Anna NorthRezensionen

Fast paced and fabulous! I enjoyed the alternate history worldbuilding and the ways misogyny is founded on the same principles, but to fit the need (in this case, underpopulation) the details come out different.

I don't think I agree that this book is uninterested in gender except where it concerns cis women and their reproductive abilities. It just doesn't spoon-feed the reader characters who always have super-enlightened thoughts about their own positionality. Yeah, Ada is straight, weird kink but I guess that's allowed. The gang member who suggests sleeping with gay men I read as transmasculine for multiple reasons. The crossdressing festival definitely gets at something about how misogynist and transphobic societies have ways of letting off gendered steam while reinforcing the hierarchy (see also, British panto), but no, it's not an essay deconstructing the practice.

It was one of those books that grabbed me from the first sentence: “In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.” Obviously, from the title and the cover, the book is about an outlaw, or more precisely, a group of outlaws. But Ada was an outlaw before she committed any real crime. She was an outlaw based on superstition and the condemnation of women as witches by ignorant people -- fueled by hucksters who claimed the mixing of the races, witchcraft, sin led to women's ailments when something bad befell someone else. The writing was mostly very good, the story compelling, although there were a few missing pieces in places, but all together, a quick and enjoyable read.

A slow burn of a story but I loved the setting and fell in love with the characters.

The new novel by Anna North, called Outlawed, is worth a read. It stirs up the western with a provocative blend of alt-history and feminist consciousness. The result is a thrilling tale that is once familiar yet fresh.

Ada is a midwife’s daughter learning to be a midwife herself. However, after a year of marriage at the age of 17, she is still not pregnant so her mother-in-law sends her home. Then measles sweeps through the village, causing women to miscarry. People look for someone to blame so the sheriff comes knocking, accusing Ada of witchcraft. She flees for her life, first to a convent then to join a gang of outlaws who resemble legendary male outlaws except they’re not necessarily men. Ada struggles to find her place in this group of outlaws until she realizes that her midwifery can be useful to the team. And while Ada and her group of outlaws set out to conquer a town and turn it into a refuge for the barren and the lost, the sheriff is hot on their tail. In the end, Ada must not only confront the sheriff in a classic Western standoff but must learn to not only channel her feelings of inadequacy and shame but her scientific knowledge (which sadly is frowned upon) into a force that can be used for good.

Since we live in a time when a huge percentage of the population seeks to control women's bodies and tons of folks deny medical science, this book is eerily relevant. “Barren” women are, of course, the equivalent of lepers in this alternate history where the Flu killed 9 out of 10 people. The focus on repopulation is immediate rather than religious but religion weighs in with accusations, murdering women, etc. The majority of these folks in the story are MAGA-types who embrace lunatic fringe preachers and their teachings. While this is alternative fiction, it is not escapist. Far from it. This book deals with some heavy subject matter.

I will say that I enjoyed this book and I thought the ending to be satisfying but I was confused about the LGBTQIA representation in this book. It seemed to me to be fully fleshed out and then kind of reductive in the end. Nevertheless, this is a very unique western!

Trigger warnings: depression & barrenness.

DNF'd 25% of the way through. Really creative and original idea, but the execution is a little ham-fisted. I find it hard to see the story past the ideology, and I find it difficult to suspend my disbelief.

It was an easy enjoyable summer read. Cool concept with the main character's family background in midwifery, but modern interpretations of queerness felt a little forced at times and character development could have been deeper.

I don't think I've read anything like this before. The different take on the Hole in the Wall Gang sort of took me by surprise. I don't remember what the blurb said when I initially read it and I've thought of a hundred books since then. My remembery isn't so good...

I have mixed feelings about certain aspects of the story but, overall, I enjoyed it and it made me think.

4.5 rounded up.

Not at all what I expected, with the Sundance Kid involved, but a great genderfluid western. Read on recommendation, I think it was via Itinerant Reader in Charleston. Though a bit uneven in pacing and reveals, I still, overall, liked it. 2022 read.

Interesting book taking place in an alternate version of the past. Good fast read and good writing.

A queer feminist western with compelling characters. What’s not to love? I did not want this novel to end.

Le savoir peut être une chose très précieuse, mais seulement si les gens le désirent. Sinon, ça peut être pire qu’inutile.
(p. 43, Chapitre 2).

