Anyway, everything felt like the book was staged specifically to show men as some kind of beasts. It's basically misogyny in reversal. The novel explores themes of women's subjugation through sexual violence in the post-apocalyptic United States, questions of gender identity, the spectrum of sexuality and sexual practices, women using violence as a means of defense, women assuming roles of submission or as caretakers. [1] The narrator chooses to avoid the fate of most other women in the novel. Elison's book depicts the fate of women as either sexual enslaver or enslaved people; the unnamed midwife refuses either of these outcomes, choosing to dress and act male as a form of protection. Bosch, Torie (28 January 2016). "This 2014 Sci-Fi Novel Eerily Anticipated the Zika Crisis"– via Slate. The unnamed midwife makes it her goal to travel to a safer place, while pretending to be a man, and giving women healthy options to not get pregnant. She also is willing to help with births, to try to save the lives of the pregnant woman, because all the children being born are stillborn.

She wanders the Tenderloin district dazed until she smells someone cooking and discovers a gay man named Joe using an abandoned restaurant to make food. The first time she introduces herself is the first time she decides to change her name. After leaving the community the Midwife finds a home that was owned by doomsday preppers, so it has more than enough stored food, wood, guns, and other things she’ll need to survive the winter. Honus has an almanac, so the date is finally revealed. It’s Christmas, and all three have a modest celebration with gifts Honus has acquired while out raiding. Shortly thereafter, Jodi gives birth to a stillborn baby boy. Dusty and Honus cremate the body so scavengers don’t get to it. Although Jodi survives the birth, she falls into a deep depression, and just sits and watches a solar-powered TV that Honus gave her for Christmas. No spoilers, but we get a lot of different gender identities and they're all showcased in ways that even surprised me.

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

It's scary to be a woman in today's world, but it's downright terrifying to try to survive as a woman in this book's world. This main protagonist is one of the strongest and most empowering woman I've ever had the privilege to read about, and I don't even get to learn her name. I'm sure many will go, Oh you're being too harsh, it's great for a debut. Or, It's better than how you write this review is littered with grammatical errors. This book heavily talks about gender roles and their impact on any society. They are obviously enhanced because of the ratio of men to women in this new post-apocalyptic society, but the parallels within our own society are so real and so scary. It is highly unlikely that you, I, or anybody else would be a survivor of an actual apocalypse, and it is even more unlikely that, were we to survive, the post-apocalyptic world would be worth staying alive to see. To imagine yourself as a survivor is to evade the truth and to indulge in a ridiculous fantasy. To imagine yourself as a successful survivor — someone who doesn’t suffer terribly before finally, painfully dying — is even worse. One of the key points Matthew makes, especially toward the end of his piece, is that if the aim of apocalyptic fiction is to provide the reader with a cautionary tale, then it’s irresponsible to make extinction seem bearable. While the protagonist of Meg Elison’s The Book of the Unnamed Midwife does ultimately find stability in her life, the novel goes to great pains to show us a world that’s anything but bearable or desirable. Elison chooses a plague to wipe out most of humanity because it gives her the ability to kill off more women than men and make pregnancy a near death sentence. In other words, create an apocalypse scenario that’s not only bad because billions have died, but also puts whatever power remains in the hands of men. Violent, angry, horny men.

The Unnamed was Etta’s hero. Not as a Midwife, but as a survivor, a person who could be anything they had to be to survive. ”..." The text organization. It's not impressive. Original but not functional. We got a bunch of Chapters across which go journals, the Books and plain text. The Books include 'The Book of Histories and Hives', 'the Book of the Dreamless Ones', you get it. Pretentious, that's what it is.

Publication Order of The Road to Nowhere Books

To tell a story of apocalypse in which people’s lives are not even as difficult or painful as the lives of millions and millions of people currently alive on Earth moves beyond escapist fantasy and into the realm of idiotic irresponsibility. (This, perhaps, is why some of the better apocalypse/dystopia stories are written by people who are not middle-class white Americans.)" The supernatural ending made me decrease my rating with one star because I could not see its place in the rough realism that characterized the prose until then. I hope the next book will not be about the supernatural Mormons who save the world.

The Road to Nowhere novel series written by author Meg Elison is comprised of a total of three books released between 2014 and 2019. This award-winning series describes a feminist post-apocalyptic story and consists of the central characters in the roles of Etta, Flora, and several others. The debut book of this series penned by Elison is entitled ‘The Book of the Unnamed Midwife’. It was released by the 47 North publication in 2016, after its original release in 2014. The opening lines of the book’s plot describe that when the Midwife was asleep, the world was heading towards doom and when she woke up, it had already died. Initially, it is mentioned that a pandemic decimates almost all the population of earth. It killed children, women, and men, and the women who survived were deprived of the ability to give birth to new children. WTF??? Why are we doing this to ourselves? Why is Meg Elison doing this to us?? And what is wrong with us to actually appreciate it and ask for more??? I think there is a word for insanity like ours, but I would rather not put us in a category.... So by the end, nothing important happened. Nothing important enough that every future person would read this book and act like it was important. She didn't encounter enough people to be a good story of the end of the world as we knew it. She didn't learn anything, she was a pretty nasty person till the end. The majority of the book is spent not on what the world is like, but her describing sex to a Mormon guy in detail. Why would that be important to the future? I spent the majority of the book trying to make excuses for the book, and the rest being angry and annoyed. This book was a waste. A wasted chance on a good concept, a wasted chance traded for absolute worthless drivel and characters and interactions that are shallow and unrealistic. The author was all over the place. She had no idea how to put her thoughts together. She wrote the same story as multiple types of books than just shoved them all together. She didn't have a plan for her character. She had a cool title and couple of passages and just tried to make it work. It didn't. Again, this book is so important. This book honestly touched, and shook me to, my core. I don't use these words lightly, but I will carry this book inside me for the rest of my life. This book is so needed, and I hope it wins every award there is. As much as I loved the first book, this one just felt like it had already been done to death. I mean even this happens. (And I hate it on the Walking Dead also)Overall, it was much better than I expect form this Post-Apocalyptic genre. However, I would not recommend it to the faint of heart, to those who have issues with implied rapes, and to those who have low tolerance for violence. I would not like to think that children or those under 18 would read this - I rather they wait until more mature, and no, I am not a prude.