two dystopian novels

This summer, even though I have been extremely occupied with keeping up the gardening required on our two-acre property, I’ve had time to read quite a few books. Two of them were recommended to me and in turn, I’m recommending them to you if they seem to be something you’d like to read.

I’ve noticed this spring and summer that a lot of dystopian feminist novel titles have been turning up in messages and comments. I wonder why?  (she said sarcastically!) I’ve already written about The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents, but today I’ll be writing about the two I read last month, The Grace Year, by Kim Liggett, and I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman.

Harpman wrote her book, in French, in 1995. It has just recently been translated into English and it’s a book that packs a wallop!

The main character is 15 when the novel opens. She is one in a group of 39 women who for some reason, they do not know, are kept in a cage. They are all older than she and none of them know how they got there. One day they had normal lives and the next thing they knew, they woke up surrounded by bars. Some of them remember sirens and flames but that’s all. They also don’t know why the little girl is among them as she’s not related to any of them. Guards pace the outsides of their cell, open on all sides, 24-7. They do not speak and do not allow the women to speak to them. If the women break any of the other rules, such as no touching, the guards whip them through the bars.

The women are given clothes of sorts, and the barest minimum of food to cook with in a big pot in their cell. They have to use the toilet in front of everyone, guards included, as there are no walls, no privacy. While the women know how to read, write, and do basic math, the child does not, so the women try to teach her as much as they know and can remember, but hardly any women remember anything concerning math past the mere basics. The child asks questions they have no answers to. Sometimes they refuse to answer her questions even though they know the answers because they know she will have no need of the answers living as they do and the knowing is painful for them. They try to save her from the same pain and loss.  

Can you imagine living in this type of situation as the main character? This living space is all she has ever known. Such as it is, there will be no future other than this. What keeps a person continue to want to live?

One day there are sirens and the guards suddenly rush out, even the one who was unlocking their cage to put the food in. When the guards don’t return, the women continue to unlock the door and then explore their surroundings. They find a locker room, a huge freezer full of food and stairs, which they climb. They pull open the door at the top and find themselves outside. There are no guards anywhere, nothing but bleak landscape. They don’t know where they are, on Earth or elsewhere. What should they do? What would you do?

I Who Have Never Known Men is a small book and easy to read but I warn you, it’s dystopian for sure. Still, it’s a good mental exercise to ask yourself things, like what is the purpose of our lives and what would we do and how would we act in the same kind of place and situation they find themselves in. What would count as loving kindness? 

Harpman also has another book, just published in July, called Orlanda.

The Grace Year has been called The Lord of the Flies book for girls. The setting is a lot like colonial United States, harsh religion and patriarchal society included.

The main character, Tierney, is 16, and is about ready to be marched off to a remote camp with other 16 year-old girls for what is called The Grace Year, a mandatory exile to help them discover and temper their magic assumed to be dangerous to others, especially to married women, because it can drive men crazy. They’ve all noticed that in prior years, not all the young women have returned, and the ones who do don’t look so good for a while until they recover. They also know that they have to stay within the confines of their fort because there are poachers outside who will kill them for their body parts if they don’t. The poachers are men who have grown up in the Outsider world and they get paid big money for these body parts, particularly the skin, which is believed to be an aphrodisiac.

Before they go, there is a veiling ceremony where the young men the same age choose one of the women to be his wife. The ones not chosen know that they will be relegated into servitude as maids and nannies or field workers. Others will be sent to be Outsiders who live only to service men sexually. If a girl dies in her Grace Year, then her next sister in age is sent to be an Outsider. Obviously, not many of the girls are excited to be sent on their Grace Year, knowing the odds but they are excited to learn what their magic may be.

Tierney does not want to be a wife, plain and simple. She wants to be a field worker because she likes the outdoors. Unfortunately, her best friend, Michael, a young man her age, chooses her over her nemesis, the person everyone thought Michael would choose. This does not bode well for Tierney’s Grace Year. Teenage relationships among young women in the best of all possible worlds are fraught with betrayal and cruelty, so imagine if some young woman decides to control all the others and is angry because the man she thought would choose her chooses you instead. You are going to be struggling for survival, for sure.

As written by others describing the book, it explores themes of oppression, female relationships, survival, and the psychological effects of fear and trauma, ultimately questioning the nature of the magic and the society that perpetuates it.

There are scary parts and exciting twists and turns in this book. It’s a fast read and you won’t want to put it down. It does end with some hope for the future, at least, unlike Harpman’s novel. To quote from the end of the book, “ The things we do to girls. Whether we put them on pedestals only to tear them down, or use them for parts and holes, we’re all complicit in this. But everything touches everything else, and I have to believe that some good will come out of all this destruction. The men will never end the grace year. But maybe we can.”

And this one:” The fear of growing older, the shame of not bearing sons. The wounds the women held so close that they had to clamp their mouths shut for fear of it slipping out. I saw the hurt and the anger seeping from their pores, making them lash out at the women around them. Jealous of their daughters. Jealous of the wind that could move over the cliffs without a care in the world. I thought if they cut us open they’d find an endless maze of locks and bolts, dams and bricked-over dead ends. A heart with walls so tall that it slowly suffocates, choking on its own secrets. But here in this room, my mother and sisters gathered around me, I understand there’s so much more to us…a world hidden in the tiny gestures that I could never see before. They were there all along.”

And finally, “The magic is real. Maybe not in the way they believe, but if you’re willing to open your eyes, open your heart, it’s all around us, inside us, waiting to be recognized.”

And if you need something uplifting to read in between these two books, allow me to recommend The Farm Wife’s Almanac, by Shari Wagner, a lovely book of poetry.