The Misconceiver (Inscribed First Edition)

Ferriss, Lucy

ISBN 13: 9798218042714

Editore: Wandering Aengus Press, 2022

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Vashon Island, WA: Wandering Aengus Press, 2022. New edition, issued only in print-on-demand format, nearly twenty-five years after the novel's original publication. Softcover. Fine condition. A tight, clean copy. Octavo, 282 pages. Inscribed by the author to a prior owner on the title page. "The Misconceiver" is Lucy Ferriss's rediscovered dystopian novel, first published in 1999, portraying a near-future America where abortion is outlawed and women resist through underground networks. Reissued following the political upheaval of the Trump era. In the world of the novel "The Misconceiver, the United States has overturned Roe v. Wade, people are arrested for distributing contraceptives and a group of resistors known as misconceivers have risen up to aid women seeking abortions. In 1997, when the novel was first published, the genre was speculative fiction. While "The Misconceiver was well-received at the time, the novel quickly went out of print until, 25 years later, it was rediscovered in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning nationwide abortion rights in 2022. Ferriss is an American novelist and essayist whose work often explores moral conflict and personal autonomy.

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Misconceiver (Inscribed First Edition)
• Editore: Wandering Aengus Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2022
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 13: 9798218042714
• Rilegatura: Soft cover
• Condizione: Fine

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

This fresh release of an epochal novel from the late 1990s unlocks the dystopic world of the United States circa 2026, when Roe v. Wade has been overturned and abortion finally banned in all 50 states. Following in the steps of her dead sister and mother, narrator Phoebe Masters works in the computer industry by day and at night performs illegal "misconceptions" in her basement, restoring to desperate women some measure of control over their own bodies. Outside, technology has progressed but social change has moved backward. Married women tend to stay home. Amniocentesis is illegal. The worst punishment for rape is a paternity suit. Homosexuality is back in the closet.

           Yet despite her profession, despite the connection she sees between her job stamping out malware and her illicit vocation terminating pregnancies, Phoebe holds few political beliefs-until a love affair forces her to choose between closing herself off and revealing her secret. Betrayed, arrested, and jailed, she begins to confront the multiple contradictions of her world. Eventually she must choose- between revenge and forgiveness, family and self, guilt and accountability, love and action.

While The Misconceiver initially presents its characters' repression matter-of-factly, the accretion of detail concerning their emotional and physical pain makes this far more than a merely political novel. Phoebe is fiercely loyal to the memory of her sister but anxious for her own freedom. Haunted by memory and hunted by the law, she begins to find her true self even as she sheds her old identity. Set in a future that is not far-fetched but well within the range of our imagination, The Misconceiver not only addresses a vivid issue of our time but also brings to life characters and relationships that could well be ours, just over the horizon of time.

Informazioni sull'autore

Born in St. Louis, Lucy Ferriss has lived on both coasts, in the middle, and abroad. The overturning of Roe vs. Wade has brought renewed attention to her frighteningly prescient novel, The Misconceiver, a dystopian near-future story of survival in a Christo-Fascist U.S., where laws increasingly turn against women, LGBTQ, and people of color. Ferriss's eleventh book, Foreign Climes, won the Brighthorse Books Award in short fiction. Other recent fiction includes A Sister to Honor (Penguin, 2015) and The Lost Daughter (2012), a Book-of-the-Month pick. Her memoir Unveiling the Prophet was named Best Book of the Year by the Riverfront Times. Her novel Nerves of the Heart was a finalist in the Peter Taylor Prize competition. Leaving the Neighborhood and Other Stories was the 2000 winner of the Mid-List First Series Award. Other short fiction and essays have appeared most recently in The American Scholar, december, Missouri Review, New England Review, and Crazyhorse and have received recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Faulkner Society, and the Fulbright Commission, among others. She lives with her husband, Don Moon, in the Berkshires and Connecticut, where she has two strong sons and abiding passions for music, politics, travel, tennis, and wilderness. Her collection of essays, Meditations for a New Century, is forthcoming from Wandering Aengus Press.