Review: Vox by Christina Dalcher

Vox

by Christina Dalcher

Publisher: Berkley

Pages: 336

Format: book

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than 100 words daily, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial--this can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her.

This is just the beginning.

Soon women can no longer hold jobs. Girls are no longer taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words a day, but now women only have one hundred to make themselves heard.

But this is not the end. 

For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice.

Kritters Thoughts:  When I heard the concept of this book, I was ready to read it immediately, although it didn't quite go where I thought it would, I still enjoyed it.  The part that I had heard before going in was that women were literally being silenced by wearing a contraption on their wrists and it would shock them if they went above a certain word count.  Yes, this is in the book and what a concept, but the book goes somewhere I wasn't expecting.  

The book focuses on Dr. Jean McClellan who was close to discovering something that would help reverse a brain injury in the Wernicke's area of the brain that had people talking in gibberish, but she was halted by the new regime.  First let me say that this book made me do some googling and I was excited and surprised to see that this area is truth and does impact one's ability to compute and understand language.  I love that at the heart of this crazy story was truth.  The focus of the book was her discovery and how it could impact society in a possibly negative way.  

Although I was disappointed that the contraption and the literal silencing of women wasn't the complete main focus, the thing that hit me hardest was seeing this female doctor raise both genders and be limited in her words.  I think the family scenes really made me think about how any gender would be limited if they were limited to an amount of words per day.  I know we can all joke that women speak more, but this book made me think about how many words EACH of us says in a day and if we had to limit them how that would impact us on the job, at home and in all of our relationships.  

I love when a book makes me think and this one did and is still making me wonder about things.  I hope that Christina Dalcher has another book in this vein up her sleeve!


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Berkley.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.