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In her stunning novel, Hall imagines a new dystopia set in the not-too-distant future. England is in a state of environmental crisis and economic collapse. There has been a census, and all citizens have been herded into urban centers. Reproduction has become a lottery, with contraceptive coils fitted to every female of childbearing age. A girl who will become known only as "Sister" escapes the confines of her repressive marriage to find an isolated group of women living as "un-officials" in Carhullan, a remote northern farm, where she must find out whether she has it in herself to become a rebel fighter. Provocative and timely, Daughters of the North poses questions about the lengths women will go to resist their oppressors, and under what circumstances might an ordinary person become a terrorist.
Chronicling a journey of violence, oppression and fleeting liberation, this brutal third novel from the author of The Electric Michelangelois a timely feminist commentary on war, gender, politics and identity. Set in a dystopian near-future northern U.K. where global warming, a fuel crisis, drug epidemics and a cruel totalitarian regime known as the Authority have savaged the land and people, the story is told by Sister, a young woman living in cramped terrace quarters. Sterilized against her will (the result of the Authority's female sterilization policy) and forced to work in a "New Fuel" factory, Sister escapes to seek out Carhullan, a shadowy all-female commune run by the enigmatic Jackie Nixon. Carhullan is a hard-knocks utopia, in which women's strengths and passions grow from manual labor, paramilitary training and intense, sometimes sexual, friendships. As the threat of the Authority grows, Sister rises in the ranks of the Carhullan resistance force, oblivious to the increasing similarities between the Authority and Jackie's seductive, psychological control. Though the climax and denouement are sloppily handled, the overall effect is haunting, timely and well wrought. (Apr.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationIn a flooded, postapocalyptic Britain, most of the country is wet and uninhabitable; what remains above ground is in the tight control of a repressive, misogynist regime called "The Authority." Citizens are assigned work in newly essential industries and are provided with tightly shared living quarters; women are force-fitted with contraceptive devices except for the fortunate few who win the breeding lottery. From these hellish conditions, a young woman leaves behind her husband and home to seek out a fabled, utopian community of women in the north. The brutal reception she receives upon her arrival there is offset by the warm communality that follows her acceptance into the group. However, all is not well, as the women must face predatory outside forces, and the novel races toward a riveting conclusion. After Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami, this foreboding tale by Hall (The Electric Michelangelo ) seems eerily imaginable. Sure to be of interest to readers of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and others who like their apocalyptic fiction raw.-Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria, England. Her fiction has won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book), a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree, Jr., Literary Award, and the Portico Prize. She has been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (South Asian and Europe region), the Prix Femina-Roman Etranger, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Author biography courtesy of HarperCollins.
"I occasionally make things out of salvaged material, creepy Victorian shadow-box looking constructs, and am consequently quite partial to glue."
"Drivers who do not acknowledge thanks when I've let their car filter into my traffic lane make me furious. Ah, yes, and if I'm holding the door open for you, and you're a man, please don't take it from me and try to make me go in first."
"To unwind, I'm a bit of a keen fell walker (fells are mountain in the north of England). I also enjoy jumping up and down on the same spot, joyfully, like a kid. Any kind of watery expanse brings me peace and makes me feel like I'm home -- I was born and brought up right by a river and it's very likely that I haven't ever been drained properly. I'm really keen on folk art. I like frogs and peanut butter -- not together though, that wouldn't taste good."
Daughters of the North
Chapter One
My name is Sister.
This is the name that was given to me three years ago. It is what the others called me. It is what I call myself. Before that, my name was unimportant. I can't remember it being used. I will not answer to it now, or hear myself say it out loud. I will not sign to acknowledge it. It is gone. You will call me Sister.
I was the last woman to go looking for Carhullan.
It was a wet rotting October when I left. In the town the leaves had begun to drop and their yellow pulp lay on the ground. The last belts of thunderstorms and downpours were passing through the Northern region. Summer was on its way out. The atmosphere felt as if it was finally breaking apart, and at night and in the mornings something cooler had set in. It was a relief not to wake up sweating under the sheet in our room in the terrace quarters, coming out of some hot nightmare with milky dampness on my chest. I have always slept better in the winter. It feels like my pulse runs slower then.
