![]() ![]() The dust-jacket plot synopsis of Daughters isn’t really enough to distinguish it from all the other doomsday scenarios clotting up bookshelves.īut Daughters has a secret weapon. Women are tolerated solely for their breeding capabilities in marriage they are property, and once they pass child-rearing age they commit suicide. Every couple on the island is permitted two children, and boys are heavily favored over girls. An elite team of wanderers occasionally travel to the mainland, to pick up useful goods from the supposedly burned world. ![]() It’s been fairly stable for most of recent memory. ![]() Gather the Daughters travels in a straight line through Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Jackson’s “The Lottery,” taking note of elements with a magpie’s eye as it proceeds.ĭaughters takes place on an island off the coast of a ruined civilization. Melamed’s influences are right there in a blurb on the front cover of the book, as written by Helene Wecker, who calls it “An heir to the creations of Margaret Atwood and Shirley Jackson.” That’s about as succinct an observation as you can fit in a front-cover blurb. Seattle writer Jennie Melamed’s Gather the Daughters is a dystopian novel that remixes several pre-existing gimmicks into one. Every dystopia needs a gimmick - some hook to distinguish it from the ever-expanding constellation of literary post-apocalypses. ![]()
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