VOX Author: “What Would Our World Look Like if We Lost the Ability to Communicate?”
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Our new Igloo Book Buzz selection is Christina Dalcher’s VOX, on sale today from Berkley. One of the most talked about and eagerly anticipated novels of the summer, VOX tells the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one woman will do to protect herself and her daughter when half the U.S. population has been silenced. On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than one hundred words per day, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial. This can’t happen here. Not in America. Not to her. This is just the beginning…
Christina Dalcher says, “Although I wrote VOX as a cautionary tale, a warning call about gender politics and backlash and cultural shift, I also explored how much our humanity, our personhood, is tied to our ability to acquire and use language. In the book’s time period we never reach a point where the language faculty is wiped out, but that threat looms. What would our world look like if we (or some of us) lost the ability to communicate, to think, to express ourselves?”
Christina Dalcher Photo: B. Dalcher
“The moment I started reading VOX I was riveted,” says Cindy Hwang, Vice President, Editorial Director, Berkley. “As an editor I’m always looking for emotional engagement with both the story and characters but it’s a rare writer who is able to completely captivate from the opening sentence. The themes and fears of VOX resonated with me, but that’s not the only reason I immediately became obsessed with it—Christina also happened to write an utterly propulsive page-turner with the heart of a thriller.”
VOX is Penguin Random House Sales’ current Title Wave selection and was picked as one of Good Morning America’s “Best Books to Bring to the Beach This Summer.” Here is a sampling of high praise and raves the book has elicited:
- “Sure to beg comparisons to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale. . . VOX highlights the urgency of movements like #MeToo, but also of the basic importance of language.” –Vanity Fair
- “[An] electrifying debut.” —O, Oprah Magazine
- “A terrifying thriller for our times” –People
- “The real-life parallels will make you shiver.” –Cosmopolitan