SML Book Club (In Person)

The next SML Book Club discussion is Wednesday August 3rd at 4pm. We'll be discussing the book Vox by Christina Dalcher.

In the not-too-distant future, American women and girls are allowed a quota of 100 spoken words per day, after which each syllable triggers electrocution via wrist band. Narrator Dr. Jean McClellan, wife and mother of four, is a cognitive linguist at the top of her field—or she was, until the government

was hijacked by fundamentalists led by Reverend Carl, architect of the patriarchal Pure Movement and close adviser to the president. Under Reverend Carl’s direction, women are no longer allowed to hold jobs or bank accounts, study biology or physics, or, most punishingly, to speak more than 100 words a day, read, or write. When the president’s influential older brother is in an accident and damages his Wernicke’s area—the part of the brain that controls language—Jean is temporarily called out of forced retirement (and silence) to resume work on a cure.