Calla has been singled out for one sort of life, but yearns for another in Sophie Mackintosh's Blue Ticket. Finding friendship in adversity, she goes on a journey of survival. Part the Handmaid's Tale, part Robinson Crusoe, this is a terrific book, where you will really care about its unlikely heroine. A worthy follow up to the Booker Prize nominated The Water Cure.

Following her Booker-prize nominated The Water Cure which received mixed reviews from the blogging community, Sophie Mackintosh is back this year with her latest offering, Blue Ticket. I have a feeling this one is going to split readers further, and I'm not sure where I stand. The Water Cure, while strange, I found hypnotic and compelling reading. Something in it resonated with me, but this one didn't have the same impact.

Mackintosh's dreamlike prose and complex feminist concepts are back in full force with this latest release. While The Water Cure looked more at men and women's relationships in general, this one is more about one woman's relationship with her own body and with motherhood. In Blue Ticket, every woman is subject to a 'lottery' when she gets her 'first bleed'. This will determine whether she is a White Ticket - deemed worthy of motherhood, a family and all that comes with it - or Blue Ticket - destined for a child-free life of freedom.

Our protagonist, Calla, received a Blue Ticket in her teens, and so her future is decided. She is told to embrace the freedom and independence her ticket offers, finds herself a successful job and builds a life divided between work, wild parties and flings with no strings attached. But things can never be that black and white, and as Calla grows older she wants more. So she breaks the rules.

I have mixed feelings about this book. For a start, it's bizarre, it's quite graphic - there's really no holds barred and Mackintosh invites us into the inner workings of Calla's mind and body. I guess everyone will relate to it differently, and I think being a childless 30-year-old meant I struggled to understand Calla's overwhelming urge. And yet some part of me can - because I think the heart of this story comes down to control; to being forced what to do with your own body from an early age.

"When I thought about burning my life to the ground, which I was thinking about increasingly often, I wondered whether there were white-ticket women who wanted to burn theirs to the ground too. To be alone and unbeholden to all, and to find the glory in it."

The lottery and all that followed was a fascinating concept but unfortunately wasn't explored enough - there's a lack of world-building on this stellar concept and only snatches of how the world operates once the rules are broken. What Mackintosh does brilliantly is create a feeling - both Calla's urges to break from the status quo and that stifling feeling of isolation and lack of control as she goes on the run from the authorities. It's an atmospheric, hypnotic read from the author and, while I didn't love it, I'll still be looking out to see what she does next.

What does it mean to be a mother? Who has the right to be one?
As soon as she gets her first period, Calla is taken to the lottery house where she will receive her ticket: white for a life as a mother; blue for childlessness. The ticket is then placed inside a locket worn around her neck. If you get a blue ticket you are sent out alone, with the minimum of provisions, to find your way to a town or city where, if you make it, you will be assigned a job.
Calla gets a blue ticket.
It would be hard for me to say more without spoiling the plot. I was completely gripped by the novel, reading it in one sitting over a few hours. For those who enjoyed her previous novel, The Water Cure, you won’t be disappointed. This is familiar territory from an alternate angle. Individual freedom and who polices it are at the heart of Blue Ticket as much as The Water Cure. Young people are abandoned to adulthood, cast out from their homes to find their own way; given a coming of age ritual if you will. But the girls are restricted in their choices. Their reproductive abilities decided by the state, managed and policed heavily by well-meaning doctors and emissaries. Unsurprisingly, the echo of Atwood’s speculative fiction is a gentle whisper across the book as we explore Calla’s attempt to fight back, to revolt and choose a future for yourself.
A fast and gripping read, Blue Ticket is sure to be as successful as her debut.

Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh is an ambitious novel about women’s reproductive rights and choices.

Oh, this is a shame; Blue Ticket is a disappointing second novel from Sophie Mackintosh. Her debut, The Water Cure, was utter magnificence; a deftly crafted nuanced story of sisters who have grown up on a remote island without the presence of men in their lives. However, that well-developed world creation filled with a fascinating set of characters and believable plot is missing in Blue Ticket.

In this novel, we are set in a world where young girls are allocated firm categories at puberty: to be given a white ticket means that you are marked out for motherhood and compulsory babies, a blue ticket means that you must remain childless. And these responsibilities are policed to the nth degree.

Only quite why the world has introduced such rigorous inflexible categorisation is unclear; I certainly can’t think of a reason why that would be. And that the book neve gets its head round this is a gaping chasm that undermines the plot. Feminist speculative fiction is everywhere right now, and some great ones at that (incl. The Water Cure) but a key requirement in this genre is internal coherence and there is none here. In fact, it is exacerbated by the fact the once young girls are given blue tickets, they are immediately thrown out of civil society altogether literally; they are put on the streets, thrown out into the woods with only their wits to survive.

