Voting Day is a fascinating and moving series of interlinked stories, set against the backdrop of Switzerland's 1959 referendum concerning the right of female citizens to vote. However, the book is more about women's lives than women's rights. All the action in Voting Day takes place on a single day - Sunday, 1 February 1959. The novella is broken up into five parts - one each telling the stories of Vreni, Margrit, Esther and Beatrice, and a short epilogue, set a year later. Voting Day is an engrossing read, telling the stories of four resilient women and the challenges they face in their lives. While their stories are quite distinct, elements of each will resonate with, or at least evoke sympathy from, the reader. The level to which each woman contributes to and is impacted by the prevailing socio-economic conditions highlights the idiocy of excluding an entire half of the adult population from political engagement. Clare O'Dea's direct but nuanced writing style evokes a strong sense of history and place. Like its predecessors in Fairlight Books's exquisitely-packaged Fairlight Moderns series, Voting Day is a thought-provoking and quietly beautiful read. I'd recommend it to any reader interested in women's lives and mid 20th century settings, and certainly not limited to those with a specific interest in the worldwide suffragist movement. My thanks to the author, Clare O'Dea, publisher Fairlight Books and NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review this stimulating title in the lead-up to its release on 1 April 2022.

The prospect of change being dangled in front of you while remaining slightly out of reach is a hurtful thing, and that is exactly what Voting Day covers - the events of a day in February 1959 when men were given a choice to give women the vote. I know very little about Switzerland, and even less about Switzerland before the 21st century - and I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. I am frequently hesitant with regard to reading books which cover multiple perspectives - however these four intertwined tales drifted so effortlessly into each other that I found myself a little heartbroken over some of these changeovers. As well as covering multiple people's encounters on the day of the vote, the book often dips into fragments of the past - and does so gracefully. A lovely read about the strength of women and their relationships with each other that was simultaneously uplifting and poignant.

February 1959. Switzerland has decided on a referendum to give women the right to vote and today is voting day. Once more, the women of the country have to depend on men to choose ‘’what is right and proper’’ for them… This novella is a quiet chronicle of how four women from different social backgrounds experience not only the day of the referendum but the circumstances that have defined their lives. A mother travels to Bern to meet her daughter who has found herself threatened by a despicable man, a young woman tries to find the means to provide for her son aided by a hospital administrator who is a fervent supporter of the campaign. In the faces and stories of Beatrice, Margrit, Vreni and Esther, an eternity of injustice, neglect, oppression, abuse and sheer tyranny is depicted. Motherhood and womanhood. Lack of opportunities and impossible choices. Life on the periphery of society because that is what the other half of the population has dictated. Speaking in strictly literary terms, I was not impressed. The writing is simple, a bit dry at times, the dialogue ‘’sounds’’ jarring and the characters are nothing we haven’t seen before. But sometimes even books that can be called ‘’average’’ must be deemed necessary reads. Why? Because Switzerland decided to grant the vote to the women of the country in 1971 (which is unthinkable…) Because we do not have the luxury to take anything for granted anymore.