Upright Women Wanted: Subversive roaming librarians in a near-future U.S.A.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

After being betrothed to a man she doesn’t love and watching her secret lover, Beatriz, get hanged for aberrant behavior and possession of unapproved reading materials, Esther decides to run away. So she hides herself in the wagon of the traveling Librarians, the distributors of all approved reading materials, who are passing through her town.

When the stowaway is discovered, Esther attempts to convince the librarians that she always wanted to be one of them but, in reality, she is hoping their good morals and upright behavior will rub off on her so she will no longer feel deviant.

But that’s not going to happen, as Esther soon learns, because there’s a good reason why these women have chosen to remove themselves from regular society and become itinerant librarians. They don’t fit into the conservative, patriarchal social order endorsed by the approved reading materials they dispense. Here, amongst these women who would otherwise be ostracized and possibly executed, Esther begins to believe she might find acceptance and the kind of family she’ll be comfortable in.

Sarah Gailey

Sarah Gailey’s novella Upright Women Wanted (2020) is a finalist for both the Locus and Hugo Awards this year. I love the dystopian setting and want to read more about subversive roaming Librarians in a near-future United States that has reverted to an old West type of civilization. I want to know about the perpetual war that patriotic Americans are being asked to support via the circulation of state-approved propaganda that ensures everyone is on the same page. Who are they fighting and why? I want to know how America fell so far and I want to see the Librarians resist and overcome. I rarely say that I wish a novella was longer, but in this case, I wish Gailey had given us more and I hope she has additional stories planned for this intriguing world.

I liked most of Gailey’s characters, but Esther irritated me a bit. We are told that she was in love with Beatriz, but her grieving feels shallow and very quickly we see her lusting after somebody else, so it was hard for me to take her seriously. However, other readers, especially those that identify with Esther’s uncertainty about what her sexual orientation means for her place in her conservative society, may feel that this confusion is realistic and genuine. I suspect that readers who feel more empathetic toward Gailey’s protagonist might also be a lot more forgiving about the vagueness of her world.

The audio version of Upright Women Wanted was produced by Tantor audio and narrated by Romy Nordlinger. Her voice seems a little too pert for a girl in Esther’s situation but, overall, the audiobook is a nice format for this novella.