Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen

I would like to thank Sarah from Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £8.99 paperback £4.31 Kindle eBook

The world is suffering an infertility crisis, the last natural birth was over twenty years ago and now the only way to conceive is through a painful fertility treatment. Any children born are strictly monitored, and if you are deemed an unfit parent then your child is extracted. After witnessing so many struggling to conceive – and then keep – their babies, Kit thought she didn't want children. But then she meets Thomas and they have a baby girl, Mimi. Soon the small mistakes build up and suddenly Kit is faced with the possibility of losing her daughter, and she is forced to ask herself how far she will go to keep her family together.

Children are something that many people love to have in their life and others do not. Our society is geared to saying you grow up; meet someone and are then expected to have the next generation. At this point there are tonnes of guides, families, newspaper articles etc all telling you how to be the perfect parent. It’s safe to say that children can be pressure – how can anyone ever do it all right? In the disturbing dystopian science fiction novel Dark Lullaby Polly Ho-Yen gives us a glimpse of a world where women are expected to do their duty to have children; rear them perfectly or if not face the consequences.

In the near future for reasons not fully understood human fertility is falling fast. In the UK this has led to a government that has made huge policy changes to encourage women to have children. If you are rich then you can afford an XC (a foetus grown in an external laboratory created from a mix of human genetic material) but for anyone else this requires women to go through a process named Induction – the taking of strong medications and hormones to change the body to make it receptive to having a baby. Kit and Evie are two young sisters. Evie has just announced she will be going through Induction with her partner Seb while Kit has always been ambivalent - Induction can be very dangerous to women with fatalities being common. We watch over a few years Eve have her child and Kit meets a partner who makes her want to have a child. But in the UK all parents are subject to OSIP – The Office of Standards in Parenting. This has eyes and ears everywhere in society and a parent felt to be putting their child at any risk even low birth-weight risks a penalty of an ISP (Insufficient parenting standard) enough of these then enforcers will arrive to take your child away and place them in a government child-rearing facility. As the story progresses both sisters face this threat and we then watch how Kit has to desperately try to find her child before it gets too late.

This is a thoroughly unsettling read and I write that as a man who has no desire to ever have children. Ho-Yen has created a dystopia that very much uses that very common prejudice that all women are expected to have children and that all women must be the best parents possible. Society will always be judging you. What impressed me so much was how Ho-Yen creates that society and we see young girls being made to watch videos about Induction; women without children are punished in pay and living standards especially if they want to work themselves and everywhere the government sponsored GoSpheres in every home and street constantly tell people about the benefits of having a child. AS a reader you feel for the sisters that they really aren’t being allowed any choice. Sexism is also clear – for men no such penalties exist and beyond sperm donation little pressure is provided for them to be the perfect fathers. It feels like a UK gone backwards but these days that feels not entirely impossible any more and Ho-Yen makes this feel terribly plausible if the wrong people got in power – you could easily imagine the Daily Mail being in favour of such policies.

Ho-Yen then explores the pressure of a woman who has decided to have a child to then be judged for how she rears them. Ask any mother and they’ll tell you everyone has an opinion on what is right and wrong and here it’s the state itself judging health, morality, care and even family happiness. Let your child cry in a park too long and you can expect a penalty. All of this should be horribly overbearing but the threat of extraction – that you will be judged so bad a parent after only a few mistakes that you must lose the child makes this a truly horrible fear ever present in the novel. Kit and Evie have this 24/7 and we can see the impact on their physical and mental health as the novel progresses. Ho-Yen creates a pressure cooker of a tale where relationships are under constant stress; emotional blackmail and fear making this a discomforting read.

Gelling all this together is Kit’s voice and we see events leading up to her own child Mimi being born and then a near future where she is on a desperate search for Mimi. This Then and Now approach adds tension as we try to piece together what has happened and why Kit is in such a state. That allows us to explore the world and how the sisters have changed with motherhood and societal pressures. This becomes more a thriller and we start to unpick the real truth of this world which is a truly terrible one to reside in. The question is what would you do to keep your head above water? You may not approve of the sister’s choices, but you will understand how they were led to them and how the society they lived in encouraged it.

Dark Lullaby is a disturbing piece of science fiction that verges on the horror which as I read was because it felt incredibly plausible. With lockdown we have already seen plenty of surveys that women have had the burden of childcare placed thon them at home with little support. We know every woman has been asked ‘are you having a child yet?’ and we’ve all heard from parents about people being told this is the right way to be a parent. Ho-Yen has merged those ideas and created a terrifyingly prescient cold world where children are a duty and choice is not allowed. Fans of Claire North and Black Mirror would be well advised to give this your attention…you may feel shivers long after reading it.