But why?

We never find out. All we have, instead is Calla. She is our (approximately) 30-year old blue-ticketed narrator. She leads a shallow, unfulfilling life so decides to become pregnant – against all the rules – and give birth to a child.

A strong plotline with plenty of opportunity for conflict but, sadly, the book displays so little of that as it quickly sets into an endless internal monologue from Calla. And this goes on for pages and pages and pages.

As a result, we lose interest as readers, remain perplexed at plot holes, get increasingly alienated from the narrator’s obsessive self-interest and are never the wiser on why Calla rally wants a baby. I sense that Sophie wanted to examine themes of male violence, patriarchal structures and even nature vs nurture (if you are commanded to have no children, does this shape your personality without you realising it?)

The book meanders away for about 200 pages, only in the last 50 or so the plot gaining some complexity but how many will still continue to be reading at that point, I am unsure.

This book though has not dissuaded me from wanting to read more from Sophie. I sense in Blue Ticket a book hurried to market before the ideas and plot had been fully developed into a well-rounded novel. A touch of pressure from publishers to meet demand generated from The Water Cure? Possibly. Sophie remains an obvious talent and I hope she is given more time to fully flesh out her subsequent novels.

This novel takes place in a very strange nightmarish world. A world , like our own, but the rules have changed. The right for a woman to have a child no longer exists - the powers that be choose by lottery to decide which woman may bear a child. A blue lottery ticket means the woman has the ‘freedom’ to get a job and live in a city; however, an IUD coil is fitted as she is to live a childless freedom. A white lottery ticket means the woman is taken away to bear children.
The book centres around Calla who has a blue lottery ticket which is held in a locket on a her necklace. Calla rebels against the system that is controlling her choices, wondering why she was chosen to have a blue ticket, what did she do that made her get a blue ticket. The story is clinical and harsh and whilst some questions are answered, as you would expect from this type of novel, many remain unanswered.
This is a complex, thoughtful feminist novel.

This is such a stunning, compelling and beautifully written book. Sophie Mackintosh's voice and world-building feel so utterly believable and immersive, and it's the first book I've been able to absorb myself in since lock-down. Mackintosh is a true talent and this book deserves every bit of praise and all the accolades that her debut, The Water Cure, received. I cannot recommend it enough. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

3-4 stars

This is Calla’s story, in an unnamed country, place or time. She lives with her father until her first menstruation and then is taken with other girls to The Lottery where she receives a blue ticket which is placed inside a locket. She is also painfully fitted with an IUD coil and dispatched to the city to live a childless life of freedom. White ticket girls go on to be able to produce children. The states will is enforced by Emissaries so there is no way of avoiding your fate. She eventually works in a lab and very much like a lab rat she has to tell her thoughts to Dr A. However, Calla has other ideas about her destiny and she’s out to make her own choices. This leads to punishment and banishment and a dangerous journey to try to get to the border and freedom. Along the way she meets a few other women in a similar situation. Calla is the storyteller.

This is a very strange, possibly even weird book and it’s very unsettling. Calla narrates the story in an unstructured way which I imagine is deliberate as in every other way in this world there is rigid structure. However, that makes it hard to read. Calla is very difficult to understand and she makes it very hard to empathise. She seems robotic, almost dead externally but internally she is something else which is very dark and unfathomable. She appears to have no maternal instincts whatsoever so her desire to have a child either comes from some baser instinct over which she has no control or is an act of rebellion. She is told she can’t have a child so sets about demonstrating that it’s her choice to do so. She’s very disconnected and even with Dr A with whom she has something resembling a relationship she’s playing some sort of game to her own rules. This is a harsh, clinical book of a dystopian world and it’s unrelenting with no soft edges. As you read you have so many questions to which there are no answers - this is the way it is in this place, there is no perceived rationale.

Overall, this is probably a Marmite book that some will not like and others who will admire the idea and the way it is written. It’s very hard to find any empathy because Calla doesn’t let you. At its heart it’s about lack of choice and free will as Calla sets out to prove that it is her body and her decision to do with it what she wills. It’s a very different book which has to be a positive.

That sound you hear is me screaming. I'm screaming because Sophie Mackintosh is such a great fken writer. I'm screaming because her writing reaches in and scrapes itself along your bones and makes you want to sink into the earth and walk into the water and be made of fire.

