Silent Women of “Vox”

I read Vox, by Christina Dalcher, in one sitting, because the first 98% of this book was just so amazing.  In the near future, women are limited to 100 words a day. It’s a believable future, where an AP Religious Studies class indoctrinates impressionable freshmen. Televangelists also preach the values of modest (silent) women, and it’s a eye-rolling, awful joke, until it’s not.

Jean, the main character, was a scientist and is now a silent homemaker. Books, reading, writing and talking are all forbidden. Her youngest child, a daughter, has never experienced a world where she can express her thoughts freely. She’s eager to please, and wins her classroom contest for quietest girl, a distressing victory for Jean to see.

Jean’s oldest son, Stephen, is every guy who read an article about gender differences once. It’s biology! Men are just better at strength and intelligence and logic, because biology says so! It’s ok, because he’s a teenager. Well, it’s ok until it’s not.

Her husband Patrick is all the perfectly nice guys who think it’s sad that women don’t make as much as men and it’s sad that women are subjected to sexual assault, but they “aren’t political” and don’t really apply their power.

While women become silent, life goes on on usual for the men and boys. Sports, TV, school, work, and talking about all of these.  With only 100 words a day, how many do you devote to getting a counter in a color other than pink? How many do you devote to talking about your day? Sharing your thoughts? Naturally, Jean spends most of her words telling her children she loves them.

When an important politician has a brain injury that’s exactly like the work Jean was doing before the silence, she and her former team are brought back to try to stop it. She wins special privileges, and at first she tries to find a balance between working fast, as instructed, or working slowly, and spinning out the time she’s allowed to have a normal life again. But her team stumbles onto a much more sinister project, and this becomes a scifi page-turner and a thoughtful evaluation of marriage and motherhood. It’s so good.  It’s well-plotted (until the last couple pages), blending agenda twists and true characters, shocking politics and realistic relationships.

But, those last few pages. Vox raises these really dark questions about whether Jean’s first obligation is to her existing sons or to her possible, future daughter. It asks wider, darker questions about what we straight-married ladies owe to our queer sisters in a regime that penalizes all women, but doesn’t penalize all equally. And then, none of these are resolved.  Suddenly, they’re in Canada (WHY WASN’T THAT AN OPTION EARLIER?) waiting for passports to Italy.  Also, there are characters who’ve been taken off to shady, distant punishment camps, but they’re fine! Also, in a world where there’s a camera at every doorway, a teenager just disappears? Eh.

Vox was compulsively readable because the stakes were so high,  and I felt completely conned when it all worked out just fine.