This book was incredible. So much so that if I’d managed to read it last year it may well have been in my top twenty. I’m always interested in dystopian fiction and the feminist overtones also interested me, especially in the current climate where reproductive rights are still at the centre of political debate in Poland, the USA and Northern Ireland. Don’t expect a full-on dystopian society with a philosophy behind it, the novel keeps to one area and everything else has a hazy, ephemeral feel. We’re introduced to Calla who is waiting for her ticket; the ticket that determines what she does for the rest of her life. When a girl reaches her first period, she reports to the station. Calla is seen by Dr A for an assessment and receives a ticket. A white ticket grants her marriage and motherhood. A blue ticket grants you a career, and freedom to do whatever you want with your life - but she’ll never be a mother. Calla was a blue ticket woman, but is now starting to question her fate.

Calla’s rebellion is against others deciding her fate. This is not that deep internal tick of the biological clock, Calla isn’t even sure she wants to be a mother. What she is sure about though, is that it should be her choice. Who decided it was okay for society to choose her life and her fate. She’s not in the right place to be a mother. Her boyfriend isn’t ready to have children, in fact he’s not really someone she’d ever have children with. Yet he has the right to decide whether to keep Calla, his blue ticket woman or exchange her for a white ticket holder.

The book becomes a road trip when Calla becomes pregnant. Blue ticket holders wear a locket identifying their status, so once their pregnancy is visible they become a target. ‘Emissaries’ have the job of hunting down these women who flout the rules so Calla goes on the run and her journey is eventful. She meets others who choose to live this itinerant lifestyle, like Lila and Marisol, with whom she finds a loving sexual relationship. These are women constantly on the move, living in the now and tasting the real feel of freedom. Of course there’s an inevitable end to her movements as she comes towards the birth of her child. This is described in such vivid detail, bringing a physical and emotional experience to life. It is a talented writer who can truly make the reader feel something, and in this case I felt Calla’s experience physically, The fact that she makes this the end of the book has meaning. It’s a move forward, an achievement of rebellion and choice, and possibly a sign of hope for the future.

A weird and wonderful book - I wasn't the biggest fan of The Water Cure by the same author but this book addresses some moral dilemmas that I could get on board with. In this world, whenever a woman menstruates for the first time, they are handed a ticket - either white or blue. The blue ticket is the way out of child-bearing - but of course, it's harder to accept the lifestyle you are delivered. A thoughtful and intriguing read that I would definitely read again.

I loved SM 1st novel 'The Water Cure' so was really excited to read this one. If anything I thought it better than the 1st, with shades of Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin & Joyce Carol Oates. It's a short book, a novella really & as such packs a huge emotional punch, asking the reader question free will, a woman’s right to choose and the tyranny of patriarchy. The sparse language & slightly otherworldly voice of the narrator is utterly convincing and very beautiful. This is a haunting story championing the strength of the human spirit. Recommended.

A haunting adventure with an intriguing premise.
Blue Ticket is set in a society which divides women via a random lottery system into two categories – blue ticket women and white ticket women. Those with a white ticket must reproduce whereas it is prohibited for a blue ticketed woman to do so. The novel follows Calla, a blue ticket woman, as she removes her contraception and sets of on a journey to escape her blue ticket life.
Feminist dystopia is quite an overcrowded genre at the moment but what sets this novel apart is its brilliant use of plotting. The action is perfectly paced meaning the story doesn’t get held down by the concept.
The book raises some interesting questions around motherhood, the right to choose and free will versus destiny alongside the impression of stigma around both sides of the argument and the idea that the grass is always greener.
I chose to read this book after really enjoying Sophie Mackintosh’s first novel ‘The Water Cure’. This second novel meets its high standards in many ways. It’s thought-provoking without been heavy handed, it’s got some truly eerie and haunting scenes and its full of beautiful, immersive prose. I really recommend.