Yes, it's a dystopia so the Atwood takes will follow but maybe we can just not. Also, why are there so many assholes on Goodreads. Chill out, friends. You don't have to leave shitty reviews. You could stick your head out the window instead. Make something nice to eat. Have a bath.

It's about a society where women are given tickets (blue or white) that permit them to be mothers or not. It's about being a women in that world, this world, any world. It's about women's bodies and women's power.

For me, mostly, it hits home about motherhood and about occupying this (woman's) body and what comes with that. All the statements we make about having or not having children even though we are not trying to make statements we are just trying to live our lives. Women's bodies are political whether we want them to be or not. We are always judged about the lack or the having or the way we have. It's exhausting.

If you liked this read Sheila Heti's Motherhood.

I enjoy Sophie Mackintosh's writing and I think the concept for this is a really intriguing one, In both this novel and her previous one, The Water Cure, Mackintosh manages to blend a dystopian idea with a vivid real world in a compelling way that does not ever become a gimmick. The ethical questions she asks made me shiver: is it okay to take away a woman's choice to have children? What happens when you make a woman's body a crime?

This is beautifully written and thought provoking, but I struggled a bit with the lack of clarity over what was actually going on. The concept is that, when young women begin to menstruate, they are sent to a centre where they are given either a blue ticket (meaning they are considered 'free' of obligations to have children and will be able to have careers) or a white ticket (meaning they will get married and have children). I appreciate the author probably didn't want to interrupt her narrative by over-explaining anything, but I could have done with more world building in order to understand how this situation came about, how it has impacted on people, and what exactly the purpose is of the strange mission or journey the young women have to undertake before they find somewhere to settle.

In this dystopian tale we are told of her life by Calla. When girls reach their first period they are summoned to an official centre where they are subjected to a medical then are asked to take part in a lottery. Some will receive a white ticket, but Calla, like most, will win a “blue ticket” that she will place in a locket bequeathed by her mother. She will then say goodbye to her father, be given a small survival pack and will be advised to head for a city somewhere to “the South”. When we see her 18 years later, she lives and works in a settlement for “blue ticket” women in the City, life is seemingly good, she has a job, house, new lover. But then decides she wants more choice and that will involve having a child.
As the tale unrolls we are introduced to this strange world that is similar in some respects to some places now, but on examination has distortions and differences. White ticket women are allowed to marry and have children – albeit there might be increased risk to this. Blue ticket women are not supposed to have children so have been implanted with a contraceptive device. They are medically monitored for both their physical and medical condition to ensure they meet the “no pregnancy” rule. When Calla finds herself pregnant and will not agree to an abortion she is warned that this will not be tolerated and unless she escapes to an “another” place outside the zone – that apparently lies a distance to the north, she will be tracked down and dealt with. On her route north - which forms a substantive part of this novel - she will meet others who will help or hinder her. But she has to test herself both mentally, physically and emotionally in a way that has not been necessary since her original testing trip south as a teenager.
This is a simple hypothesis to underlie this tale, but it asks many questions. Do we really have choices or is life determined by chance? Even if the first “choice” has been made, should one be expected to stand firm by it? But as Calla travels north we see a spectrum of seemingly casual but much more invidiously destructive tally of ways of life. With the two “choices” for females established when they are still children as the social norm. with little variation allowed, and enforced by both specific watchers and the wider community. The requirement is for women to stay within their specific role of blue (and of course white too). We are shown potential for serious sexual violence against “blue ticket” women seen to be acting outwith their parameters. Women are expected to police themselves but medication either by drugs, or casual acceptance of heavy alcohol intake to ensure compliance seems to be part of the picture. Serious ignorance of the lives of others – or indeed the nature of pregnancy and childbirth, makes compliance the easiest choice for most.
It is hard to say more without spoiling this subtle, multi layered and deeply considered parable. It is a compelling read that draws the reader along at speed. But it also asks a number of questions about compliance, choice, respect for others and the price of loyalty. When would you sell another down the river to get what you want? What price would you pay for friendship? Who can you trust in a dark place? Is making choices about the actual result – or just about establishing the right to make a choice? This novel resonates through the brain for ages after. A re-read allows you to recognise the placement of clues as to the nature of the place that through “ignorance” might have passed you by. But by then you might know that allowing ignorance is a form of control. And by then you might be asking deeper questions about the other people Calla came into contact with and the nature of their collusion, or lack of morality or care for others. You might not like what you read here – but it asks serious questions of the reader and challenges their basic values.

