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The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (The Road to Nowhere, #1)

Meg Elison

Start date: July 20, 2017

Finish date: August 1, 2017

Discussion: AW BOOK CLUB (spoilers)

Why we're reading this: Discussion with spoilers begins August 1st.
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AW BOOK CLUB (spoilers)

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What Members Thought

Aug 07, 2016 Erin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: post-apocalypse-dystopia, arc-review

ARC for review - EPB: October 2016.

I love me some post-apocalyptic fiction and this did not disappoint. The story of the Unnamed Midwife of the title is being transcribed at some future date by a group of boys specially trained for the purpose - I suppose it is one of the few stories they have of the immediate aftermath of the plague that kills most of the population of the world and nearly all the females. The Unnamed Midwife survives by disguising herself as a man and we read not only her stor ...more

11 likes · Like · see review

Jul 27, 2017 D rated it liked it

Shelves: i-don-t-miss-the-future

This is one of those reviews where I have to average the categories on my scoring rubric. I guess those categories are: plot, voice, attention to detail, dialogue, and characterization.

5 stars for some really gritty, grim, post-apocalyptic thought experiments made manifest. I respect the hell out of that. It's one thing to envision the world devoid of almost everybody, but then what? What happens next? Here's one woman's idea.

2 stars for characterization. The early interior monologue of the tit This is one of those reviews where I have to average the categories on my scoring rubric. I guess those categories are: plot, voice, attention to detail, dialogue, and characterization.

5 stars for some really gritty, grim, post-apocalyptic thought experiments made manifest. I respect the hell out of that. It's one thing to envision the world devoid of almost everybody, but then what? What happens next? Here's one woman's idea.

2 stars for characterization. The early interior monologue of the titular character made me cringe, reading them aloud while laughing to my husband and him saying, "Are you going to keep reading?" and me, shrugging, thinking yeah, we'll see where this goes. Maybe I'm supposed to hate her. Nope. I don't think that was the author's intention at all, but whatever. I guess you can hate Holden Caulfield and still love the book.

The other characters were pretty flat and stereotypical.

2 stars for moving the fucking plot along. There were pages I was soaking up, really loving the scenes and action, and then there were huge sections where I was like, whaaaat iiiiis thaaaa poiiiiint. Then it breaks out of the framing device of having the super-in-the-future scribes copying the midwife's journals by having the omniscient narrator tell us what happened to every single major character after the midwife leaves them. That's amateur hour. Closure is for children's books. I didn't need to know what happened to Roxanne: enough hints had been planted (and planted well, too!) that I could imagine. Same with Jack. If you're gonna break out of your limited third person, it's gotta be done right, and this wasn't.

Also, holy shit this is a rapey view of men. We meet like a handful of dudes who aren't holding chains with collars on the ends of them, and we only get to know, kinda, one of the "good guys" and he's basically a moron.

I read that the sequel is a new character going scalp-hunting for rapists and slavers so I suppose that's just what this version of the post-disaster world is like.

Overall one-word summary of this book: Grim. If you can stomach a lot of violence against and subjugation of women, and you really love post-apocalyptic books, go for it. ...more

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Feb 27, 2017 Alice rated it really liked it

Shelves: scifi-apocalyptic-fantasy, 2017

Great, but terrifying. I like reading post-apocalyptic books and stories, and many of these hint at what this books whole focus is: how much it would suck to be a woman in a society without the legal rights and protections that keep us from being victims on a daily basis. These rights and protections come after a long fight and struggle. Just watching the evening news will show you how tenuous they really are in the world we currently live in, and how they would cease to exist altogether if we d ...more

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Oct 10, 2019 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, women, speculative-fiction, literature

This was a surprisingly engrossing dystopian novel. Kind of like The Road from a female perspective. Audiobook narration was well done but I ended up reading most of it on my Kindle because I was so engrossed and could read faster that way. Although I started this a couple of weeks ago, I put it down in favor of a library book and then read most of it in the last 24 hours. Really good.

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Feb 11, 2017 Kaye rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: feminism, apocalypse_dystopia, read-in-2017

This book spooked me, and felt real with different stylistic narratives and an ever shifting main character. It had the timelessness of all well done apocalyptic fiction incorporating snapshots into alternate realities. Grim, lacking even a shred of humor, but gritty and smacking of realism. I feel repulsed and satisfied all at once.

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Nov 18, 2019 Paula Hess rated it really liked it

I thought this was a pretty good post apocalyptic read.

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Jan 30, 2019 Hectaizani rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, audio, kindle, lgbt, series, fiction-sf-science-fiction, kindle-unlimited, challenge, fiction-sf-dystopia, group-apocalypse-whenever

A really enjoyable post-apocalyptic story of survival. Note: Canned peach alert.

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