Blue Ticket imagines a world in which women have their fate decided by a lottery ticket that is handed out to them when they start their periods:
A white ticket means they are chosen for marriage. They are chosen to bear and raise children.
A blue ticket means they are chosen to have a career and freedom. But they are to remain childless forever.

When Calla, a blue ticket women, decides to go against her fate and becomes pregnant, she has to run.

This book is a super interesting concept - I am always happy to read a bit of dystopian fiction! The idea of women only being able to have either a family or a career is really interesting, so I was super happy to see this explored in this book.
Blue Ticket barely has any dialogue, it is mostly 300 pages stream-of-consciousness. That made it a little bit hard to stay invested the whole way through. It also prevents the reader from really getting to know the various characters, which is why they remain very one-dimensional throughout the book.

Sophie Mackintosh is fast establishing herself as a fantastic writer of modern feminist thrillers. 'Blue Ticket' rings of a future that is eerily possible; with the same skill that she wrote her debut, 'The Water Cure', here she focuses on female relationships and the destructiveness and disconnect of men. A gripping read that leaves you short of breath. Definitely recommended.

Firstly I really like this cover. It totally grabbed my attention when I saw it. This storyline is totally different to what I normally read.

Calla lives with her dad. When her menstruation starts she’s taken to The Lottery. Given a blue or white ticket determines if they can have children or not. A blue ticket means she can’t have children. However what if she really does want a child?

This is a disturbing and uncomfortable read yet I couldn’t get enough of it.

It grew on me as I read, but I didn’t enjoy the writing style. It seemed too forced, too intentionally creative. I also thought the presentation of the blue and white characters was, unfortunately, so black and white that it was boring. I understand the intent, but the presentation was simplistic and at times annoying. Still, I did continue reading. It was entertaining, but not moving and not thought provoking.

Brilliant book. Loved the writing style, and the subject matter was eerie and reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale. Love Sophie's writing. Couldn't put it down.

Absolutely loved this book. The storytelling is beautiful and almost lyrical, full of raw emotion. I thought the narrative was very well done and the focus was in just the right place. Would highly recommend.

I had read Sophie’s debut novel and was excited to hear about the follow-up coming so soon. I’d read the blurb which explained a plot point which otherwise developed more succinctly, although still fairly early on in the novel. I enjoyed the simplicity of having just the one narrator as opposed to the three, four, more in the somewhat experimental The Water Cure.
I found Blue Ticket very thoughtful, from the character’s names - all new to me - to the process by which a girl granted either a blue or a white ticket proceeded with their lives. There wasn’t endless exposition - making sense since narrator Calla could only know in detail about the blue ticket way of life - and the lack of omniscient narrator left large gaps in this dystopian universe open to interpretation. It was unclear if some nightmare event had occurred, leaving dark forces to rise up and implement this system, or whether society had universally agreed to its imposition. It didn’t matter; this was Calla’s story.
The story kept me interested throughout. When Calla became pregnant this started a nine- month timer and we seemed to miss out large parts of the pregnancy, seemingly dipping in now and then for a few weeks with little explanation of what happened in the gaps we didn’t see. When the twist came at almost the very end, it wasn’t a horrifying development, but all the more satisfying for it: the blue and white tickets are assigned randomly, and are not a recognition of an individual girl’s suitability for motherhood or otherwise. It was all to chance and I felt sad learning this. I would absolutely recommend this book. It wasn’t long - I read it in two sittings across one day, and I needed to find out what happens to a blue ticket woman when she has a baby. The conclusion satisfied as much as it upset me.
The alternate world - I’ve no idea where it was set, or when - wasn’t incredibly dark. Sure, there were the emissaries and if you broke the law there was the hint of 1984-style re-education from Doctor A, but otherwise it seemed fairly benign. A man could certainly exist in that world and not be troubled by the ticket system. Sophie in this way smartly compares our world to that by indicating there are few consequences for men - R refuses to play the game, and we never hear from him again. I also enjoyed the lack of traditional dialogue combined with the Sally Rooney style of stating what was said without using speech marks and endless variations of muttered, exclaimed or shouted.