J’avais lu une note de lecture lorsque ce livre est paru aux Etats-Unis qui le qualifiait de western dystopique et féministe, il ne m’en a pas fallu beaucoup plus pour guetter sa sortie en français, et c’est cette rentrée littéraire et les éditions Stock qui nous l’offrent.
Nous sommes aux Etats-Unis, à la fin d’un XIXème siècle qui ressemble beaucoup au nôtre, à deux petits détails près : une Grande Grippe a frappé le pays et tué 9 personnes sur 10 un peu plus d’un demi-siècle plus tôt, et le Petit Jésus est apparu pour demander aux survivants de croître et multiplier pour repeupler la terre. Deux petits détails, qui permettent à Anna North de mettre un verre grossissant sur certains travers de notre société. Parce que dans ce monde-là, les filles sont élevées pour devenir des mères, et si elles ne tombent pas enceintes dans les premières années de leur mariage, elles sont chassées de chez leur mari et deviennent vite des sorcières qui n’ont pour perspective que la pendaison ou la fuite. Ada fait partie de ces femmes stériles et elle doit fuir, d’abord dans un couvent puis en rejoignant la bande du Kid.
Anna North surfe ici sur des thèmes à la mode comme celui des sorcières et propose un roman dans l’air du temps, comme chaque rentrée littéraire nous en livre un ou deux, un roman dans la lignée des [Heures rouges] de Leni Zumas ou des [Graciées] de Kiran Millwood Hargrave. Je dois avouer que je m’attendais à un roman plus profond (d’autant qu’il est édité dans la collection La Cosmopolite, qui me semble d’habitude proposer des lectures plus exigentes) et j’ai donc été assez déçue par ma lecture.
Cela reste cependant un bon roman pour qui veut un roman facile à lire et original. Il y a de bonnes idées, par exemple la façon dont le mythe de Billy the Kid est détourné pour devenir un repère de femmes stériles qui veulent reprendre leur vie en main, ou bien l’idée de faire d’Ada une femme stérile mais aussi une sage-femme, ce qui permet de confronter différents points de vue sur la stérilité (même si le savoir médical s’est en grande partie peredu avec la Grande Grippe), mais aussi sur le sens qu’une femme peut donner à sa vie au-delà de ses propres maternités. Rien de révolutionnaire dans ce livre donc, mais une lecture qui pourra faire passer un bon moment et qui ne manque pas d’originalité dans sa façon de traiter des thèmes pourtant maintes fois évoqués.

Merci aux éditions Stock de m’avoir permis de lire ce livre, via netgalley.

Really this would be 3.5 stars, maybe because I thought this would follow a different path than the author did.

This book starts taking place in 1894 after a Great Flu wipes out much of the population and creating many fertility issues, where barren women were often accused of witchcraft. It tells the story of Ada, a young woman, newlywed, and midwife to be, who can't seem to have any children. In order to save herself and probably her family, she sees herself forced to move to a convent and later becoming an outlaw.

The Hole in a Wall Gang is not your typical gang. It's some kind of a queer utopia where even barren women are welcome, where its members are not bound by their gender and are just their true selves. The gang's leader, the Kid, is a great character with a big dream - to found a place, a city, or whatever, where everyone is accepted for who they are. This leads the gang on many adventures and misadventures.

I really liked this book's concept. Having a legendary Western gang full of women who do not play by the rules seemed to be great. However, I had a really hard time coming to like the main character, Ada. No matter what she said and what she did (including her foolish actions with hard consequences), I often found myself looking for the other member's backstories. I wanted to know so much more about News, Texas, Lo, Elsy, and Cassie and their relationships!

Something that also bothered me a little was the length of the first chapters - they were too long and seemed like they had no end!

Still, the finish was quite beautiful. I could settle on knowing only about the gang's finishing story, but seeing Ada making her dream come true was sweet too.

It's a nice and quick read, full of representation. I just wished the author would develop some character's backstories and relationships more, which would have made the book quite perfect for me!

shockingly unsatisfying

Alternate history with no magical of fantastic elements it bored me with all its good intentions. Or maybe despite, but that would be generous and I'm angrier at the lost chance of something interesting with a gun-toting midwife against the matriarchy-patriarchy monolith.½

The Publisher Says: In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.

The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.

She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.

Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Imaginative, inventive, and insolent prose telling the oft-told tale of good soul gone bad. It's not a new trope or even take...woman blamed for problems she can't control, runs away, lives her best life among other like-minded women...but it's very well crafted and quite fun to read.

“The point is, you live like I did, you start being able to spot what makes some people sink and other people swim. There’s a quality, I don’t even know how to describe it—sometimes it looks like luck and sometimes it looks like skill and sometimes it doesn’t look like either one. But you have it, I saw it when I met you. You’ve made a lot of mistakes, but you’re a good bet. You’ll swim.”
–and–
“If they take you, keep your head up. Don't beg for your life. Don't confess to any sin. If you die without shame, the shame is all theirs.”

