A high-school state champion runner turned college dropout, Angela is working as a receptionist at an abortion clinic when a “heartbeat law” criminalizes most abortions statewide. In the ensuing upheaval, her boss is arrested for providing illegal procedures and the clinic is shut down. Angela has never been either an activist or a model employee. But she gets why her boss didn't follow the rules. She decides to go on a hunger strike in the boarded-up clinic, to protest her boss's arrest and everything that's been lost. Angela's protest is solitary, enraged, and a little messy, but it mobilizes a group of people around her.
Admirably resists the interpretive clarity the world craves from Angela ... Often funny, and pleasantly odd ... As Angela grows increasingly delirious with hunger, Plum fragments her prose into a kind of self-conscious poetry that strains beneath the weight of the plot ... But the pleasure of this book lies not in its plot or even in its characters (Angela is more voice than character), but in the intimacy of its setting.
