Vox

by Christina Dalcher
Dec 16-23, 2018

I've been reading nonstop lately. What else is there to do in winter?! And Vox was a super quick read that I busted out in a week.

My first inclination is to call it Handmaid's Tale-Lite. Women are repressed in the name of religion, but it's only been a year in this new way of life, and again, only in the US. Vox is like the Cliff's Notes of a dystopian society. It held my attention and stressed me out, but resolutions came quickly and crises were swiftly resolved. Because of this, it was hard for me to really dwell on the "what-ifs" presented here. But really, what if you could only speak 100 words a day? How would you make them count?

Dalcher does a decent job at character building in minimalist form. Just enough to evoke hatred for most characters. Her vocabulary isn't the best – I hate when people use the word "sex" as an anatomical description – but the simplicity flowed easily and didn't leave any room for misinterpretation.

I also think Vox is a timely parallel, in abstract form, to our current state of affairs. Again, the what-ifs.

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