Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Dystopian
Approximate word count: 65-70,000 words
Availability
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Author:
“Nicolas
Wilson is a writer, journalist, and stay at home cat person. Not that he's a
cat-person; he just prefers cats.”
Description:
“In the
near future, women’s rights are eroding, and those who buck the system are
hunted as gender criminals by the authorities and rogue militias. This
harrowing dystopia is seen through the eyes of a woman cast into a resistance
group by circumstance, and a newly minted gender crimes detective tasked with
bringing them to justice, as he grapples with whether or not that word still
has meaning.”
Appraisal:
How to
judge Whores presented me with a quandary.
It’s dystopian, which Wikipedia describes, in part, this way:
Dystopia is defined as a society
characterized by a focus on mass poverty, squalor, suffering, or oppression.
Most authors of dystopian fiction explore at least one reason why things are
that way, often as an analogy for similar issues in the real world.
Dystopias usually extrapolate
elements of contemporary society and are read by many as political warnings.
This
definition fits Whores, especially
the last sentence. It takes off from recent political events in the US,
characterized by some as the “War on Women,” and extrapolates this trend,
theorizing on what continuing far enough in that direction could lead to. It’s
trying to make a political statement. My dilemma was deciding what things were
fair game for critique. Should I take the existence of the world described on faith,
as I would with most dystopian novels, and, based on that, judge the story?
Should the credibility of the fictional future world enter into my judgment?
Last, how well does the story make its case for the political warning? The
first is in any review. However, if there is an attempt at the political
warning, which it seems obvious to me there was, then the other two seem to be
fair game as well.
As with any
sensitive subject such a politics and religion, the reviewer’s personal stance
can enter into their judgment. So, by means of disclaimer, here’s where I
stand. While I think the term “War on Women” is inflammatory, I also think it
is real and that a certain segment of society is doing what it can to “put
women in their place,” as they view that place, which is what it was prior to
Roe v. Wade and the women’s liberation movement. While abortion rights are the
largest and most visible part of this “war,” I think it goes well beyond that.
In other words, I’m sympathetic to the intended warning.
The story,
if the reader is able to suspend disbelief and take the dystopian world
envisioned on faith, is a compelling story. Like many (maybe most) dystopian
worlds, there is much that is different from our current world and it isn’t
pretty. The characters you’re supposed to like, you either do or, if not, at
least understand why they are the way they are. Those you aren’t supposed to
care for, you don’t. While I think some of the characters would have benefited from
a little more nuance (for example, a woman cop who seemed devoid of any
conflict between her job and gender), overall the story works, or at least
would, if not for the answers to my other questions.
I wasn’t
able to believe our current world could evolve into the story world described
in as short a time as indicated, which caused a constant inability to suspend
belief. The book’s description says the story is set in the near future and all
the clues point to this being the case. Specifically, other than changes in
laws pertaining to women and their rights and how those changes were reflected
in the attitudes of people, there was very little different from today’s world.
Unless technology and progress in other areas comes to a standstill, it has to
be in the very near future. The few technology changes I saw were relatively
minor and easy to picture as obtainable in a short amount of time, if not
today. Ten years, at most twenty in the future, was the way it felt to me. That
one of the characters referred to Gwyneth Paltrow seems to reinforce my feel for
the timing.
My concerns
with the changed world the reader has to believe could come about in a short
time weren’t with changes to abortion laws, which, given the path pointed to by
the “War on Women,” could happen that quickly, but in the changes beyond that.
A part of it was in the attitudes of men that, with few exceptions, were so
chauvinistic as to be unbelievable as the norm, even though they are
representative of some men in today’s world. But the biggest problem I had
believing was in other laws that had also changed. Outlawing abortions had
caused the pendulum to swing not to where the potential child was viewed as
essentially equal to the mother, which would have been credible, but to the
point where the mother had almost no rights or perceived value when compared to
the potential child. Police power had reached the point where an officer could
force a cell phone to pick up and be put on speakerphone, technologically
believable in the time frame, but not
for what this would imply about changing the rights of citizens so
quickly. Not only were abortions outlawed, but a law was passed overriding
doctor-patient confidentiality retroactively where abortions were concerned, so
that law enforcement could identify those who had obtained abortions in the past.
Were this story set way in the future, say a hundred years or so, I maybe could
have bought into the premise. Beyond these issues, I had a few minor issues
with the story. However, these were insignificant when compared with the bigger
issues of believability.
Last is the
question of whether the political point was well made. In short, the answer is
no. The world that Wilson extrapolated was too much change too fast and
overstates what the credible fallout of starting down the path he pictures
might be. If someone like me, inclined to agree this is a bad path to be going
down, can’t believe that this route would lead us to the world painted in Whores, what are the chances that someone
disinclined to believe will? I’d say, no chance.
FYI:
Adult
language.
Format/Typo Issues:
A small
number of typos and other copy editing and proofing issues.
Rating: ** Two stars
