Belletrist's August 2020 Book Pick

"[Mackintosh's] writing is clear and sharp, with piercing moments of wisdom and insight that drive toward a pitch-perfect ending.... Blue Ticket adds something new to the dystopian tradition set by Orwell’s 1984 or Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale." (New York Times Book Review)

From the author of the Man Booker Prize longlisted novel The Water Cure ("ingenious and incendiary" (The New Yorker)) comes another mesmerizing, refracted vision of our society: What if the life you're given is the wrong one?

Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you marriage and children. A blue ticket grants you a career and freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back. But what if the life you're given is the wrong one?

When Calla, a blue ticket woman, begins to question her fate, she must go on the run. But her survival will be dependent on the very qualities the lottery has taught her to question in herself and on the other women the system has pitted against her. Pregnant and desperate, Calla must contend with whether or not the lottery knows her better than she knows herself and what that might mean for her child.

An urgent inquiry into free will, social expectation, and the fraught space of motherhood, Blue Ticket is electrifying in its raw evocation of desire and riveting in its undeniable familiarity.