The Voice of a Book: A critical reading reflection of Vox by Christina Dalcher with focus on genre, POV, style and themes
This is an assignment I did for my MA in Creative Writing. Normally, I would just say ‚loved the book‘ (or not), but this needed to be more thought through. I am not sure if I still agree with all of it, but wanted to share this text. To be honest, I really struggled with this assignment but managed to get a decent enough pass-mark. And yes, I liked this book enough to get the German version for my significant other:
Vox is the story of Dr Jean McClellan, a cognitive linguist in the USA. When a new president is elected, the new government reshapes women’s roles, submitting them to men’s control. Girls are no longer taught to read and write, since these skills are deemed unnecessary. Worst of all, women are allowed to speak no more than 100 words per day. Jean uses an opportunity to reclaim her voice.
To remain mentally healthy, a person must speak an estimated 6000 words per day (https://www.wikihow.com/How-Many-Words-Does-the-Average-Person-Say-a-Day, accessed 14.02.2024) The pretext of being allowed no more than 100 words each day fed into a personal obsession, and the story, Christina Dalcher’s first published, full length novel, kicked off so many discussions that I chose it for this assignment.
The importance of genre is discussed in Anderson (2006, p. 161-162). In most advertising for Vox, the novel is classified as ‘dystopian fiction’.
‘Dystopia … challenges readers to reflect on the current social and political environments … Dystopian literature often portrays society in cataclysmic decline resulting from environmental ruin, control through technology, and government oppression of individual freedom and expression.’ (https://literarydevices.net/dystopia)
The basis of the world that Dalcher creates is easily recognisable as the America we all know from TV shows or other American-based books. There is that suburban feel to the house the McClellan’s share, the neighbourhood, the cars and their general style of living. However, Dalcher describes the processes that have led to a change in government – the vast majority of voters forfeited their right to vote, unaware of the potential impact of their inaction (e.g., pages 18 – 19). However, this impact turned reality as soon as the new president and his supporters gained power. Dalcher’s imagined future begs the question, how far this is removed from potential reality? With a decisive US presidential election close, drastic changes are suddenly possible. And if we look elsewhere, it has already happened: the Taliban forbids schooling for girls in Afghanistan; women in Iran cannot freely speak without recrimination. Dalcher rattles us with an insistent, unbearable intensity.
I never imagined myself as writer of dystopian fiction. When I began my work-in-progress ‘The Trilogy About the End of the World’ (shortened to ‘The Trilogy’ hereafter), I imagined it as simply a story about a woman on a journey. I focused on themes, not genre. Genre labels are unavoidable, and I was forced to evaluate in what box my story should fit. In comparison to Dalcher, my WIP imagines a future that ‘could be’ – based on reality, and only one or two things need to occur to make it real. In that, I can approve of this label. On the other hand, nobody says that writing needs to fall in just one category of genre.
Vox is originally published in the United States and the copyright page shows the cataloguing by the Library of Congress as Misogyny – Fiction, Women – Fiction, Fantasy Fiction and Dystopian Fiction. Similar categorization does not exist everywhere, but I find this breadth useful.
There is no doubt about Vox’s cataloguing as Misogyny and Women’s Fiction. It should be noted that there is no label of Men’s Fiction. What does that imply? Men don’t read? All books are written with a male audience in mind? Hardly. Genre goes back as far as the ancient Greeks. Labels of Comedy and Drama (and others) were defined to prepare audience for what they were about to see or hear. I can only think that historically, writers were male, rendering their product ‘Men’s Fiction’. I have yet to find any reason for the lack of ‘Men’s Fiction’ as its own genre.
‘Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and usually inspired by mythology or folklore …’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy).
If fantasy means that a story is removed from reality, then Vox is fantasy. Most fiction should be given this label. Vox does not conjure up magical potions, dragons and faraway worlds, and I do not understand this label. Why call Vox fantasy? The reason becomes clearer when looking at other books published in America: they, too, make use of four genres in their Library of Congress categorisation. For example, Allison (2002) is classified as Southern States – Social Life and Customs-Fiction, Working-class women-Fiction, Women, poor-Fiction and Lesbians-Fiction.
The foundation for The Trilogy, is an event that rids the planet of most of its population against the worsening climatic changes. As in Vox, the reader is made to reflect and question their own situation. In The Trilogy’s world there is no government left to oppress, the setting is close to the now. Additionally, the label of women’s fiction applies. As Vox, The Trilogy centres around a female character and is written by a female author. I might want to claim the Carrie O’Grady’s (2018) term of speculative novel. I am still working on ‘experimental fiction’.
Vox is written from the first-person perspective of Jean McClellan who takes us through the events of the week when she will …
‘bring down the president, and the Pure Movement, and that incompetent little shit Morgan LeBron …’ (p. 1)
Using a first-person narrator raises the question of reliability as discussed by Masters (2017, Chapter 4). How much does the character know, and how much of the story is tainted by Jean’s own beliefs and experiences? The truth the readership gets to read is that of the ‘I’ that tells the story, with potential for distortions and concealments.
