Once Upon a Bookcase: 5 to 1

Monday, 7 September 2015

5 to 1, feminism, feminist story, holly bodger, interview

Interview with Holly Bodger: Feminism and 5 to 1

Today, I'm honoured to have YA author Holly Bodger stopping by Once Upon a Bookcase to talk about her novel 5 to 1 and feminism.

Can you tell us what led you to write such a feminist dystopia, over a general dystopia?

I honestly didn’t set out to write a dystopian novel at all. I wanted to write about the effects of gender selection and felt I needed to set the book slightly in the future in order to exaggerate these effects. While some of the elements of my imagined future are found in the average dystopian novel (i.e., a controlling government, a walled society), I built my world this way because that was how I specifically envisioned the society would evolve and not because I was trying to satisfy any rules of the dystopian novel.

Friday, 3 July 2015

5 to 1, dystopia, feminist story, holly bodger, review, YA

Review: 5 to 1 by Holly Bodger (#Ad)

15:51 Jo 4 comments

5 to 1 by Holly Bodger

I was sent this review copy for free by Knopf Books for the purpose of providing an honest review.

In the year 2054, after decades of gender selection, India now has a ratio of five boys for every girl, making women an incredibly valuable commodity. Tired of marrying off their daughters to the highest bidder and determined to finally make marriage fair, the women who form the country of Koyanagar have instituted a series of tests so that every boy has the chance to win a wife.

Sudasa doesn’t want to be a wife, and Contestant Five, a boy forced to compete in the test to become her husband, has other plans as well. Sudasa’s family wants nothing more than for their daughter to do the right thing and pick a husband who will keep her comfortable—and caged. Contestant Five’s family wants him to escape by failing the tests. As the tests advance, Sudasa and Contestant Five thwart each other at every turn until they slowly realize that they just might want the same thing.

This beautiful, unique novel is told from alternating points of view—Sudasa’s in verse and Contestant Five’s in prose—allowing readers to experience both characters’ pain and their brave struggle for hope. From Goodreads - but edited.