Red Clocks

"[A] lyrical and beautifully observed reflection on women's lives... Highly absorbing... Zumas is a skillful writer, expertly keeping each of her characters in balanced motion, never allowing one to dominate the rest. Her cunning device of not revealing the name of each character in the sections she narrates grants us a multidimensional perspective on all four women, highlighting their roles in one another's stories. It's a beautiful metaphor for the interdependence of women's lives."-Naomi Alderman, New York Times Book Review

"In an alarming peek into a dystopian future, a group of women navigates family and motherhood in an America that has outlawed abortion, in vitro fertilization, and adoption by single women. Each of the interwoven story lines is complex and heartbreaking in its own way, and overall it's a fascinating and unsettling exploration of the limits society can place on women's bodies."-Samantha Irby, Marie Claire

"The story is set in a small Oregon town in a future that Mike Pence can almost see if he stands on his pew...This provocative exploration of female longing, frustration and determination couldn't be more timely, and yet there's nothing fleeting about it. With Red Clocks, Zumas has written a novel that's political without being doctrinaire, that expands the dimensions of our most pressing social debate."-Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Intricate and alarming, Leni Zumas' riveting second novel, Red Clocks, arrives just in time...Wry and urgent, defiant and stylish, Zumas' braided tale follows the intertwined fates of four women whose lives this law irrevocably alters...Lit up with verbal pyrotechnics and built with an admirably balanced structure, Red Clocks is undeniably gorgeously written... Indispensable."-Chicago Tribune

"Zumas has written a work that's preoccupied with what it means to live inside a woman's body, and to exist in that body in a world that's long viewed it with fear and unease... A thoughtful, complicated picture of womanhood-and a fierce argument for individual choice... Red Clocks is relentlessly interrogative but always humane... Red Clocks instead is deeply, intentionally personal. Rather than trafficking in sweeping generalizations or one-size-fits-all dictates, it focuses on the uniqueness of all of its characters, who are nevertheless linked by the immutability of their bodies. The familiarity of the book's world, just a step removed from our own reality, is the most shocking thing about it." -Atlantic

"An enchanting ramble through the myths and mundanities of womanhood... "Red Clocks" ends up feeling like an enjoyable puzzle that is fundamentally unsolvable, some of its pieces playfully misplaced along the way. The fractured narrative leaves us to connect the dots between these disparate characters, all of whom make bleak compromises because they - like so many women throughout history - have so few options available to them."-Los Angeles Times

"Hilarious, terrifying, and masterful--this pitch-perfect, timely novel reflects the horror and absurdity of our political landscape with a brilliance that ensures the book's timelessness. A poignant, wickedly sharp classic."-Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love and Tampa

"A cautionary work of far-sighted fiction... Spooky-good." -Elle "Chillingly relevant." -People

"This highly absorbing novel imagines a near future of America in which abortion is illegal in all 50 states. Zumas has a perfectly tuned ear for the way society relies on a moralizing sentimentalism to restrict women's lives and enforce conformity."-New York Times Book Review, Editors Choice

"Leni Zumas here proves she can do almost anything. Her tale feels part Melvillian, part Lydia Davis, part Octavia Butler-but really Zumas's vision is entirely her own. RED CLOCKS is funny, mordant, political, poetic, alarming, and inspiring-not to mention a way forward for fiction now."-Maggie Nelson

"Where a lesser writer might have delivered a shrill, one-sided polemic, Zumas draws us into the intersecting lives of five women in a profound exploration of our attitudes toward motherhood, freedom and life itself... A page-turning plot is rendered in sentences as gorgeous and wise as poems...Be prepared to dog-ear these pages."-Oprah.com

"Strange and lovely and luminous. I loved Red Clocks with my whole heart."-Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners "In bristling sentences, Zumas shows girls and women defying the excruciating restrictions imposed by both law and culture. Red Clocks is unabashedly political and fiercely humane."-Emily Fridlund, author of History of Wolves

"Move over Atwood, Leni Zumas's Red Clocks is a gender roaring tour de force. The bodies of women in Red Clocks are each the site of resistance and revolution. I screamed out loud. I pumped my fist in the air. And I remembered how hope is forged from the ground up, through the bodies of women who won't be buried."-Lidia Yuknavitch

"Zumas manages a loose yet consistently engaging tone as she illustrates the extent to which the self-image of modern women is shaped by marriage, career, or motherhood. Dark humor further enhances the novel, making this a thoroughly affecting and memorable political parable." -Publishers Weekly

"The women in this suspenseful book resist. They will not be circumscribed. The effect on the reader is cathartic."-Christine Schutt, author of Prosperous Friends