Blue Ticket
A Novel
-
-
3.4 • 54 Ratings
-
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the Booker Prize longlisted novel The Water Cure comes another mesmerizing, refracted vision of our society: What if the life you're given is the wrong one?
"Blue Ticket adds something new to the dystopian tradition set by Orwell’s 1984 or Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale." —New York Times Book Review
Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you marriage and children. A blue ticket grants you a career and freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back. But what if the life you're given is the wrong one?
When Calla, a blue-ticket woman, begins to question her fate, she must go on the run. Pregnant and desperate, Calla must contend with whether or not the lottery knows her better than she knows herself—and what that might mean for her child. With Blue Ticket, Sophie Mackintosh has created another mesmerizing, refracted vision of our world that explores the impossible decisions women have to make when society restricts their choices.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mackintosh's haunting, dystopian tale (after The Water Cure) explores the emotional fallout of forced birth control in a near-future society. Once girls begin to menstruate, they go to a lottery clinic and draw a ticket. White means they must bear children; blue means they must use birth control. Calla draws a blue ticket at age 14, and as she becomes a woman, she happily explores her untethered sexual freedom. When she reaches her 30s, she begins wanting a child. Despite her fears that the blue ticket means she is unsuited for motherhood ("Failure to nurture," she imagines a doctor writing on her chart), Calla nevertheless manages to remove her birth control device and becomes pregnant. After her doctor says she must have an abortion, she goes on the run. Calla meets fellow rebel Marisol, and the two women become lovers while holed up in a deserted cabin, determined to give birth before they're caught by the authorities. Mackintosh serves up vivid details of Calla's psychological ordeal in the language of body horror ("I was the chicken I opened up one day only to discover that the stomach had been left in by mistake"), and convincingly conveys Calla's and Marisol's desperation. This tense, visionary drama is a notable addition to the growing body of patriarchal dystopias.
Customer Reviews
More questions than answers
I was excited about the premise of this book but found it difficult to get through. The novel dealt with the main character’s struggle with the ticket-choice handed to her in a dystopian society. My struggle was that I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, at all. There was little information about the society and why it functioned the way it did. I was left with so many questions and no answers.
A poem
This is a moan of longing. Simple, concise, a tribute to an idea of freedom.