women are once again property, denied civil rights and banned from public life. Earth's wealth depends on interplanetary commerce with alien races, and linguists--a small, clannish group of families--have become the ruling elite by controlling all interplanetary communication. Their women are used to breed perfect translators for all the galaxies' languages.Nazareth Chornyak, the most talented linguist of the family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for trade organizations, supervising the children's language education, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth comes to discover is that a slow revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them from men's control."
An amazing, amazing concept that I was so excited to see explored in this speculative fiction. As someone that loves learning, and learning about languages, this book sounded right up my alley. It was full of amazing ideas (the creation of a secret language for women who have been oppressed).The standpoint on language reminds me a lot of 1984 and the Newspeak dictionary, the idea that taking away words for certain concepts or creating/encoding words for others can change the way people think and behave and affect whether they have the capacity to rebel against an authoritarian regime. But, it lacked several things, in my opinion, that prevented it from living up to the proclamation: "feminist science fiction classic."
One of those things was characterization. The first one hundred or so pages in the book had no distinct character for the reader to engage with. There are several plot points expounded in male points of view that readers are supposed to be disgusted by (and are disgusted by!. There is one storyline involving a woman, lacking any real depth, killing out of revenge; and then, there is the mention of some other characters who may be important later. That's it.
In my opinion, having no characters with any emotional depth for the reader to latch onto was a serious flaw. It made the pace slow, and frustrated my sense of who or what to believe in in this story.
Another problem I had with this book was the "good guys/bad guys" dichotomy applied by the author. It's simple: All women are good (even the one lady who systematically kills people), all men are bad (even the one guy who appeared to treat a female character like she was equal in intellect and status). I, personally, don't like my contemporary fiction to be so black/white. It is boring, and it is not believable. It narrows the reader's frame of mind and ability to objectively engage with the work.
Another serious issue I had with this book is the underutilisation of the Aliens. For a book prominently featuring the idea of communication with aliens, it's quite disappointing that there is not one single alien character developed. We don't know how a single alien thinks; what their cultures want, or how or why they are sending representatives to Earth to teach babies their languages. None do any interacting with any of the characters. I thought that the women could learn for the aliens, realise how strange and awful their society was through contact with others. Big missed opportunity....
The final problem that I had with the book was this - the notion that women should have their own language in the first place. Don't get me wrong! I love imagining the subversive power that a secret language has for the oppressed secondary citizen! It was wonderfully done, and very inspiring! But...Elgin, and by extension, her characters, believe that one's native language creates one's reality - how one perceives the world (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis), and allowing the women in this story to create and use their OWN language will change their reality. I am all for the exploration of that notion.
The problem with all this is that Elgin really believes - IN REAL LIFE - that women should have a language separate from men. And - in doing so - that we would be essentially better off as separate from them altogether? She believes there are things one can experience as a woman that men could not possibly conceive of. We-ellllllll....I have to disagree. I thought that the language would allow the women to communicate freely, feel autonomy and potentially start a rebellion. Kind of like a women strike. But for the concept that men and women should be permanently separated feels like a terribly cynical view. Misogyny is taught, not inherent. Men can be taught differently.
Age Rating 16+ Lot of sex references, murder, and infant mortality.
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