Halfway to Free

Out of Line collection

By: Emma Donoghue

Narrated by: Samira Wiley

Raising a family is the ultimate luxury as the human race teeters on the brink of extinction in this visionary short story by Emma Donoghue, the bestselling author of Room.

Miriam was raised in a society without children. To offset the devastation of climate change, state-of-the-art birth control has made daycares and playgrounds things of the past. As tempting as the government inducements are to remain child-free, Miriam’s curiosity about the people who “drop out” of society to become parents grows. When she finds a like-minded partner, she must choose between the rewarding comforts she knows and the unknowable mysteries of being a mother.

Emma Donoghue’s Halfway to Free is part of Out of Line, an incisive collection of funny, enraging, and hopeful stories of women’s empowerment and escape. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

Audible narration by Samira Wiley (The Handmaid’s Tale)

©2020 Emma Donoghue (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Vision of the future of childbirth/rearing

Not every woman wants a child to be considered whole. Definitley a one aided view of the future

Two thumbs down

Sadly,This book did not Hold my attention at all! It was very hard to get into.The story line and premise Not that good I guess they all can't be winners.

definitely different

I didn't hate or dislike but I definitely didn't love or even like.

narration: pretty good. the whole thing was just a so-so experience.

Original dystopia

The last children were born 30 years ago and the world is trying to reduce overpopulation. The stated goal is 3 billion people, the current population is at 6 billion. In the last 30 years the probation had already shrunk by 3 billion, halfway there. Yet Miriam and Ned have a yearning to have a child and to give up being "free" individuals. What would the consequences be?

compelling short story about future where pregnancy is socially unacceptable due to population

This was a middling one of the Out of Line stories for me, got and kept my interest and had some particularly poignant bits, but I still wanted to "just get through it" so played it at 1.20