This freshness seemed to cleanse the town too. The bacterial smell of the refinery and fuel plants began to disperse at night when the clouds thinned and the heat lifted. Each year after the Civil Reorganisation summer's humidity had lasted longer, pushing the colder seasons into a smaller section of the calendar, surrounding us constantly with the smog of rape and tar-sand burning off, and all of us packed tightly together like fish in a smoking shed.
The change of temperature brought with it a feeling of excitement, an alertness that went beyond nerves or the heightened awareness of the risks I knew I wastaking. It was restorative. The cool reminded me of my childhood. Back then the weather had been more distinct, separated. Some older people in the factory where I worked said of all the English traditions to have been compromised, the weather was the saddest. As if there had been a choice of some kind, a referendum for these semi-tropics.
I still recall the fresh ticking of hail on my face in March as I stood to catch the bus for school. And autumn blusters, when objects large and small were bellowed back and forth. The deep-vein chill of January; my hands and feet numb under fleece and wool. You don't fear possibility when you are young. You don't believe the world can really be broken or that anything terrible will happen during your lifetime.
Even the rain is different now; erratic, violent, not the constant grey drizzle of old postcards, jokes, and television reports. It's rain that feels wounded. There is seldom any snow on the fells, though people in the town look for it out of habit.
Where I was going the altitude was high, it was remote, and part of me hoped that if I stayed there long enough I would see those white drifts again.
I left at dawn, so I could get out of Rith without being noticed. My rucksack was packed light enough to carry a long distance, then on, up into the mountains. I was not bringing much away with me—clothes, boots, some tins of food and squares of rusk, a canister of water, a medical kit in case the regulator could be taken out of me, though I didn't know if that would be possible. And I had an old Second World War rifle, packed between the jumpers and waterproofs; its stunted barrel nuzzled against the top flap. Thiswas what I planned to bargain with at Carhullan.
I had hidden the bag in an alleyway behind our building the previous night so I could get down the stairs without the extra weight, without bumping and scraping the walls on my descent. It was pushed into an alcove behind the main chamber of the rain tank where it was dark and dry. I'd put it there while the families in the other quarters were eating dinner, and before my husband got back from his shift, checking the void first with a stick to make sure there were no rats' nests.
In the early morning I left our bed without waking Andrew and dressed quietly in the communal bathroom. I'd stowed a plastic bag in the pocket of my trousers to collect the items I needed. There was a new packet of soap on the shelf belonging to the family in the next room, and I took that too, slipping it into the bag with my toothpaste, deodorant, a razor and some blades. I paused for a moment before opening the little medicine cabinet they used. There was some aspirin, a packet of sanitary towels, and a sachet of powder for treating cystitis that was long out of date. I gathered them up. Then I made my way along the hall and down the stairs.
Outside the door of the building I waited a minute or two to be sure that Andrew had not heard me leaving, trying to be calm. My heart was sending fast volleys of blood up through my chest. I could feel the contact and back-turn of pulse in my fingertips. I told myself it would be OK. In the last month I had trained myself to wake early and had practised this departure. Always I'd made it out silently and safely, then I'd walked around the dark town, careful to avoid the patches where the feral dogsroamed, before coming home again. But this was not a dry run. I breathed deeply, blew the air out, and waited. The last thing I wanted was to have Andrew following me down, calling me crazy, creating a fuss and waking the people above. He would never have let me go off with a packed bag, out of the official zones, even though we were at odds now, hateful or silent towards each other.
Daughters of the North. Copyright ? by Sarah Hall. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.Chapter One
My name is Sister.
This is the name that was given to me three years ago. It is what the others called me. It is what I call myself. Before that, my name was unimportant. I can't remember it being used. I will not answer to it now, or hear myself say it out loud. I will not sign to acknowledge it. It is gone. You will call me Sister.
I was the last woman to go looking for Carhullan.