Dalcher introduces Jean as wife and mother, with the first chapters dedicated to the introduction of her four children and husband. We get to share her thoughts and the words she doesn’t speak in form of interior monologue, giving us instant access (for example, see p.15). This immediacy makes Jean personable. The abundance of information she shares makes her appear open and trustworthy. We get to see the ‘real’ Jean McClellan, the one who wants to shout, swear and revolt against the limitations forced upon her (female) kind. She makes us part of the outcry, complicit in her suffering through this intimacy. She is a capable mother but hindered by outside restrictions. Nowhere does this come across as poignantly as when her daughter, 6-year-old Sonia, screams from a nightmare and Jean has no words left to calm her:
‘Lousy mother becomes useless mother… ’ (p. 27)
The voice of mother and wife first proves faulty when Jean introduces us to Lorenzo (p. 23), the man she had an affair with that she would like to continue. Dalcher opens up the character to criticism – morality being enforced on the populus of the book. Suddenly, it becomes obvious that she is an unreliable narrator, see Anderson (2006, p. 105) and the niggling side sweeps against her husband Patrick and her male children become significant.
When the twins ask her daughter open questions, she says:
‘I refuse to think they do understand, that they’re baiting her, teasing out words. But at eleven, they’re old enough to know.’ (p. 2)
And about Patrick, she concedes:
‘Everything about him seems to be pointing down.’ (p. 3)
These words almost seem to foreshadow the end to her marriage.
Before the apex of the drama’s arc, we learn that Jean is Doctor of Cognitive Linguistics, a fact that makes her voiceless-ness even more harrowing, creating intensity and enabling the climactic scenes that follow.
‘I was a god who could bring back lost voices.
Was.’ (p. 33)
Wernicke’s aphasia, a real term with real symptoms, and Dr McClellan’s research are described much later (p. 107 – 108).
Christina Dalcher herself is a doctor of theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University and spent much of her professional time researching on speech and the loss of speech. Dalcher herself is at home with the vocabulary necessary to make Jean believable as Jean the cognitive linguist. Dalcher explains medical terms for us. When Jean is told that the president’s brother suffered brain damage in an accident, her questions are those of a doctor’s anamnesis:
‘Locus?’ …
‘Lesion in posterior section of STG. Superior temporal gyrus. Left hemisphere. Patient is right-handed, therefore left-brain dominant.’ …
‘The MRIs, or magnetic resonance images …’ (p 46 – 48)
In the field of medical research, the boundaries between author and narrator become blurred adding to the story.
In the first part of The Trilogy, the main character Karen finds herself alone. Initially, I started in third person POV, but since most of the story must be carried by the character’s thoughts and impressions with the impossibility of dialogue, third person felt awkward and cumbersome. I could not allow Karen to talk to herself, since I needed her to come across as sane and capable despite her circumstances. To allow dialogue, I invented Kevin, the externalisation of the voices in Karen’s head. The importance of acknowledging Kevin is a psychological one and relates to trauma therapy. As with Dalcher and Jean, there is an amount of intersection between Karen and me: both of us are Engineers of sorts, both of us are childless and travel for business, both are survivor of trauma. At times it becomes difficult to know where the character ends and the author speaks – an issue highlighted in the course and one to be aware of.
From Masters (2017, Chapter 7.2), I take away that style includes all the tools writers have at their disposable to tell their story effectively. There are many facets to this repertoire, but I will reflect on rhythm, language choice, and imagery.
Dalcher relays Jean’s thoughts and actions in paragraphs of several lines’ length, with a single, short sentence almost like a summary at the end. Even by merely looking at the text, Jean’s urge to communicate and her restraints become apparent. She cannot speak and yet, she must voice her opinion.
‘If anyone told me I could bring down the president, and the Pure Movement, and that incompetent little shit Morgan LeBron in a week’s time, I wouldn’t believe them. But I wouldn’t argue. I wouldn’t say a thing.
I’ve become a woman of few words.’ (P. 1)
Dalcher equips Jean with a scientist’s educated speech and good grammar. This does not only shine through when talking about medicine. Before the changes, Jean read widely. She followed international news and politics, knows other countries’ opinions about the US government; the text mentions, for example, Al Jazeera and ‘Britain’s political pundits’ (p 5).
Dalcher paints Vox’s suburban setting or the lab that reminds us of many we have read about in straightforward prose. She uses metaphors sparingly as enrichment of her vocabulary.
‘In my bedroom, as on all other nights, I wrap myself in a quilt of invisible words …’ (p. 4)
Metaphors illuminate Jean’s situation in new light. In the above example, we learn about Jean’s comfort zone. Here, the restrictions on her daily life no longer matter. The reader is shown her as a person in need of escape, adding to her humanity.
I never saw myself as a writer of metaphors. After all, Engineers say what they mean. When I was praised for the imagery I use to help my audience understand difficult scenarios, I stopped short. In the next round of edits, I shall ensure that I include this tool more purposefully in Karen’s story.
On the speedometer chart of minimalist versus maximalist writing, Dalcher clocks very much in the minimalist range, see Masters (2017, Chapter 7.4). From the beginning, she uses short sentences; when she uses subordinate clauses, they are often built without use of adjectives. Later, as the story develops the lifting of the character’s internal constraints is shown in less constricted sentences. Sentence length mirrors Jean’s level of voicelessness; style reflects content and mood.
