Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Are you okay?”

One of the books from the Clarke submissions pile that I put aside because it clearly wasn’t science fiction but looked like it might be worth reading anyway. A future world where women are likely to be witches, and are kept under strict social control by being compelled to marry; our protagonist’s mother vanished years ago, and the quest to find her, and what happens next, is part of the story. It’s a rather healthy contrast to Fritz Leiber’s awful Conjure Wife, which takes the same premise in a different direction. The concept is not so dissimilar to The Handmaid’s Tale, but I think it is sufficiently different to be interesting, and the society depicted is sufficiently close to our own to be scary. You can get The Women Could Fly here.

This was my top unread books acquired in 2023. Next on that pile is An Experiment with Time, by J. W Dunne.