Elison's gripping and grim first novel, which won the Philip K. Dick Award in its previous, small press publication, tells the story of an unnamed woman who survives a plague that wipes out most of humankind in just weeks, leaving 10 male survivors for every woman. The story is beautifully written in a stripped down, understated way, though frequently gruesome in its depiction of rapes, murders, and stillbirths. The protagonist, who sometimes calls herself Karen, or Dusty, or Jane, is beautifully realized as a middle-aged, bisexual woman with considerable skills, an indomitable will, and great adaptability, though she suffers considerably and is far from a superwoman. A prologue and an epilogue set long after the events of the main narrative (and reminiscent of the concluding chapter of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale) hint at a positive future, leaving the reader with a glimmer of optimism in the midst of despair. This fine tale should particularly appeal to readers of earlier feminist dystopias such as The Handmaid's Tale, Suzy McKee Charnas's Walk to the Edge of the World series, and P.D. James's The Children of Men.
Recovering from a mysterious and nearly fatal disease, the unnamed female protagonist of Elison’s debut novel must adapt quickly in order to survive a new and brutal world. This mysterious disease swiftly wiped out a majority of the female population and has made healthy birth impossible for survivors in its wake. Elison’s unnamed protagonist has made it her mission to use her previous medical experience as a midwife, providing birth control to any women she meets during her travels. Men were left almost entirely untouched by the disease, though, and much of the remaining male population has degenerated into gangs of rapists and slavers, hunting and selling the remaining women they find. Cutting her hair and donning male clothing, will the protagonist be able to save the women she encounters? Does civilization still exist in this new postapocalyptic world? Elison takes readers on an exciting and often excruciating journey, navigating issues of gender and sex in a scorched, disease-ridden world.
Review
“The science fiction analog to the Zika crisis.” —Slate
“As her debut novel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife captures the spirit of Elison’s artistry. The human capacity to survive is something authors have explored for as long as science fiction has existed as a genre, but Elison brings to it her own definitions of sexuality, resourcefulness, and determination.” —The Daily Californian
“Elison paints a world so empty of long-term hope and driven by short-term desperation that you’ll be haunted by it even when not flipping the pages, yet the barest glimmer of light on the future’s horizon will keep you moving forward.” —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review
“Meg Elison’s exploration of femininity and women’s inequality is unflinchingly honest. She doesn’t hold back when considering the differences between men and women, those that naturally exist and those that are constructed. Particularly, I appreciated Elison’s ability to examine the ways in which women are treated when the laws that protect them are gone. In other words, Elison shows that it wouldn’t take much for society to regress. That the progress we’ve made is an illusion unless people enforce it themselves.” —Word After Word
“Elison’s future where men outnumber women ten to one or more is brutal and frightening, mostly because it exposes how thin [a] veneer of personhood women have now.” —Book Riot
“The Road to Nowhere trilogy asks big questions about a world that’s more possible than we might imagine, and it’s a radically queer treatise on the future of sex.” —LitReactor
About the Author
Meg Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. Her debut novel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes like she’s running out of time.
