The Gate to Women's Country / Sheri S. Tepper / 1988 / 278pp

I read this first in 09 but it's a twist novel (as in, the whole story goes along, then in the last 40 pages you learn something intriguing about the society in which it is set which makes you want to re-read the whole thing looking for clues). So, on my clue expedition I discovered that Tepper isn't nearly as good a writer as she is a storyteller (or perhaps I do not have the encyclopedic knowledge of the Trojan War and related art which is a major theme in the book). There aren't enough clues to guess the twist in the book. She hints at it enough that you know something is up, but there's no way to gather enough info about the twist to learn the real secret.

The story, however, is wonderful. It is the future and society as we know it has destroyed the world, ridding it with radiation hotspots. A group of women have begun running daughtertowns (named "Mollyburg," Emmaville," etc.) and in these walled towns everyone is devoted to survival and knowledge; most of their poetry/art is pulled from Greek classic theatre, but they subvert all the tropes so that the women's sorrow is at the forefront (instead of men's heroic victories). All men-- except those willing to submit to women's rule as houseservants-- live in ultra-vicious "garrisons," supposedly in existence to guard the towns, but in reality the women are controlling everything, secretly. The method of this control is the twist so I haven't given away anything major here. The world she has created is internally consistent and you actually care about the people in her novel and kind of feel bad for them living in such a crap place. Despite the lack of twist-clues, it's an amazing novel.