book review: Voting Day by Clare O’Dea

VOTING DAY by Clare O’Dea
★★★☆☆
Fairlight Books, April 1, 2022

Set in 1959 against the backdrop of Switzerland’s failed referendum for women’s suffrage, Voting Day is split into four sections, each dedicated to a different Swiss woman, all of whose lives end up intersecting. This novella is short, sweet, and to the point: O’Dea deftly carves out a rich inner life for each of her four protagonists, and the story crescendos bittersweetly during the anticlimax of the result of the vote. 

The only problem I had was with the sentence-by-sentence writing, which felt overly modern, simplistic, and occasionally under-edited:

Oh God, she saw Luigi. I can’t say he’s a work colleague… maybe a neighbour? I’m so disappointed in him. He was up front all along, so why did he have to get so secretive in the end? It doesn’t do justice to what we had together.

Well, seeing as I was in that special situation with Herr Fasel, and not looking for anything serious, I thought, why not? I have no time for all this fuss people make about love and heartbreak and bagging a man. I’m a modern woman, and I don’t have to fit into some outdated mould.

(This seems to be a theme with a lot of my recent reading, doesn’t it: liking the idea of a story more than I like the prose.)

As this only takes about an hour to read, I have no hesitation in recommending it if this is a premise or period of history that particularly interests you, but unfortunately I don’t think this was as brilliant as it had the potential to be.

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Thank you to Netgalley and Fairlight for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.