It was a wet rotting October when I left. In the town the leaves had begun to drop and their yellow pulp lay on the ground. The last belts of thunderstorms and downpours were passing through the Northern region. Summer was on its way out. The atmosphere felt as if it was finally breaking apart, and at night and in the mornings something cooler had set in. It was a relief not to wake up sweating under the sheet in our room in the terrace quarters, coming out of some hot nightmare with milky dampness on my chest. I have always slept better in the winter. It feels like my pulse runs slower then.
This freshness seemed to cleanse the town too. The bacterial smell of the refinery and fuel plants began to disperse at night when the clouds thinned and the heat lifted. Each year after the Civil Reorganisation summer's humidity had lasted longer, pushing the colder seasons into a smaller section of the calendar, surrounding us constantly with the smog of rape and tar-sand burning off, and all of us packed tightly together like fish in a smoking shed.
The change of temperature brought with it a feeling of excitement, an alertness that went beyond nerves or the heightened awareness of the risksI knew I was taking. It was restorative. The cool reminded me of my childhood. Back then the weather had been more distinct, separated. Some older people in the factory where I worked said of all the English traditions to have been compromised, the weather was the saddest. As if there had been a choice of some kind, a referendum for these semi-tropics.
I still recall the fresh ticking of hail on my face in March as I stood to catch the bus for school. And autumn blusters, when objects large and small were bellowed back and forth. The deep-vein chill of January; my hands and feet numb under fleece and wool. You don't fear possibility when you are young. You don't believe the world can really be broken or that anything terrible will happen during your lifetime.
Even the rain is different now; erratic, violent, not the constant grey drizzle of old postcards, jokes, and television reports. It's rain that feels wounded. There is seldom any snow on the fells, though people in the town look for it out of habit.
Where I was going the altitude was high, it was remote, and part of me hoped that if I stayed there long enough I would see those white drifts again.
I left at dawn, so I could get out of Rith without being noticed. My rucksack was packed light enough to carry a long distance, then on, up into the mountains. I was not bringing much away with me—clothes, boots, some tins of food and squares of rusk, a canister of water, a medical kit in case the regulator could be taken out of me, though I didn't know if that would be possible. And I had an old Second World War rifle, packed between the jumpers and waterproofs; its stunted barrel nuzzled against the top flap. This was what I planned to bargain with at Carhullan.
I had hidden the bag in an alleyway behind our building the previous night so I could get down the stairs without the extra weight, without bumping and scraping the walls on my descent. It was pushed into an alcove behind the main chamber of the rain tank where it was dark and dry. I'd put it there while the families in the other quarters were eating dinner, and before my husband got back from his shift, checking the void first with a stick to make sure there were no rats' nests.
In the early morning I left our bed without waking Andrew and dressed quietly in the communal bathroom. I'd stowed a plastic bag in the pocket of my trousers to collect the items I needed. There was a new packet of soap on the shelf belonging to the family in the next room, and I took that too, slipping it into the bag with my toothpaste, deodorant, a razor and some blades. I paused for a moment before opening the little medicine cabinet they used. There was some aspirin, a packet of sanitary towels, and a sachet of powder for treating cystitis that was long out of date. I gathered them up. Then I made my way along the hall and down the stairs.
Outside the door of the building I waited a minute or two to be sure that Andrew had not heard me leaving, trying to be calm. My heart was sending fast volleys of blood up through my chest. I could feel the contact and back-turn of pulse in my fingertips. I told myself it would be OK. In the last month I had trained myself to wake early and had practised this departure. Always I'd made it out silently and safely, then I'd walked around the dark town, careful to avoid the patches where the feral dogs roamed, before coming home again. But this was not a dry run. I breathed deeply, blew the air out, and waited. The last thing I wanted was to have Andrew following me down, calling me crazy, creating a fuss and waking the people above. He would never have let me go off with a packed bag, out of the official zones, even though we were at odds now, hateful or silent towards each other.
