Pretty sure Honus feels it too, but Jodi doesn’t have a clue. Look like a young effeminate man… need to do more pushups. Settled for rubbing dirt into my jaw every morning.

Couldn’t find one in a costume shop or anywhere. Got men’s cargo pants and combat boots, with a couple of loose shirts and my hoodie on top. It’s a surprising and powerful aspect of the book.Ī strategy for survival where woman are a commodity.Īpartment in the Mission, found a compression best to hide my tits. No, not rape fantasies, but consensual sex and intimacy. It helps that our protagonist, who adopts a number of false names throughout the novel, is smart and resourceful and driven by the need to save the lives of women, not just by freeing them from men but by giving them access to contraception.īut what really struck me about the novel is its eroticism. Except, for all the savagery displayed, Elison has done a masterful job in limiting the sexual violence. Not unsurprising given in this post-plague world women have become a commodity. Of the six books nominated for the PKD, this one just pips Memory of Water as my favourite.Ĭompared to other end of the world narratives, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife is a brutal novel. But what hope is there in a world where pregnancy is a death sentence for both mother and child? Now she survives by masquerading as a man and offering her services as nurse and midwife. The bulk of those who have survived are men, which makes women a scare resource.

A plague has wiped out most of the population.

The unnamed midwife