“What do you think you’re doing you silly little man?”
It seems fitting to this week read a book like this. Set in a future where women are in dominant gender, this sequel to News From Gardenia (be aware, spoilers ahead) feels more possible than ever now that Britain has a female Prime Minister again, Scotland and Germany are both run by very strong women, and it looks like the USA is about to have their first female President. So let’s dive in, and I’ll try and share my thoughts afterwards.
Gavin has crashed his plane and thinks he’s in a different part of Gardenia, the future England that he’s just left. He is picked up by several women and taken to what seems to be a hospital, but it’s like nothing he’s ever seen. Sure at first that this is part of Gardenia that he never witnessed before, it soon turns out that he’s wrong. This is still 2211, but this is an alternate future. Here, women are the dominant gender and outnumber men five to one.
While not officially held prisoner, he finds himself a resident of the Institute of Mental Health, where female doctors and psychologists want to study him. He manages to convince them that he’s really from the past, and the world falls in love with him. Well, most of it anyway. See, in this world the stories go that the men from the dark times were all evil and so the appearance of one who appears to be half-decent is a shock to the system. And his timing couldn’t be more appropriate. There’s about to be a vote to see whether men should be left to die out, leaving a fully female human race, and the man-hating Weaver women are not too pleased that there’s a man here now screwing up their propaganda.
With no means of getting home, and with his plane now in a history museum, Gavin is left to explore this world with his great-great-great-great-great-nephew Ralph, and the beautiful Dr Nkoyo Oshineye. He is also equipped with his kidonge, a small device that imbeds itself in your body and allows you to know anything just by thinking about it, and hold all your money on you at all times, making payments via handshakes. The kidonge, it turns out, also records your every move, so no one is ever where they shouldn’t be, and anyone can be found at any time…
Is this a utopian paradise, or is it an Orwellian nightmare?
I have so many feelings about this book that are almost impossible to put into words. I have no issue with a world where women are in charge – they’d probably make a far better job of it – but the way it came about seems a bit flimsy. It appears that men simply “gave up” and women had no choice but to take over. I don’t think this holds up as a reason. I also found myself irritated at the notion that because men were responsible for all the nasty things in the world, now women rule there is apparently no violent crime, rape, child abuse or war anymore. It seems to imply that no woman would be capable of such things, although just flick through the news and I’m sure you’ll find a story or two. I get that this is meant to be propaganda from within the novel, but it still stings. I dislike being categorised with men who treat women poorly. Maybe I’m just taking it too personally, and I’m certainly not going to stand here and say that men don’t cause a lot of issues, but it just jarred with me.
Gavin by this point has also become a less sympathetic character, talking a lot about what a wonderful person he is, but displaying obvious homophobia and occasionally sexism. Granted, he seems to understand these issues about himself and isn’t necessarily happy about them, but it’s most apparent when he’s really struggling to get his head around the fact that the super fast train he’s riding could’ve been invented by a woman from Africa. Of all the people you’d want in the future, Gavin isn’t in the top thousand.
There are some cool concepts though. Religion is here regarded as a “treatable mental condition” which is an interesting take on it, and some of the technology is incredible, although how realistic any of it could be, I’m not sure. I also love the Museum of Human History, which is so enormous that its exhibits include Harrods, the Palace of Westminster and the Shard. Yep, the Shard. On the other hand, the evolution of language that we see is a bit strange and used intermittently; often simply words have been replaced by their counterparts from other languages. Syntax and grammar remain the same, though many slang terms are now absent and don’t seem to have been replaced – they’ve just vanished.
Like with the first book in the series, there is not much plot to hang your hat on, and Gavin just serves as a conduit for us to explore this new world. It’s a fascinating place to look at, but there’s something horrific about it. It feels more dystopian than News From Gardenia, which portrayed a perfect society, and maybe to the people living in this new world, this is perfect but, for me, I don’t feel welcome. The series continues (and concludes) with News From The Clouds, which I’ll get to in time. I’m still curious enough to want to know where this ends.
