176 pages
Published 2020
Read from May 11 to May 13
Rating: 3 out of 5
It was the summer of lockdown. My local library had just reopened on a “reserve books and pick them up” basis. As with so many other folks, I had taken the preceding months to reflect upon and reevaluate myself. The queerness that had always lurked in the background of my self-understanding wanted to take a form. For the first time, I wanted to make a conscious effort to seek out queer fiction. Fortunately for me, the last few years had seen a change in publishing norms; queer genre fic was in the mainstream like never before.
Upright Women Wanted was in the first batch of books I requested that lockdown summer. Like every other book I tried to read, it glanced off my anxious, preoccupied brain. I don’t think I finished a full chapter before abandoning it with the rest. I didn’t even get far enough to realize it’s set in a post-collapse future of patriarchal assholes and climate change rather than a Weird West alternate history. (I wonder why I read only six books that year.)
Here we are now, bounds and bounds closer to the dusty patriarchal dystopia Gailey portrays, with its state-controlled media and furtive queerness surviving in its margins. Women feels uncomfortably relevant in ways the last few years have only exacerbated; its message of “No matter what, be yourself and don’t let the patriarchs control your fate” is urgently needed.
As a story, Women could have used some space to breathe. The characters don’t develop much beyond archetypes, which makes big twists feel perfunctory, reading more like an outline than a novel. Rushing as we do from one scene to the next, the world doesn’t get much of a chance to shine, either. Gailey gives us some of the texture and odor of her future West, but I would have liked a lot more.
No comments:
Post a Comment