Blue Ticket

Reviews

Cool, disturbing, it deals with emotionally fraught material. Mackintosh traffics in ambivalence and ambiguity... What Calla really wants, the author shows us, isn't necessarily a baby; it's an answer A spare, haunting tale of autonomy and free will Both claustrophobic and expansive, dream-like and heart-stoppingly tense. You will want to languish in its world for a very long time This book left me breathless - it is gloriously subversive in its exploration of motherhood and desire. I'll be pressing it on everyone Strange and luminous, spare and precise... A thrilling exploration of what it means to follow one's own longing to the point of destruction and beyond Utterly exquisite - clever and brilliant and heartbreaking. From the dusty road to the salving forest, I absolutely adored it Chilling, haunting, heartbreaking... Mackintosh brings a new sense of pathos to the dystopian novel... A moving and original meditation on freedom, fate, and women's rage A dreamlike exploration of free will and desire A must for Handmaid's Tale aficionados Powerful, Ishiguro-esque... Sophie Mackintosh lays bare many of the fears and realities that face any society's women as they contemplate when their choices begin, and where they might end Told with ragged prose that catches the breath, [Blue Ticket] articulates the irrepressible desires and wounds that can lie deep within, marked by a claustrophobia that never stops pressing in from the margins. This unsettling reimagining of the anxieties and pressures around motherhood lays bare the alienation that comes when your body is not truly yours A darkly brilliant allegory... Astute, revelatory and heartbreaking A rich, sharp, and daring book. To read Blue Ticket is to feel so vigorously alert you can feel the world turning Mesmerising Mackintosh poses urgent questions about social expectations and free will that are relevant to all realities Definitely don't miss the return of Sophie Mackintosh... Blue Ticket gets to the root of women's ambivalence and confusion around becoming mothers set against an unsettling dystopia; she's amazing Dreamlike, tense, compelling... Blue Ticket adds something new to the dystopian tradition set by Orwell's 1984 or Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale... Piercing moments of wisdom and insight drive toward a pitch-perfect ending The cool intensity and strange beauty of Blue Ticket is a wonder - be sure to read everything Sophie Mackintosh writes Even more hallucinatory and spiralled than her first [novel]... Terrifying and enchanting in equal measure The Handmaid's Tale as told by David Lynch... A bona fide chase narrative as well as a polyvalent, dream-like allegory of pregnancy and bodily change - not to mention the vortex of judgement that surrounds womanhood... Mackintosh is part of an exciting generation of writers, including Daisy Johnson and Julia Armfield... Blue Ticket stands apart from the crowd One of the most disquieting novels I've read in a long time, Blue Ticket will worms its way under your skin and haunt your dreams Gripping, ethereal, atmospheric... Mackintosh handles haziness deliberately and with poise, demonstrating the near impossibility of trying to articulate or rationalise maternal desire Mackintosh writes with a language drawn from the body.... Impressionistic and haunting in equal measure Visceral, primal, striking... This is a potent exploration of biology and agency, motherhood and childlessness, which confirms [Mackintosh] as a writer of note Mackintosh is part of a new generation of female writers creating feminist fictions that relate uncannily to our dystopian times... [Her] fiction lives, to an unusual extent, in its musicality, in the rhythm and spareness of its sentences For anyone currently waiting with bated breath for the new season of 'The Handmaid's Tale', Booker-longlisted author Sophie Mackintosh's new novel is a feminist dystopia to quench your thirst A thoughtful and haunting exploration of freedom, fate and a woman's right to choose her destiny Chilling, timely, thought-provoking [Mackintosh] writes with an ethereal lyricism that is equally capable of fragility and violence Blue Ticket offers a completely different angle on a familiar subject... Like all good speculative fiction, [it] reminds us of a truth in the real world A compelling, unsettling tale... Part-horror, part thriller, and part pregnant-lesbian love story A dark fable... Mackintosh sensitively conveys resonant questions about motherhood, female solidarity, queer love, and bodily autonomy Expand reviews