned.
This is a powerful thriller, and a frightening glimpse of what could happen if extremists gather too much power. It’s also a strong character study, and an examination of complex relationships. It applies to Australian society.
“Vox” is a thoughtful novel that I won’t forget easily. Although not always comfortable to read, it was well and truly worth it.
By the way, this review is 385 words. I’d be dead before I finished reading it aloud.
I received a copy of Vox by Christine Dalcher in return for an honest review as part of The Beauty & Lace Book Club.
Be warned: this is a very captivating read that makes you think.
This is a captivating account of a modern day America where a power-tripping egomaniac, who is being enabled by a President who only cares about votes and the conservative, religious population is trying to revert everyday living back to the ‘glory days’ of the 1950’s and earlier by oppressing women and girls. It’s a fascinating read outlining some of the tactics used by governments the world over to oppress their people and some of the ways that the people fight back. The characters are authentic and gritty, with their personal dramas unfolding and intertwining throughout the story. The narrative was disjointed, jumping from the present, to the past, then into imagined futures, and yet it worked.
Above all else, this book makes you think. How easy would it be for our government to implement something similar to this? With all of our freedoms slowly being eroded away and new policies implemented to keep us ‘safe’ from all the bogeymen out there, is it a matter of time before something like this really does happen? It’s a call to arms to stop standing by and letting others fight the good fight. Burst out of your bubble and stand up for yourself and everyone else now before it’s too late, and yet, it’s not at all preachy. A gripping story that leaves a lasting impression that I definitely recommend everyone to read.
Christine Dalcher has definitely made her way onto my ‘must read’ author’s list.
Thank you Beauty & Lace Book Club and HQ Fiction for my copy of the brilliant Vox.
Wow Wow Wow.
Like many other people my first and only taste of a dystopian novel was The Handmaid’s Tale, so I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this. But I was really taken by it quite early, I liked the characters and the plot although at times I really struggled with the concept. As a mum to a young girl the thought of a life like this was scary. Not only that having 100 words per day would be limiting and the punishment harsh, the effect it would also have on their development and how they would perceive themselves.
It also went into the effect of this ‘new world’ on the young boys in families which was an interesting insight as well. While I feel I know my son well, how would he change when faced with such a swing in beliefs.
I don’t always related to main characters in book but I found myself really liking Jean, although not always agreeing with some of her life’s choices. Like others I feel the ending was a little rushed, but by then I just needed to know what was going to happen so I didn’t mind.
So thanks to Harlequin and Beauty and Lace Club for the opportunity to read this book, I will be on the look out for more of Christina Dalcher books in the future.
Gripping from the start! Obviously I had read the blurb and had an idea what I was in for, but VOX was so much more than I expected! I hadn’t realised that it would be set in the now time frame, I thought it would be more in the future, this was intriguing and disturbing, as in so many ways you wonder and do also vision it as a possibility!
I loved that we got a feel of life before the counters as well, and to learn the many different views on whether people agreed with it or not and how they conformed.
The story went in directions I didn’t expect, but i thouroughly enjoyed it from start to finish and would definitely recommend.
A hard book to put down!
This is an interesting and engaging novel, which I found myself loving the whole way through.
This is a thought provoking novel with many deeply engaging topics. I found myself able to put myself in the main characters shoes. This novel had me enraptured from the start, and got me thinking about what it would like if our own world were this deeply women suppressive, and what it would be like if I lived in these conditions.
I found myself feeling multiple emotions through this novel; anger, sadness, and even suspenseful excitement.
This is a novel I would highly recommend to anyone who likes to read distopian novels, which are engrained with truth.
Thank you Beauty and Lace and Harper Collins for the opportunity to read and review Vox by Christina Dalcher.
How would you feel if as a woman one day you woke up to discover all your rights had been stripped over night, you no longer had the right to work in your career, own your own money, access joint funds, or speak more than 100 words per day. What if you were fitted with a bracelet that counted how many words you uttered, and if you exceeded your limit provided you with an electric shock. How would you feel clamping your hand across your small daughter’s mouth as she struggled with a nightmare to stop her using up her precious daily allocation of words.
But the reality is things like this don’t happen over night, they build over time, insidiously. Movements begin, The Pure Movement, relying on literal interpretations of the words written by men in the Bible, recruiting to their cause, initially those with a twisted hatred of women and a desire to see them back where they belong “barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen” then gradually as the movement infiltrates government and education what once would have been seen as abhorrent becomes the norm, people believe the messages that are being fed to them, children accept the truth of what they are being taught, those that oppose the new truth are disappeared, or made examples of. It becomes safer to accept the new norms than oppose them. This is how the rise of the far right and the far left has occurred each time in history, Communism, Fascism, Nazism etc.
Vox is a poignant reminder that we must be aware of the underlying themes from our charismatic leaders and not assume that “it could never happen” but be prepared to stand up and be counted early to prevent such dystopian futures. We only have to look at what is happening in the world right now, religions, races, ethnicities, sexualities, genders being denigrated and made to appear more frightening than they are. People’s fear of difference being used to discriminate against individuals and cultures.
Vox is an intense, disquieting and eerily accurate portrayal of the impact of such a dystopian future on a normal family, mum Dr Jean McClellan, a cognitive linguist before they took that away from her, her husband Patrick and their four children, Steven the eldest, twin boys aged 11, and Sonia just 5.
This book is a great read and will hopefully leave you questioning your world, and your and your children’s future and encourage you to think about and question what you are taught and the messages you receive from those in positions of power, rather than blindly accepting them as fact.
Highly recommended 5 stars
VOX
CHRISTINA BALCHER
I apologise for the late review, I actually wrote it straight after I read and digested the novel and thought that I had posted it. Seemingly I hadn’t so here it is.
I was, literally, gobsmacked by the premise in this novel. I can actually imagine this happening, especially with the current American political situation. It is a powerful message to those of us that just let things slide, or happen, because we think we can’t influence the current situation, whatever it is.
Almost overnight women lose all of their basic rights, including the ability to speak more than 100 words per day. No one saw it coming and once it was implemented it seemed nothing could be done. Jean McClellan is, or was, a scientist specialising in socio linguistics and a brain condition that is supposedly affecting the President’s brother. Her expertise in this condition puts her in a position to affect the position of women and the situation, if she can coordinate her research, her team (that is not really her team), a few men who are sympathetic to the plight of the women.
I don’t want to spoil the story, so I’ll just generally say that there were at least 3 unexpected twists or story lines that I didn’t see coming. However, they filled out the plot and tied up a lot of loose ends.
This story has remained with me weeks after I read it and, although it is a bit ‘out there’ I think it is a fantastic read, thought provoking, and designed to make one do a little soul searching about apathy in life. Apart from that it has a great plot and was enthralling from beginning to end.
I was hesitant to start reading VOX, but once I started there was no putting it down.
It was an amazing read, one I can’t talk about too much without giving everything away!
Like other reviews I felt the ending a bit rushed and would have liked more detail. I was left wanting more. I do highly recommend giving it a go.