• Vox: A Novel
• written by Christina Dalcher
• published by Berkley (2018)

Vox is a horror novel.

I’m not privy to whether author Christina Dalcher intended for it to be one. Sci-fi? Yes. Dystopian? Also yes. Political and social commentary? Check.

In Dalcher’s near-future world, half of the American population has been silenced.

The female half.

All women, all girls, are limited to 100 words a day. They are forced to wear counters, and, if they go over their quota, they receive successively torturous electrical shocks. Boys and girls attend separate schools; the boys learn science and math and literature, along with state-sponsored religion. Girls learn sewing and cooking and household accounting. Women are forced from their jobs and careers and relegated to the home. If they resist or violate new purity laws, they are sent to work camps. The government confiscates the passports of legal citizens who happen to be female and deny all applications for girls. Husbands and fathers gleefully deprive non-males of books and computers. Birth control is non-existent. Marriage is lifetime consent.

LGBTQIA+ individuals are also rounded up. They are put in prison cells, one man and one woman each, based on the theory that, eventually, they’ll realize they have a “choice” to be “normal.”

“How did this world come to be?” you might be wondering.

A single campaign. A single election.

One administration.

One year.

Until the former Doctor Jean McClellan, now Mrs. Patrick McClellan, an expert in neurolinguistics, is called upon to create a cure for the president’s brother, who has, supposedly, suffered a traumatic injury to the part of the brain that translates thought to coherent speech. For her to do so, the administration must okay the removal of her counter. Jean uses her temporary freedom as an opportunity to fight back.

She also uses it as a chance to consider what would have happened if she’d spoken up sooner. If she had used the voice she had when she had it to stop the abuse and marginalization from coming down on her fellow Americans, her own daughter, rather than having to smash it once it’s grown roots in the majority of American males, including her son.

A few years ago, I would have thought, “Wow. This is disturbing. Good thing it will never happen.”

Now? Now, it’s sci-fi horror. Because it could.

To women. To citizens of color. To immigrants. To the LGBTQIA+ community.

Because in our country, as it stands now? Anyone can be silenced.

This is a story about what happens when we don’t use our voices. When we assume someone else will take care of a problem. When we think the evils being wrought on someone else won’t touch us.

And if I could have done without the infidelity/romance/martyrdom subplot, well… to each one’s own and if the neat wrap-up isn’t necessarily the ending I would have chosen, this isn’t my story. And if every book were the same, our reading lives would be boring indeed.

Vox is a disturbing book. It’s also an important cautionary tale.

Speak out for what you believe in, rebels. Before someone takes that ability away.

(Disclosure: Berkley provided me with a review copy of this book. All opinions remain my own.)