Thanks to Penguin Books (UK) and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The 'Blue Ticket' has much to recommend it to a reader looking for something a little different. Sophie Mackintosh's dystopian novel, set in the near-future, constitutes a profound meditation on women's reproductive rights. Indeed, you may want to scrap that last bit, because in this novel the individual and collective female body is the sole property of the body politic. This includes a woman's capacity to choose whether she has children. In this chilling vision of regressive femininity, the State determines who will become mothers. through a lottery held on the same day as a young girl begins to menstruate. A blue ticket denotes a life free of motherhood, the opposite is true if a white ticket is drawn. It should be somewhat taken for granted that the erosion of boundaries which constitutes the separation of State from the individual's capacity to free-will, in this case the right to reproduce, raises some profound questions about the so-called 'naturalness' of motherhood as a biological imperative and the rights of governments to reconfigure motherhood as something that is profoundly impersonal - subsumed to needs of government and country. This is all rather topical, given ongoing debates about abortion in Western countries - that continuous, contested battleground that endlessly sees individual rights pitched against secular and religious ideologies, vying for control of the fraught battleground of female reproductive rights. We debate endlessly whether the notion of motherhood as universally natural is a social construction that excuses women's participation in the public sphere and broader enfranchisement, or something that is 'naturally' inbuilt in the female DNA. Both arguments seem to co-exist, somewhat contradictorily, in contemporary debates about the propagation of the species - even in what many view as a post-feminist world. Sophie Mackintosh draws on many of these themes in her own exploration of the boundaries between the public and private sphere - if such a thing can be said to really exist. Choice is the word du jour of her engrossing, dark vision of female agency in an authoritarian regime. I enjoyed it immensely as a verbal 'shot-in-the-arm' to young women everywhere who seem to view feminism as somewhat anachronistic in the 21st century. The war has been won, they'll say, women and men are now equal in a substantive and discursive sense, they'll say. Well maybe not. This is the strength of 'Blue Ticket' - it makes you think about how we have really come in the battle for female liberation. Yet, the ideological thrust of Sophie Mackintosh's novel seems to be missing. This is perhaps due to it being a rather short book. It does, however, lack the context of a world-view that would elevate this novel from a great read to a truly exceptional one. The questions: why does the State feel the need to limit motherhood to a randomly chosen few? Is this ideological or a response to demographic change? These questions feed into the representations of a particular configuration of masculinity and femininity as conveyed in the book. For example: Is Mackintosh making a broader point about feminism? Is this an anti-feminist diatribe against women who let their reproductive window wither and die. or, a broader statement about how individual rights can be deferred to the perceived needs of the State? Specifically, this relates to the ongoing relevance of feminism in what is perceived as a post-feminist world.

Blue Ticket is a dystopian story, probably set in a near future, where women's fertility is controlled by the state. Young women are subjected to a lottery where the majority are allocated a blue ticket - they will not have children and will wear a mirena IUD to make them infertile. A few receive a white ticket and a life of motherhood awaits. The blue ticket girls are told they are the lucky ones, free to have fun, free from responsibilities, free to pursue a career.

Calla receives a blue ticket and keeps it in a locket around her neck - as the law requires. But after a few years of freedom, she starts to yearn for a child.

On the one level, this is a story of a young woman who tries to escape over the border to a land of choice. It's a game of cat and mouse as the authorities try to close in on her. She meets others along the way who also fail to fit neatly in their pre-ordained roles. She makes friendships and encounters betrayals. It's a British Handmaid's Tale.

On a deeper level, it makes us feel the injustice of this forced choice when so many women in our own society face a choice between a career or motherhood - and some have that choice forced upon them through biology to bad luck. We see that people's attitudes changeover time; what may seem like the right choice at one point of life may no longer look like the right choice at another. And then there is the nature of choice - having one thing and losing another. For some people, there is no right choice - they want both mutually exclusive options.

There are some plot imponderables. Why would the state choose to control fertility in this way? Why would the state stop women emigrating? How does the population remain stable when most women are allowed blue tickets? Then there's the question of men. How can all the men seem to have access to relationships with white ticket women when there are so few to go around?

But I guess these are relatively unimportant practicalities when the primary purpose is surely to make the reader dwell on matters of choice and destiny. Blue Ticket does handle that well. Moreover, there is enough character development for the reader t0 care about Calla and her fate.

Blue Ticket is a short novel, not perfect and not as unique as I suspect it tries to be. But it is a worthwhile and enjoyable addition to the feminist canon.

