- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Avon (April 1983)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0380631644
- ISBN-13: 978-0380631643
- Product Dimensions: 17.5 x 10.4 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,008,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
A successful and upsetting novel --Sunday Times
Intelligent and energetic book... (which) works persuasively --Hermione Lee, Observer --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Intelligent and energetic book... (which) works persuasively --Hermione Lee, Observer --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Product Description
It is summer... a heat wave... tense, uneasy days in the city. There are ominous signs of political turbulance in the dying years of the twentieth century. Welfare benefits are under attack, but women are fighting back, using unorthodox weapons. Lynn Byers does not accept the government's demand for a return to 'womanly duties'. As desperate politicians use increasingly savage methods of control, she can no longer stand aside to watch. A classic of women's fiction.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is truly one of my favourite books - you know some books stay with you a long time? Well this one has for YEARS! It's set in an alternative present, where birth control has become a matter for the government - "the wrong rats are breeding". It's scary in that you can imagine this really happening. It centres around a kind of women's commune set up in a derelict tower block, and the Fairbairns manages to develop some really intense characters and scenarios. Read this book and it'll certainly make you think - although it was written in the 70's it has maintained a real edge.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
Benefits: fascinating feminist sci fi
6 Oct 2007
Benefits is an excellent feminist sci-fi book.
The story is riveting, stunning and compelling: the British government from the 1970s through the new millennium tries to "manage" its women using many of the typical tools of government: money, policy, social stigma -- and finally through medical control. A few strong personalities get involved to bring about chilling changes. Though written in the 1970s, the threat of such an event happening is very real and modern.
My only complaint is that development of the female characters is limited. In the decades in which the story takes place, the ideas and actions of the women -- especially the feminists -- remain stagnant, stuck in the mid-1970s. Government evolves, men evolve, but women don't, and hindsight of the modern reader sees a great disconnect in that lack of evolution. Even when I read this 25 years ago, I wondered how women could fail to evolve through time.
Do other readers of science fiction find this a universal issue throughout the genre, where later readings of beloved science fiction stories suffer in modern light?
The story is riveting, stunning and compelling: the British government from the 1970s through the new millennium tries to "manage" its women using many of the typical tools of government: money, policy, social stigma -- and finally through medical control. A few strong personalities get involved to bring about chilling changes. Though written in the 1970s, the threat of such an event happening is very real and modern.
My only complaint is that development of the female characters is limited. In the decades in which the story takes place, the ideas and actions of the women -- especially the feminists -- remain stagnant, stuck in the mid-1970s. Government evolves, men evolve, but women don't, and hindsight of the modern reader sees a great disconnect in that lack of evolution. Even when I read this 25 years ago, I wondered how women could fail to evolve through time.
Do other readers of science fiction find this a universal issue throughout the genre, where later readings of beloved science fiction stories suffer in modern light?
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