This was an intriguing premise, but the character's motivations were never clear--the worldbuilding was weak and if the book was trying to say something about reproductive choice and motherhood, it wasn't very clear.

Like Margaret Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale' published in 1985, there are things in Sophie Mackintosh's writing which seem scarily prescient. Indeed, the question at the heart of 'The Blue Ticket' (i.e. to what extent do women have control over their own bodies) is not only speculative, but for a lot of women is their day-to-day reality.
Mackintosh carries the conundrum of what is tantamount to the legal policing of a woman's private sphere through to its logical endpoint. That is to say, deciding who is 'worthy' of work and who is not. Who is 'worthy' of child rearing and who is not. Who is 'worthy' of choices and who is not. And in so doing, Mackintosh has written perhaps one of the most important political statements of her time. Not only up there with Attwood, but other satirists like Swift and More who worked in this thought-changing mode many centuries ago.

I really enjoyed Sophie Mackintosh's second novel. It follows in the footsteps of her previous novel. This feminist dystopian novel is reminiscent of the work of Margaret Atwood. I would definitely recommend this on-the-road journey from gendered bodily incarceration to attempted liberation.

What if women were forbidden from having it all?

In Blue Ticket, the follow up to her booker prize nominated debut, Sophie Mackintosh explores this question in a dystopian reality.

Here, at puberty, women are either assigned a blue or a white ticket which will define the course of their lives. A white ticket means motherhood, but a blue ticket means freedom.

But as the protagonist, Calla, discovers, freedom comes with limitations.

After a slow start this became a riveting read, and an interesting take on the fluidity of femininity and motherhood.

Calla’s fight for true freedom will stick with you for a long time.

Blue Ticket is a must read!

Even if I liked the style of writing I found this book boring and the story didn't keep my attention.
Some more detail and world building would have helped.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

A dark and chilling dystopian novel which begs the question, how far would you go to become a mother?
On the day of Calla’s first bleed, she is taken to the lottery to pick a ticket, but not in the way we know it. A white ticket and Calla will be destined to motherhood and family, or a blue ticket where she will be free from those responsibilities. Although she cannot explain why, or give voice to the feeling, after years of the freedom of the blue ticket, Calla yearns for more and is willing to risk everything for the baby her body so desperately craves.
Whilst this was a thoughtful and poignant exploration of a woman’s freedom to choose what she wants from her life, I found it disappointing that the Dystopian world Calla lives in wasn’t explored more - there is no further explanation of the structure and society other than the separation of blue and white tickets, which left me needing more.
The story was fairly short and moved at good pace, but the characters were all fairly twisted and hard to like so it’s certainly not one to pick up if you’re looking for something uplifting. However, if you’re after something clever, dark and original then this is a great choice!

This was an interesting premise but to be honest, it never grew passed that.

The main character is not fully realised she's just one want personified. The world is kept on a need to know basis but I actually could have used a bit more background. Is this an alternate universe to our own? An imagined future?

The main thing is there is no real sense of danger because the prose is flat and distancing. I was bored to be honest and I expected a lot of things going in but not that.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

A totalitarian government that tries to control their women isn't an innovative theme, but Mackintosh takes up the challenge to give us a story that is pedantic and yet, leaves you with more questions.

"That's how your life becomes a set thing, written and unchangeable. It was an object that didn't belong to me, and to wish for any other was a fallacy at best, treasonous at worst."

In this world, Women are divided into two groups via The Lottery - the ones with a White Ticket, who are 'allowed' to give birth and the ones with a Blue Ticket, who aren't supposed to even think of having a baby. Calla is a Blue Ticket holder, but there's a dark desire unfolding within her. She wants to experience motherhood but that would mean being banished from the world she built for herself, followed by shame and a life she is unaware if but is assured to be life-threatening.

