Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer
Kidnapped by a fertility cult, an ob-gyn fights to keep herself safe.
Obstetrix is the story of Dr. Elizabeth Gwynn, an ob-gyn who is kidnapped and held captive by an isolated fertility cult, so that she can assist with a medically complicated birth. The cult is way out in the wilderness, their surveillance is suffocating, and their discipline is strict. In order to stay alive, she has to comply enough to avoid punishment, but in order to save herself and the women of the cult, she has to resist enough to get out. Oh, and the last ob-gyn they kidnapped? They murdered him for saying no.
Wow. I was immediately hooked by this plot, and I found myself reading this book even while walking my dog.
Dr. Liz is a great character to root for. Before the events of the story, she was charged with felony murder for performing an abortion to save a patient’s life, and she endured an expensive, high-profile trial in North Dakota, not known for being a bastion of reproductive rights. So her professional life and her personal life are both in shambles when the cult “interviews” her for a job and then drugs her and removes her to their compound. Yet in her extremity, she is stalwart, resourceful, and even comforts herself with wry humor. She’s a middle-aged lady who’s worried about her elderly father, unimpressed with the toxic masculinity of the cult’s religious leaders, and annoyed by the complicit midwife who becomes her jailor. She’s also a reader! While books are banned in the cult, she recites pages of a favorite book to herself for entertainment, and bonds with one of the pregnant teenage girls by telling her the plots of movies about rebellion.
The narrative drive is powerful, the character is relatable, and the world-building is interesting. However, Kritzer leaves a lot of thematic impact unexplored and underdeveloped. She’s got an ob-gyn locked in a fertility cult, and this is an ob-gyn who has been prosecuted for standing on medical principle. But Dr. Liz mostly thinks about ways to escape, or the physical dangers she and the other women are facing. It’s understandable that she would be immediately focused on urgent issues like safety and control, but to choose not to have reflect back to her trial at all was weird. Body autonomy felt less important to the story than the right to own books or have a phone. This is a first person narrator, so we’re limited to her focus, and her focus doesn’t really include reproductive rights or women’s issues in the world outside the cult at all. As a result, there’s no growth or arc for Liz. She starts out being wronged, she continues to be wronged, and while I’m not expecting her to learn wisdom from a cult in the woods, she should at least gain understanding from the experience. She doesn’t.
Loved the premise, loved the questions being asked, loved the hard-charging plot, and loved the character, but “cults are bad for women” is not really a daring take. I wish Dr. Liz had made a few connections between what happened to her inside the cult and outside it, between the extreme religious fanaticism of the community and the insidious parallels in the wider world.