These women, cast out for failing to give birth, find their world is much bigger and much sweeter when they embrace freedom from expectations. Deeply, deeply relatable to this old queer gent.½

TW: misogyny, sexual assault, violence. I somehow thought if it was told with a feminist slant, a Western could interest me. I was wrong.

It's an alternative history of the US West; imagining that a flu epidemic in 1830 left a big portion of the population infertile, and a religious movement revering fertility arises. Women who are not able to get pregnant are shunned as witches.

This confused me, because I didn't realize it was alternative history when I started, and I got through a big portion of the book wondering "what is going on, where is this?", because I knew it wasn't right.

The writing I thought was OK, the characters flat. The plot's a bit silly, but could be fun if you weren't annoyed. Our heroine is exiled from her town due to being infertile, and goes first to a nunnery, and then to join "The Hole in the Wall" gang, a group of marginalized women, led by a non-binary outlaw called "the Kid."½

i enjoyed this alternative history of the 1890s, with overt feminist, antiracist, and queer/trans overtones running throughout. the writing is very good (i'd read her again) and the way women take control of their lives when it is taken from them by society is inspiring. this is about women accused of witchcraft (usually because of being barren or other babies in their towns being miscarried or born with genetic defects) leaving their homes and finding home with each other. if they didn't flee, they'd be killed, so they escape and find other women like themselves, and create a community of outlaws who, yes, thieve and harm, but who are just trying to survive themselves. and they have a dream of creating a town that is a safe haven for these women, where people can come and be safe and can contribute their worth to the group.

the gang and many of the people in it are based on real people in history (at least their names are) but i don't know how much of this is historical. it's just a good, thoughtful read with incidental queerness and transness as a way of life. i do wish that ada's first family had been revisited somehow, but i understand why, realistically, they couldn't be. i really like how anna north is giving us hope at the end, and that she's giving us options in the way to make change. that she's saying we can do it from the inside, or that we can do it from the outside if we make community. to be there for each other and to welcome others in. it's a slow kind of change and progress, but it is still a hopeful one. i also like the discussion she starts around blame and scapegoating. she uses the sheriff, who knows and understands that these women aren't witches and aren't responsible for miscarriages in town, as her example. because even though he knows this, he also believes that the townspeople need someone to blame, and he is willing to sacrifice these women, who he knows to be innocent, to "keep the peace" and to allow this evil to continue, because it's an outlet and it's easier. it raises an interesting question of in what other ways we do this, and why.½

Abrupt ending

I'm usually very picky about historical fiction, picking at the history of it. With this one, it seems to be a completely fictionalized world where barren women were accused of being witches. I might have to do some research to find out what happened to women who failed to produce children in the late nineteenth century. The characters were engaging and enterprising.

Ada lives in the West of 1894, after disease has ravaged the world. The long term side effect has been a decrease in fertility that effects every family. This has led to a more restrictive society that is dangerous for those women who have been declared barren. After Ada is declared barren she has to flee into a life of outlawed when all she wants is to be a doctor and help solve the problem. Good characters, good premise.

I enjoyed this. Great twist on the legends of western gangs. Also liked the history of women's roles and rights in the US during thus time period. Appalling really, but true.

I can't fault this book. This is one of the best novels I have read in a very long time and I can't wait to pick up some more Anna North when my book buying ban is finally over!

Review coming @ www.coffeeandtrainspotting.wordpress.com

A lovely story, with a strong first person narrative, about a young woman's life in the late 19th century American west. It has enough history in it to deserve to be in American studies curricula. It shows the strength of an individual's spirit, when confronted by societal shunning. Impressive and fun to read.

The premise of this book is interesting and drew me in. It's the late 1800s in the American West, but it's set in an alternate reality. The Flu killed a large portion of the population and what resulted was a society where producing more people is key. Women are valued only for their ability to produce babies, and those who are barren are labeled as witches and persecuted. The main character, Ada, is run out of her town and is accepted into a group of outlaws based on her knowledge of midwifery and medicine.

Unfortunately, despite the clever premise, the execution was not to my reading taste. The plot was nonsensical and the characters didn't have any heart. Their relationships with each other didn't ring true. I quickly lost interest in the outcome and ended up reading just to finish.

This book has gotten a lot of great press and many people seem to have liked it. So if it sounds interesting, give it a go and I'll be curious to see what you think. But it was definitely not for me.