Voting Day

I was unsure during the first segment about a disgruntled farm wife, but once this set of linked stories moved on to the next segment I was hooked. Four Swiss women with four points of view (the outer two third-person, the inner two first-person), each of whom observes and comments on the others ... their stories deftly linked into a little chain that becomes a circle at the end, rounded out by their mutual concern with another character who at first seems to be only a minor distraction. It's a microcosm of a particular place and time in history that opens up a window into many human concerns that vex us to this day.

I don't want to give away more about the plot or characters because much of the pleasure of this slim narrative is observing how O'Dea builds it up, step by step, out of the lived experience of women's lives. On this historically significant day, these women are denied by male Swiss voters their right to participate politically in society, yet they retain the right to choose - to choose life, agency, empathy, and creativity over passivity, stasis and despair. Yes, all people deserve the right to cast a ballot, but it's our will to “vote” with our hearts that will ultimately determine our future.

  February 1959. Switzerland has decided on a referendum to give women the right to vote and today is voting day. Once more, the women of the country have to depend on men to choose ‘'what is right and proper'' for them...
This novella is a quiet chronicle of how four women from different social backgrounds experience not only the day of the referendum but the circumstances that have defined their lives. A mother travels to Bern to meet her daughter who has found herself threatened by a despicable man, a young woman tries to find the means to provide for her son aided by a hospital administrator who is a fervent supporter of the campaign. In the faces and stories of Beatrice, Margrit, Vreni and Esther, an eternity of injustice, neglect, oppression, abuse and sheer tyranny is depicted. Motherhood and womanhood. Lack of opportunities and impossible choices. Life on the periphery of society because that is what the other half of the population has dictated.
Speaking in strictly literary terms, I was not impressed. The writing is simple, a bit dry at times, the dialogue ‘'sounds'' jarring and the characters are nothing we haven't seen before. But sometimes even books that can be called ‘'average'' must be deemed necessary reads.
Why? Because Switzerland decided to grant the vote to the women of the country in 1971 (which is unthinkable...) Because we do not have the luxury to take anything for granted anymore.
Many thanks to Fairlight Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.