Daughters of the NorthIn the near future in the United Kingdom global warming has made this once proud place into wetlands. The climate change accompanied by a critical fuel shortage has led to the establishment of an abusive totalitarian rule. The Authority uses the guise of security to kill anyone who opposes them they use fuel shortages to control population with enforced sterilization they encourage drug addiction to keep the masses ignorant of their plight. If innocents are hurt so be it as collateral damage occurs.------------------ The Authority sterilized Sister against her will. They made her work in a 'New Fuel' factory in conditions that makes Dickens¿ Victorian tales look like fairy tales. She is assigned cramped quarters. Sister wants out feeling that if she can make it to legendary Carhullan, an all-female commune she can survive. Run by Jackie Nixon with discipline to foster strengths, the paramilitary group is outlawed by the Authority who plans to destroy these Amazon rebels. ------------------- Although the ending is too obvious for such a complex thought provoking tale, readers will appreciate this powerful near future thriller that extrapolates from Katrina and the Christmas Tsunami. However, it is not the environmental disaster that holds the reader¿s attention it is the heroine and how she sees the world. Sister believes the Authority is evil from her position in the ooze below their food chain she thinks of Carhullan as freedom fighters from her rising up their chain towards the top. Ironically she is unable to accept how similar the two groups are in their ruthless use of expendables to achieve their respective goals. With obvious comparison to the Mideast, DAUGHTERS OF THE NORTH is a terrific futuristic thriller.------------- Harriet Klausner
5 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 13, 2012
This book depicts a futuristic Britain under totalitarian rule. It follows the story of one womens escape into the highlands and her views of what occurs around her. Definately a thought provoking story written inan interesting way.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 6, 2012
When I started this book, I might have given it 4 stars. I liked the first quarter of of the book. I enjoyed hearing about the apocolyptic world and Sister's jouney to the farm. Once she got there I started to lose interest. The characters weren't fleshed out and I didnt really like anyone all the much. I usually like a feminist novel, but I didnt find any of these woman sympathetic or even interesting. I think it was a nice idea executed pretty badly.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 20, 2012
Everyone! We are moving to iceberg all results! The areas are the same as here. Ive been told by a messenger that many of you are getting locked out.
1 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 5, 2013
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Anonymous
Posted January 29, 2013
I really enjoyed reading this story. But that was overshadowed by the disappointment of missing sections
due to data lost." Missing the most important part, the part the entire storylined worked up to, was a big letdown.
I would recommend the hard copy instead of the nook version based solely on that.
Anonymous
Posted January 25, 2013
enjoyed this little book. make you think what could happen in the future.
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Posted January 6, 2013
Didnt care for the last quarter of the book at all
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 3, 2013
The story was good, however major sections were missing noting "data lost". Most disappointing was the missing section of the last chapter.
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Posted December 25, 2012
Adult vesion of hunger games. Some detailed sex scenes.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 6, 2012
This book is different and has an intersting storyline and surprisngly enough I enjoyed it a lot. Good read
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Posted November 18, 2012
The e-copy i have is missing a few chunks of text that had valuable plot.
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Posted September 26, 2012
I could barely put this down. The characters are extremely well written the scenes are set and described so weel you can smell, taste and see it in your mind clearly while reading. Its killing me that her Electric book is not nookable - but she is such a great writer I may actually buy the book
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Posted August 25, 2012
A beautiful black she cat with frosty blue eyes pads into camp. In her neck are three icicl shaped scars.
"My name is Ravenwind. I was once Ravenstar, but now I have returned. I am proud to be your deputy once more Icystar."
0 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 18, 2012
Hi :D
0 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 16, 2012
excellent
0 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 13, 2012
So scary to think this could happen. This book make you think. Ehat eould YOU do? Enjoyed this book. There were a few places where I lost interest but mostly was a book that was hard to put down.
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Posted August 11, 2012
This was a great read. Unfortunately large portion of content were missing. Very disappointing.
0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 9, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
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Posted February 8, 2011
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Overview
In her stunning novel, Hall imagines a new dystopia set in the not-too-distant future. England is in a state of environmental crisis and economic collapse. There has been a census, and all citizens have been herded into urban centers. Reproduction has become a lottery, with contraceptive coils fitted to every female of childbearing age. A girl who will become known only as "Sister" escapes the confines of her repressive marriage to find an isolated group of women living as "un-officials" in Carhullan, a remote ...