Book Review - The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (The Road to Nowhere) by Meg Elison

I'm a sucker for a $2.99 ebook deal.  Even if I've never heard of the title or author, if it looks like a legitimately published novel, I will at least read the blurb to see if I want to find out more.  Most of these deals come to me via email from Book Riot or Goodreads Deals, and if the blurb and subsequent research turn out well (which is a discussion for another post - what makes for a good book pitch) I will often purchase the ebook at this "one day only" bargain basement price of $1.99, $2.99, or even $3.99.

My most recently purchased bargain ebook through Goodreads Deals was The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (The Road to Nowhere) by Meg Elison.  Re-published by 47 North in October 2016, this title won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award in its previous, small press release and was also named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016.  The novel begins as the protagonist, a female who remains unnamed, wakes in a post-apocalyptic world where the vast majority of the population and nearly every woman have died in a viral pandemic.

There is violence. There is rape. There is a great deal of strife and difficulty.  And I don't typically go looking for a story with these topics because, let's be honest, there are enough of these things in the real world and I don't need to read more about it during the ten minutes I have at bedtime for relaxation.  But even though I wasn't keen on the early brutality in the text, I stayed with the story because I was fascinated by the potential for where it could go.

Underlying the fight for survival in a world with few men and almost no women, a feminist plot emerges as the protagonist sets out to find women who need help.  A nurse with a background in obstetrics, she hopes to provide care eventually to a woman who might survive childbirth.  At the emergence of the virus, women and new babies were the first to die.  No new babies survived.  Could those women who managed to survive the virus be immune now and birth healthy babies?  This is the question that drives the protagonist and the plot.

Dystopia is typically dark, and this title fits that bill.  The flow of the novel is at times choppy and darts back and forth between a diary and the action of the future world that the heroine is attempting to navigate.  And while the ending feels perhaps rushed and jumps forward suddenly, there is a sequel that may answer some of the questions I was left with.  The Book of Etta was published in 2017, named a Philip K. Dick Award nominee, and promises to detail more future world building while exploring themes of survival and gender.