Trigger warning for forced gender transition and rape.
After centuries of violence, men have been reduced to as small a percentage of the population as possible without risking inbreeding. Maren Uthaug presents an unsettling future earth where women rule. Women teach their children (almost entirely daughters, as boys don’t count as children in this society) about the evils of the patriarchy, about how males must be controlled so that their testosterone doesn’t cause them to rape and murder. In Eleven Percent, four women, living in what used to be Denmark, tell a story about gender, faith, secrets, and betrayal. This book is masterfully translated by Caroline Waight.
Medea, a witchy woman who raises snakes, bookends the novel. Through her, we learn about the various factions women have split into after the (unexplained) Evolution and the end of the patriarchy. Some women, like Medea and other members of her dwindling coven, deal mostly in herbal medicine and a bit of spellwork. Others, like Medea’s lover Wicca, follow a gender-flipped version of Christianity where Mother has replaced a masculine god. Yet others are trying to create something new by erasing as many remnants of the past as they can. Medea is also unique in her society because she and her sisters, Eldest and Silence, are keeping a very dangerous secret hidden: a young male child. If found, the boy would be taken away to the concentration camps, where men are drugged and kept for breeding or sex. Medea and the others will be sentenced to an oath of silence and forced labor.
When the perspective switches to the spoiled Wicca, we learn more about the appalling fate of men in this woman’s world. Wicca’s only goal is to become a great priest like her mother but, in spite of her impressive bloodline, she doesn’t have the ability to turn snake venom into divine visions. She can’t even keep snakes alive for more than a few weeks. Her cover-ups and blunders are a huge source of conflict in Eleven Percent. To be honest, I was glad when the book moved away from her narrative because I loathed her.
The most interesting narrators for me were Silence and Eva. Their chapters take us into the past and offer further chilling revelations about what happens to those who have the bad luck to be born male in this world. Silence and Eva’s stories are hard to read because they are full of a deep longing for love and for someone to understand them, even though they don’t fit in with the other girls and women. Then, in a flash, everything goes terribly wrong.
I struggled with Eleven Percent. I’ve read other books—Y: The Last Man and The Power—where women were either in the majority or found a way to become the dominant gender. In those books, women also abuse their power over men and other women, arguing that humans will always find a way to oppress a minority given a chance. Where Y: The Last Man turned the premise into a thriller and The Power is clearly satirical, Eleven Percent isn’t written as a story where balance can be restored or as a thought experiment. The lack of literary devices to offer some mental distance, plus some absolutely horrific themes, made this book a very uncomfortable read for me.