I remember reading the Water Cure a year or so ago and being blown away. It was one of those books that grabs you from the beginning (always good!) and keeps you wondering what will happen next because it isn't like anything else you've read. In many ways, the same can be said of Blue Ticket, a dystopian novel that looks at what happens when we let society decide who we are...and then disagree.
As with many of these novels, the focus is very much on the way women are viewed in society and how men seem to have a very big say in how we behave and how our bodies are treated. Here, Sophie Mackintosh looks at motherhood, and who gets to decide what makes a good mother. Calla, her central character, gets a blue ticket in the lottery, the day after she has her first period.
At first, she's relieved. It means freedom (as long as she can make it to the city). As she grows older, however, she starts to realise maybe freedom isn't all it's cracked up to be. She wants things she isn't allowed to have, and starts to ask who decided just what type of person, and what type of mother, she would be. The question then becomes what she is going to do about it. And what the authorities will do in response.
It's hard to say more without spoilers. What I will say is that I became totally engrossed in Calla's journey and desperate for her to succeed. Blue Ticket is well written with a compelling story. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can highly recommend it.

If you enjoyed Sophie Mackintosh's "The Water Cure' or Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale', then you'll enjoy this.

Set in a dystopian but highly recognizable future, on starting their periods, women are taken to the lottery office where they are given blue tickets or white tickets. A white ticket means they have been allocated the role of child-bearer, to give birth to a child for a man, who will become the parent seen out and about with the precious and revered baby. A blue ticket means a life of 'freedom' - fitted with a coil, there is no risk of conception, and the girl is liberated and free to live their own life.

This is a story of thoughts and feelings - what if the blue tickets feel the desire of motherhood, what if they do become pregnant? We follow one such blue ticket, Calla, on her journey navigating these emotional and physical milestones.

Harsh and sobering, this is an interesting and enjoyable read.

This is a rather disturbing novel about a state that has introduced a lottery system - those with white tickets will be mothers and those with blue are sterilised, albeit reversibly. Blue ticket follows a blue ticket as she seeks to break free of a system where choice is taken away, and to rebel is to become a fugitive. Mackintosh slowly builds a world that feels realistic, giving additional information as needed rather than in exposition dumps, but arguably doesn’t populate it with characters that feel as real - this may be deliberately alienating as the lead becomes increasingly focused on her own circumstances.

This was a good read, but not as powerful - or as memorable - as The Water Cure, which i loved.

Blue Ticket is a feminist dystopian tale of love and loss, reflecting on the pressures felt by women to fit into their given or perceived role in society.

I was interested to see how Sophie Mackintosh's writing had progressed since The Water Cure, which I enjoyed but felt lacked depth, and though Blue Ticket is undeniably gripping and the concept is fascinating, I feel like she's not quite reached her peak yet.

Like The Water Cure, the writing in Blue Ticket feels superficial, as though we've barely scratched the surface. I wanted to know more about all the aspects of the story that were quickly explained away or outright ignored: how the lottery came to exist, how Calla's parents dealt with the system, what they did after Calla left and how they coped with her absence, how the enforced contraceptive system worked (doesn't the coil have to be replaced every five years?). This book could have been twice the length and not suffered for it, particularly the final third which felt very rushed.

Having said all that, I did enjoy this book a lot. The writing is immersive and evocative, and I will continue to pick up anything Sophie Mackintosh releases in the future.

My favourite book of 2018 was Sophie Mackintosh's The Water Cure. It is still a book that stays with me now. So when I received a chance to read an arc of her new novel I was so excited and jumped at the chance. I dropped my planned tbr and started it straight away.
It sticks with the themes of female dystopia which was explored so well in The Water Cure.
The day a girl gets her first period she is taken to the station to partake in a lottery which will determine her future. If you receive a blue ticket you are free and not permitted to have children. If you receive a white ticket you are set for a life of child bearing. These tickets are worn at all times in a locket around the neck. You are then sent out into the country to make your own way and never see your family again.
When Calla was a teenager she received a blue ticket. But as she grows older she wants a baby, wants to know what it feels like. She becomes pregnant and her whole life is turned upside down. She is banished. White ticket women won't accept her and blue ticket women feel betrayed by her. But she realises there are women out there like her, if you look hard enough. And they join forces to try and make it to the border where they will be able to live with their children. I didn't get the character of Calla. I don't really know why she wanted the child as she wasn't a maternal, loving person and did so many self destructive things while she was pregnant. This was an uncomfortable read but it did get better when Calla becomes part of a secret community of pregnant blue ticket women. But even then it was still a deeply dark novel with no light at the end of the tunnel.

This was page turning and fascinating, I devoured it in a day and loved the style, the prose and the concept. A long hard look at womanhood, motherhood and humanity, it has things to say, but with a corking plot to match.