Review by Booklist Review
Recovering from a mysterious and nearly fatal disease, the unnamed female protagonist of Elison's debut novel must adapt quickly in order to survive a new and brutal world. This disease swiftly wiped out a majority of the female population and has made healthy birth impossible for survivors in its wake. Elison's unnamed protagonist has made it her mission to use her previous medical experience as a midwife, providing birth control to any women she meets during her travels. Men were left almost entirely untouched by the disease, though, and much of the remaining male population has degenerated into gangs of rapists and slavers, hunting and selling the remaining women they find. Cutting her hair and donning male clothing, will the protagonist be able to save the women she encounters? Does civilization still exist in this new postapocalyptic world? Elison takes readers on an exciting and often excruciating journey, navigating issues of gender and sex in a scorched, disease-ridden world.--Colias, Rachel Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Elison's gripping and grim first novel, which won the Philip K. Dick Award in its previous, small press publication, tells the story of an unnamed woman who survives a plague that wipes out most of humankind in just weeks, leaving 10 male survivors for every woman. Years after the initial wave of the terrible disease, all pregnancies still end in the death of the baby, and most also kill the mother. Told by turns through the diary of the protagonist, the diaries of other survivors, and third-person narration, the tale covers her several years of wandering, dressed as a man, from San Francisco, where she had worked as a nurse and midwife, through the dangerous, near-empty western U.S., where marauding groups of men try to enslave any woman they meet or are occasionally recruited into polyamorous "hives" dominated by one alpha woman. Eventually, she finds a stable, caring community where the inhabitants allow their members to find their own appropriate gender roles; at last she can live without fear, be the person she wants to be, and practice her trade for the betterment of everyone. The story is beautifully written in a stripped down, understated way, though frequently gruesome in its depiction of rapes, murders, and stillbirths. The protagonist, who sometimes calls herself Karen, or Dusty, or Jane, is beautifully realized as a middle-aged, bisexual woman with considerable skills, an indomitable will, and great adaptability, though she suffers considerably and is far from a superwoman. A prologue and an epilogue set long after the events of the main narrative (and reminiscent of the concluding chapter of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale) hint at a positive future, leaving the reader with a glimmer of optimism in the midst of despair. This fine tale should particularly appeal to readers of earlier feminist dystopias such as The Handmaid's Tale, Suzy McKee Charnas's Walk to the Edge of the World series, and P.D. James's The Children of Men. Many questions are left unanswered at the book's end, but a sequel is forthcoming. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The first in a post-pandemic trilogy.The midwife of the title is an obstetric nurse in San Francisco when an unknown disease strikes; it kills men but is more devastating to women. For women giving birth, it is a virtual death sentence for both mother and child. The nurse falls ill herself but ultimately wakes alone in a hospital bed, surrounded by bodies and her doctor boyfriend either dead himself or long gone. After an unpleasant year spent in a sparsely populated city sprinkled with male predators, she decides to move on in search of something better. Disguising herself as a man and taking many names to protect herself both physically and emotionally from anyone getting too close, she travels across the country, quietly offering birth control to the enslaved women she encounters and defending herself from scavengers and potential rapists. After a troubled interlude with a young Mormon couple fleeing their increasingly unstable community, she eventually finds her way to a small settlement on what remains of a military base, where she devotes herself to passing on her skills and attempting to deliver a surviving baby. Similarly to The Handmaid's Tale and The Power, the book has a framing device set generations later in that same settlement, where the midwife's journals are kept and she is venerated as a sacred figure. But confusingly, the story is not solely drawn from her journals; with no explanation, an omniscient narrator occasionally jumps in to reveal information that neither the midwife nor the future residents of the town could possibly know. While knowing the fates of the characters who pass out of the midwife's life provides closure, it also undercuts the integrity of the story. The somewhat abrupt ending also feels somewhat unsatisfying; after a leisurely (if disturbing) account of the days and months of the midwife's travels, the author suddenly packs years of her life into the last few pages.Well written, but does not really rise much above the rest of the teeming post-apocalyptic pack. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
