Review by tangleroot_eli - Ammonite

adventurous tense medium-paced

As others have said, this book suffers from major pacing issues. I called it "medium-paced" because some parts are so fast and gripping I couldn't put the book down, while others plod along so slowly that I couldn't pick it up. I appreciate writers who can write a variety of speeds, but in Ammonite it was an impediment.
Maybe this is just a personal problem, but I struggled to look at this book through the lens of its own time and not think about what we know now. Ammonite comes from the late '80s/early '90s school of feminist scifi, where writing women who were actual, fully developed characters was somewhat shocking. These days, a lot of things don't hold up well. What does the virus do to trans and nonbinary folks? Griffith is arguing that a world without men would be exactly the same as a world with them, but would the women of Jeep be "just like men" if they'd never experienced patriarchy and toxic masculinity?
As always, I should not read author's notes. Griffith's note for Ammonite is a contradictory mess that goes something like, "Women aren't just like men! We're just like men!" Save yourself the heartache; stick with just reading the book.

Content Warnings