A good example is the description of getting ready for the trial of the Team’s vaccine on their first patient:
‘As if she anticipated her own sudden disappearance; Lin assembled two separate procedures. I put the instructions for direct-to-brain delivery aside, wincing at the photographs of skulls and immobilizing frames and boring instruments, wondering what sort of nutcase one had to be to try this on himself. Or herself, I think, remembering the woman who took an electric drill to her own head sometime in the 1970s. She said it opened up her mind.
Right.’ (p. 254)
I spend most of my professional career writing about technical matters in easy English. When Writing stories, I must stop myself from getting too verbose. Dalcher’s level of minimalism would be a good medium to achieve.
Anderson (2006, p.255) says that ‘Often the subjects which engage us seem unlikely or slight, and we have to trust that inner compulsion which will eventually reveal the theme.’
Dalcher’s Vox allows her readership to discover many themes. The obvious feminist angle has been covered elsewhere (for example, O’Grady (2018), so I will disregard this.
The theme of ‘what do we really know about people close to us’ is another obsession of mine, often reflected in my own writing. The way that people withhold or hide behind a fake persona creates drama and conflict.
Take Patrick, the husband.
Patrick is the president’s personal adviser on science and related subjects. Patrick, the husband, turns into Patrick the anti-government mole and active member of the resistance. He suggests for Jean to leave for a new life with Lorenzo, taking the children, understanding her need to get away and forgiving her the affair. In Part 2 of The Trilogy, where new characters appear this theme offers itself to move characters and story forward.
The importance of ‘What’s in a name?’ is as old as Shakespeare.
„A name represents identity, a deep feeling, and holds tremendous significance to its owner.“ (Rachel Ingber (no date) on Kidadl.com)
Dalcher uses this theme to good effect. The story begins as that of Jean McClellan, mother and wife. Her situation is filled with restrictions, she is belittled by her husband calling her ‘babe’. This is nothing but a role she is playing, in a situation that is forced upon her. At the end of chapter ten, we learn that Jean was born in Italy by Italian parents. To them and to Lorenzo, she is Gianna. That names matter becomes apparent when the character is Gianna, Dr McClellan, the researcher, or the lover. There is more freedom in her thoughts, more words are shared. When talking as Gianna, Jean appears free from the constraints of family life that through Patrick, the president’s ear, stands for politics and misogyny.
The Trilogy Part 1 starts with Karen. During her journey, she becomes Elle, a name she chooses for herself. With that name change comes a new self-awareness and a different understanding of place and purpose. Her name matters and the name change becomes an important aspect of the story.
Dalcher has produced a text that stands out. She employs many tools of the writer’s trade to make her point. O’Grady calls hers ‘an overblown, hastily imagined future.’ But evaluating Vox’s plot, we can see that today (2024, 6 years since first publication), we are not far away from the potential for a situation that the characters of Vox find themselves in, so I do not agree with this comment. But the Guardian makes another point where I conquer: ‘Vox morphs from a glum prophecy into a Hollywood-style thriller, complete with gun-totin’ bad guys growling …’. Dalcher provides us with a very American ending, and I doubt that Vox could work in a British, German, or Australian setting without major rewrite. However, that takes nothing of Dalcher’s skill as a writer.
References
Allison, D. (2002), Trash Stories, New York, Penguin Group
Anderson, L. (2006), Creative Writing – A Workbook with Readings, Routledge, Abingdon, in cooperation with the Open University
Dalcher, C. (2018), VOX, Berkley, Penguin Random House
Dalcher, C. (2019), VOX, FISCHER Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main
Ingber, R. (no date). Available at https://kidadl.com/quotes/top-name-quotes-that-highlight-the-power-of-names (Accessed: 17.02.2024)
O‘Grady, C. (2018), Vox by Christina Dalcher review – overblown feminist dystopia. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/22/vox-christina-dalcher-book-review (Accessed: 9.2.2024)
Masters, B. (2017) A803 Block 2 Fiction: Chapter 4: Experiments with characters [online]. Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2140689 (Accessed: 27.2.2024)
Masters, B. (2017), A803 Block 3 Fiction: Chapter 7.2: What do we mean by style? [online]. Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2140713 (Accessed: 27.2.2024)
Masters, B. (2017), A803 Block 3 Fiction: Chapter 7.4: Maximalism and minimalism [online]. Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2140713§ion=4 (Accessed: 27.2.2024)
Melinosky, C. (2023) What is Wernicke’s Aphasia? Available at https://www.webmd.com/brain/what-is-wernickes-aphasia (Accessed: 14.02.2024).
Shakespeare, W. (1597) Romeo and Juliet
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https://www.fischerverlage.de/autor/christina-dalcher-1009119 (Accessed: 9.2.2024)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_fiction (Accessed: 14.02.2024)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy (Accessed: 14.02.2024)
https://thriveworks.com/blog/externalizing-problem-counseling-technique-narrative-therapy/ (Accessed: 9.2.2024)
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_822-1 (Accessed: 9.2.2024)