Vox

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof*** Copyright © 2018 Christina Dalcher





CHAPTER ONE

If anyone told me I could bring down the president, and the Pure Movement, and that incompetent little shit Morgan LeBron in a week s time, I wouldn t believe them. But I wouldn t argue. I wouldn t say a thing.

I ve become a woman of few words.

Tonight at supper, before I speak my final syllables of the day, Patrick reaches over and taps the silver-toned device around my left wrist. It s a light touch, as if he were sharing the pain, or perhaps reminding me to stay quiet until the counter resets itself at midnight. This magic will happen while I sleep, and I ll begin Tuesday with a virgin slate. My daughter, Sonia s, counter will do the same.

My boys do not wear word counters.

Over dinner, they are all engaged in the usual chatter about school.

Sonia also attends school, although she never wastes words discussing her days. At supper, between bites of a simple stew I made from memory, Patrick questions her about her progress in home economics, physical fitness, and a new course titled Simple Accounting for Households. Is she obeying the teachers? Will she earn high marks this term? He knows exactly the type of questions to ask: closed-ended, requiring only a nod or a shake of the head.

I watch and listen, my nails carving half-moons into the flesh of my palms. Sonia nods when appropriate, wrinkles her nose when my young twins, not understanding the importance of yes/no interrogatives and finite answer sets, ask their sister to tell them what the teachers are like, how the classes are, which subject she likes best. So many open-ended questions. I refuse to think they do understand, that they re baiting her, teasing out words. But at eleven, they re old enough to know. And they ve seen what happens when we overuse words.

Sonia s lips quiver as she looks from one brother

Christina Dalcher earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University. She specializes in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects and has taught at several universities.

Her short stories and flash fiction appear in more than one hundred journals worldwide. Recognition includes first place for the Bath Flash Award, nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and multiple other awards. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with her husband.

PRAISE FOR VOX

Christina Dalcher s debut novel, set in a recognizable near future and sure to beg comparisons to Margaret Atwood s dystopian The Handmaid s Tale, asks: if the number of words you could speak each day was suddenly and severely limited, what would you do to be heard? A novel ripe for the era of #MeToo, VOX (Berkley) presents an exaggerated scenario of women lacking a voice: in the United States, they are subject to a hundred-word limit per day (on average, a human utters about 16,000). Considering the threat of a society in which children like the protagonist s six-year-old daughter are deprived of language, VOX highlights the urgency of movements like #MeToo, but also of the basic importance of language. Vanity Fair

The females in Dalcher s electrifying debut are permitted to speak just 100 words a day and that s especially difficult for the novel s protagonist, Jean, a neurolinguist. A futurist thriller that feels uncomfortably plausible. O, The Oprah Magazine
            
In Christina Dalcher s Vox, women are only allowed to speak 100 words a day. Sounds pretty sci-fi, but the real-life parallels will make you shiver. Cosmopolitan

Vox is a real page-turner that will appeal to people with big imaginations. Refinery29
 
Fittingly, this book about women being silenced has got everybody talking and calling it The Handmaid's Tale for 2018. Bustle

VOX is intelligent, suspenseful, provocative, and intensely disturbing everything a great novel should be. Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Chilling and gripping a real page-turner. Karen Cleveland, New York Times bestselling author of Need to Know

A bold, brilliant, and unforgettable debut. Alice Feeney, author of Sometimes I Lie

With language crystalline and gleaming, and a narrative that really moves, Christina Dalcher both cautions