Wait, Seriously!?
Vox - Christina Dalcher 2/5 stars
Sometimes you hear about a book and you instantly think, yeah I need to read that. When I heard about Vox there were a lot of comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale, 1984, but the sad part is that Vox isn't in the same ballpark as any of those books. It wants to be, and it tries really hard, but all it has going for it is the theme of government gone amok and it could in a way happen anywhere. There is that small percentage of people who will tell you that the book is controversial, but when you read a book like this you kind of expect that. These are women are allowed to speak only one hundred words a day which sounds insane, and it is, but this is what happens when you want to change in politics and vote the wrong way. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? 1984 was a frightening book that changed the way we looked at our government, changed the way we viewed the world and the language of the novel itself has crept into our culture. Vox won't do that because it's not as scary nor is it as controversial as people would have you believe. The only people who would be offended by this are the extreme Christians who really do think this way. To them, this is their Utopia, a place where women know their place and damn it, America is better off.
At first, I liked the novel, but then halfway through it, the novelty wore off. This isn't a novel that makes you think, it doesn't really do anything. There's nothing to scare you because, in this current political climate, there's nothing that would surprise me at this point. Vox doesn't serve as a warning at all, and it doesn't really serve as a book that bashes men either. The reasoning for the decision is solely on the far right and their idea that women should be silenced. That seems interesting, it truly does, but you need decent characters to make you want to see how wrong this is. Jean as a narrator comes off as boring and her husband is just too weak to care about. By the end of this, I was a bit miffed at how it all ended. It doesn't have the impact I would have expected and it should have had a huge impact. All this novel really has going for it is the controversial and sad comparisons to far better novels that do in fact make you think about the world around you. This is a weak effort that fails to incite anything other than irritation and shouldn't get all the praise that's heaped upon it. Want to read a better novel than Vox? Read 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, or When She Awoke and then you'll see just how bad Vox really is.
Sometimes you hear about a book and you instantly think, yeah I need to read that. When I heard about Vox there were a lot of comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale, 1984, but the sad part is that Vox isn't in the same ballpark as any of those books. It wants to be, and it tries really hard, but all it has going for it is the theme of government gone amok and it could in a way happen anywhere. There is that small percentage of people who will tell you that the book is controversial, but when you read a book like this you kind of expect that. These are women are allowed to speak only one hundred words a day which sounds insane, and it is, but this is what happens when you want to change in politics and vote the wrong way. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? 1984 was a frightening book that changed the way we looked at our government, changed the way we viewed the world and the language of the novel itself has crept into our culture. Vox won't do that because it's not as scary nor is it as controversial as people would have you believe. The only people who would be offended by this are the extreme Christians who really do think this way. To them, this is their Utopia, a place where women know their place and damn it, America is better off.
At first, I liked the novel, but then halfway through it, the novelty wore off. This isn't a novel that makes you think, it doesn't really do anything. There's nothing to scare you because, in this current political climate, there's nothing that would surprise me at this point. Vox doesn't serve as a warning at all, and it doesn't really serve as a book that bashes men either. The reasoning for the decision is solely on the far right and their idea that women should be silenced. That seems interesting, it truly does, but you need decent characters to make you want to see how wrong this is. Jean as a narrator comes off as boring and her husband is just too weak to care about. By the end of this, I was a bit miffed at how it all ended. It doesn't have the impact I would have expected and it should have had a huge impact. All this novel really has going for it is the controversial and sad comparisons to far better novels that do in fact make you think about the world around you. This is a weak effort that fails to incite anything other than irritation and shouldn't get all the praise that's heaped upon it. Want to read a better novel than Vox? Read 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, or When She Awoke and then you'll see just how bad Vox really is.
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