Mackintosh plays with emotions- a woman who craves for something forbidden, a mother who would do anything to save her unborn child, a woman who wants something pure and fragile such as a baby and a family, a fugitive who desires intimacy and finally, a victim/prisoner who is forced to make decisions that goes against the fundamentals of motherhood.

'Blue Ticket' is riveting, questioning repeatedly about why women need to be kept chained to this rules and that, their free will comes at a massive cost. Calla's thoughts as she navigates through her current situation, her insights into a past that has taught her survival but in a very different manner and her interaction with other women in a similar situation is interspersed with a world that starves your curious mind which is constantly looking for clues and answers.

While Mackintosh delivers a powerful narrative, she fails to convince us to root for Calla. Motherhood might be enough to melt a woman's heart but the attachment to the characters and the sense of dread felt incomplete and vague.

If you get hung up on the ubiquitous presence of 'dystopian' in book reviews, particularly the feminist sub-genre, and can't really decide if a weird, sci-fi type of thing is for you, don't be put off. This is a brilliant road-movie/thriller of a book with moments that will leave you shocked and emotionally wrung-out. In part, this is because Mackintosh presents her 'alternate' world as anything but a writerly act of the artistic imagination. Yes, young women face state-ownership of their wombs and fertility; women are selected for child-bearing, whilst others are deemed free. And, yes, 'Emissaries' are the state-security, hunting down and banishing those 'Blue ticket' holders, identified by the lockets they wear around their necks, who flout the strict laws and become pregnant. But, this imagined world is grounded in the known and knowable.
The policies of the Democratic Unionist party in Northern Ireland on abortion, pro-life campaigners, male choices, the daily commonplaces of spiteful prejudice and the self-righteous attitudes of those who presume to judge: all this must seem like a pernicious lottery to women.In fact, in the novel, even the lottery appears a device of state to conceal the callous judgement of women as being fit or unfit for motherhood.
The narrator, Calla, is the beautiful/toxic sub-species in the taxonomy of women prescribed by the state. In her post-menarche phase she is assessed by Doctor A for maternal feelings and the unsentimental Calla receives the Blue ticket. Her partner is R, a man who has the right to abandon a Blue ticket woman for a White ticket holder to bear his children at the time of his choosing. Of course, the men, like R and Doctor A have the power of anonymity, whilst the women are known and vulnerable: Calla, Lila, Marisol. But, Mackintosh's defiance is implicit in these names associated with love, motherhood and rebirth.
Once, Calla's 'condition' is known to the state, Emissaries are activated, arrest is swift and banishment inevitable. But, the road-journey is utterly compelling as Calla endures a demeaning sexual encounter with a man, finds Lila, another woman on the run and Marisol, a woman with whom she experiences the consolation of loving physical intimacy.The author's achievement in this story is to depict women constantly in transit, recognising each other's plight, whilst struggling for self-determination and survival.
Then, at the heart of this novel is a tour de force of thrilling narrative, intense and emotional monologue and artistic invention as Mackintosh describes Calla's labour and birthing. It is unforgettable for its transposition of physical and mental experience into figurative language. Mackintosh is able to fuse the morbidity and beauty of physical reality with the hallucinatory nature of emotion in language that is enthralling. The story will take a thrilling turn when a shocking betrayal compels their fates.
In my experience, Mackintosh is in a small group of contemporary writers who are able to elicit pleasure and pain, both physical and emotional, with the use of language. Her figurative writing is arresting and distinctive; her use of the familiar like, "person of interest' is repurposed and creative. Recurring images like: 'the red tent', the smearing of blood and the 'edge of the woods' are connective tissue in the layers of meaning.
Ultimately, the ownership of fertility and the cauterising of a natural blood flow are instruments of the state in this important book. Yet, the story ends with a moment of birth and therein lies hope.