Hillary Jordan
It's the mid-21st century in Texas and a young woman, Hannah Payne, wakes up in a prison to find that her skin has changed colour. She must live the next 15 years as an outcast with skin the colour of a murderer, a "Red."
We soon learn that after an affair with the pastor of her church, Hannah became pregnant and had an abortion. The procedure is illegal in the world of When She Woke, a futuristic retelling of The Scarlet Letter. When Hannah was caught and convicted, her punishment was to undergo a process called melachroming, which turned her skin red.
The story is a take on the timeless theme of a woman rejecting the faith of her family and forming her own. Hannah tries to escape persecution in Texas by fleeing to Canada through a network that recalls the Underground Railroad. As she does, she meets people of colour, other outcasts and a lesbian – types that she hadn't knowingly come into contact with in her previous life. As she gains respect for these people, she struggles to "believe in a God who was that indifferent or that cruel." She learns that a faith with narrow definitions can feel more like a prison than a sanctuary.
Hillary Jordan, bestselling and award-winning author of Mudbound, has created a dystopian world that will feel somewhat familiar to readers of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. In her new book In Other Worlds, Atwood defines her own books as speculative fiction, that is, a work that wrestles with the possible outcomes of real trends. She argues that science fiction, on the other hand, is completely fantastic.
When She Woke, by this definition, is speculative fiction. Theologians have run amok and women live under a repressive regime. There are few libraries left, the government is all-knowing, computerized navigation is used for tracking the movements of citizens and – in a twist that could only happen in an American dystopia – citizens have health care.
The story is well-paced and keeps the reader turning pages to find out what will happen to Hannah, but you will also be intrigued by the imagined world. The United States could plausibly take such an ugly turn if some of the more extreme current political candidates came to power. This is what gives fiction, speculative or not, its power. Stories can breath life into politics through complex characters. For example, Pearl, in The Scarlet Letter, embodies her mother's blessing, a daughter, and the consequence of her sexual sin. Moira, in The Handmaid's Tale, a Handmaid who later becomes a prostitute, represents female strength. Both characters help us explore questions by allowing us to engage emotionally in their contradictions.
While worthy of comparison, the characters in When She Woke do not absorb the reader in the same way. For example, the handsome Rev. Aidan Dale, for whom Hannah sacrifices her life, has a "curling lock" of hair on his forehead and is easily embarrassed by his admirers, but not much more. Or Simone, a Québécoise-feminist-lesbian-terrorist, is a fantastic ass-kicker, but feels as if she were written only to teach Hannah a lesson. Because of the use of these types of characters, the author's message feels pushed.
That said, there is much to recommend about this book. Those who admire The Scarlet Letter will enjoy spotting the references and those who appreciate The Handmaid's Tale will be interested in an alternative view. Hannah's ultimate destination is Quebec, a place where she can live a life free from persecution. The author was born in Texas and lives in New York, so it's interesting to read an American take on our role in a speculative world where Canada has severed relations with the United States over the issue of melachroming (Hannah has a memory of her parents calling Canadians "backstabber bacon").
But can a Canadian feel smug about this flattering portrait? The book describes a country where privacy is eroded, the environment has been degraded and libraries are scarce. It all sounds very much like a current list of worries from Margaret Atwood's Twitter feed.
Claire Cameron's novel, The Line Painter, was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award. She follows Margaret Atwood on Twitter.