So the novel is partly about the way that women can become defined by their roles in life and how society brackets women within a specific function. Chapters are headed by a part that these four different women play in the story: the biographer, the mender, the daughter and the wife. Sadly, it’s easy to imagine such regressive laws being put into effect with the current administration. Set on the western US coast it portrays the interweaving lives of four different women in a time when abortion is outlawed in America and legislation is coming into place that requires any child who is adopted to have two parents. The epigraph of this novel is a line from Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”. The plot of Zumas’ novel doesn’t directly relate to Woolf’s writing but it gives several nods to it and pays tribute to her predecessor so part of the great pleasure of reading this book was knowing I was in the company of a fellow Woolf lover. I love Woolf’s poetically-charged novel so much and it’s lived with me for so many years I feel like it’s a part of my body and soul. When I recently heard that Leni Zumas’ new novel “Red Clocks” was partly inspired by Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves” I felt I had to read it.
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