From Publishers Weekly
Chronicling a journey of violence, oppression and fleeting liberation, this brutal third novel from the author of
The Electric Michelangelo is a timely feminist commentary on war, gender, politics and identity. Set in a dystopian near-future northern U.K. where global warming, a fuel crisis, drug epidemics and a cruel totalitarian regime known as the Authority have savaged the land and people, the story is told by Sister, a young woman living in cramped terrace quarters. Sterilized against her will (the result of the Authority's female sterilization policy) and forced to work in a New Fuel factory, Sister escapes to seek out Carhullan, a shadowy all-female commune run by the enigmatic Jackie Nixon. Carhullan is a hard-knocks utopia, in which women's strengths and passions grow from manual labor, paramilitary training and intense, sometimes sexual, friendships. As the threat of the Authority grows, Sister rises in the ranks of the Carhullan resistance force, oblivious to the increasing similarities between the Authority and Jackie's seductive, psychological control. Though the climax and denouement are sloppily handled, the overall effect is haunting, timely and well wrought.
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Review
"A ferocious dystopian novel
Halls dystopian story of resistance and struggle
must be read at the same time as a kind of optimism, striking in its final pages a defiant chord that reminds us power can sometimes be defeated, if not always, and if always at great cost." --
Independent Weekly (Durham, NC)"If you liked Children of Men, give this sci-fi page-turner a read. Sister exists in a dystopian future where the UK is under a totalitarian regime." --
OK! Magazine (FIVE STARS)"Jackie is not infallible, and her methods in pursuit of the greater good are not always kind. But that is what makes Daughters of the North a novel, not an allegory. Hall has created a complex, tight work about hope springing out of resistance." --
NPR's "BOOKS WE LIKE" (Jessa Crispin of BookSlut.com reviewing)"The heroine of Sarah Halls novel is known only as Sister. She, like Halls prose, is raw, brave, and suprising, both to herself and to the reader...The book is remarkable for its lovingly accurate portrayal of women
the themes it raises are powerful in the present." --
Boston Phoenix, (WORD UP)
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