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We then move into the main plot of the novel, which is the prevention of a plan to remove language from the general population.

Very quickly both McClellan and Sonia are exempted from the word quota, and although they obviously continue to exist in a world in which these restrictions apply, they seem to shift outside of it. Where the novel perhaps doesn’t fully succeed is that it too easily abandons its central concept. The exploration of female rights, and how easily they can be removed, is the backbone the novel, and to some extent the plot hangs on this framework. Vox has a very strong political and social message, and in that regard it pulls no punches. Your relationship with Vox is going to be made or broken by your politics. It demonstrates how radicalisation and indoctrination are not the province of any particular religious group, but weapons of fanatics generally. How McClellan’s son, Steven, is indoctrinated by the Pure Movement – the group responsible for the restrictions on female rights – is also powerful. Some of the most effective sections of the novel are when we learn of how the “word quota” effects Sonia, McClellan’s younger daughter, and how the quota is but one aspect of schooling and education for a new generation of mute girls. Given the political shift we’ve seen in recent years, and the resurgence of many right-wing groups, the concept feels frighteningly possible.ĭalcher also knows how to pull the heartstrings. What happens when you take away not just language, but communication? How would a world in which mothers, daughters and sisters are effectively mute, function? Dalcher navigates these ideas, weaving them into an engaging plot. Although this is Dalcher’s debut novel, she has a history writing flash fiction, and her prose is both tight and easy to read. It isn’t completely without its flaws (I’ll turn to these in a moment), and it is very SF-lite, but Dalcher’s writing is deft and the plot moves quickly. Luckily, Vox is an entertaining and chillingly plausible thriller. Expectations are only heightened by very obvious comparisons with Margaret Atwood’s seminal The Handmaid’s Tale – a novel which is very much back in the public eye, thanks to Hulu’s TV adaptation. Any book that generates this sort of media interest has a lot to live up to. I picked up Vox on a whim at a local supermarket, and at the time I was completely unaware of the storm that had developed in the book’s release. For herself, her daughter, and for every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write. Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and seventy million women lose their jobs. Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins.

“Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just one hundred words a day.