Francesca Steele

Primal longing: Blue Ticket, by Sophie Macintosh, reviewed

Calla is desperate for a child, and risks all by removing her forcibly implanted contraceptive device in this dark, disturbing novel

Sophie Macintosh. Credit: Sophie Davidson 
issue 12 September 2020

Sophie Macintosh’s Blue Ticket is not classic feminist dystopia. Yes, it is concerned with legislated fertility, a world where women’s bodies are monitored like science projects by condescending medics.But the horror here is not impregnation but unwanted childlessness. Blue tickets, dispensed (randomly? It’s not clear) by a machine on a girl’s first bleed, decree a childless future; white tickets the opposite.

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