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4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
dark
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My mind has been blown. I mean, there's no other way to explain it.
It always amazes me how many perspectives you can attain just from reading. It's not every day that I close a book thinking, “Man, I never thought about it like that,” but when I do, you know it was a great book.
Jacqueline Harpman doesn't try to offer logical explanations. You could say that humans themselves are phenomena. We're walking contradictions. Harpman poses the question: What is humanity? What makes us human, even in the most dystopian scenario? When thirty-nine women and a girl are captured by masked men and forced to live in a bunker, what makes their humanity perisist?
Our main character is a young girl who has only known the bunker. She has no memories of the world before, and so this bunker is her home, although she knows she came from this "old world".
It all begins, a ripple effect, with one rebellious, thoughtful girl who starts to count her heartbeat.
It always amazes me how many perspectives you can attain just from reading. It's not every day that I close a book thinking, “Man, I never thought about it like that,” but when I do, you know it was a great book.
Jacqueline Harpman doesn't try to offer logical explanations. You could say that humans themselves are phenomena. We're walking contradictions. Harpman poses the question: What is humanity? What makes us human, even in the most dystopian scenario? When thirty-nine women and a girl are captured by masked men and forced to live in a bunker, what makes their humanity perisist?
Our main character is a young girl who has only known the bunker. She has no memories of the world before, and so this bunker is her home, although she knows she came from this "old world".
It all begins, a ripple effect, with one rebellious, thoughtful girl who starts to count her heartbeat.
I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extict. Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence. (Pg. 102)
She will be the last of her group. She is their executioner, their comapss, their clock, and, ultimately, the last of humanity. She is the one they rely on to end their lives peacefully, and continue their expeditions, to never waste her thoughts.
‘It's true,’ [Anthea] agreed. ‘You are the only one of us who belongs to this country.’
‘No, this country belongs to me. I will be its sole owner snd everything here will be mine.’ (Pg. 111)
The girl struggles not with the thought of being alone, as she finds comfort in adventure and the discovery of knowledge after so long of confinement, but in being a part of humanity. With no one to accept her as human, does it matter? What is “human” when you are the only one left in a strange world, if not just a meaningless word?
She ponders: what makes me real? Knowledge doesn't matter if nobody is there to consume it. Existence is nothing if someone else cannot prove it. So why does the girl, who doesn't even consider herself a woman, write her story down? Because, even if it is unlikely anybody will come along and read it, and that she may simply die and this strange world will go on without her, we are desperate to prove our humanity—especially to ourselves.
The alternation of day and night is merely a physical phenomenon, time is a question of being human and, frankly, how could I consider myself a human being, I who have only known thirty-nine people and all of them women? [...] If someone spoke to me, there would be time, the beginning and end of what they said to me, the moment when I answered, their response. The briefest conversation creates time. [...] As long as the sheets of paper covered in my handwriting lie on this table, I can become a reality in someone's mind. Then everything will be oliterated, the suns will burn out and I will disappear like the universe. (Pg. 160 & 161)
It is half of the reason she decides to walk this Earth for years: to find others, to share her incessant curiosity. And, just as the girl suggests, perhaps the urge to communicate your existance, to seek others out, is what makes us human.
We, as readers, follow the main character and share her hope. We were all hoping to turn the next page and find that she has uncovered a secret of her Earth, if it even is Earth, or one of the bunkers would have its cell door ajar instead of the thirty-nine bodies, some sort of explanation or evidence. We share her weariness for the endless questions she discovers. And we cannot blame her for tiring of adventure, for she has lost ever thing but not truly owned anything.
I felt a surge of grief, I, who have never known men, as I stood in front of this man who had wanted to overcome fear and despair to enter eternity upright and furious. (Pg. 122)
In just 200 pages, Harpman makes you think about the basics of our humanity. When stripped of human necessities and rights—privacy, physical contact, autonomy—and stuck in a constant cycle of fear, hope, and despair, what do we become?
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Wow. How this book was able to pair hope and curiosity with acknowlegding a bleak reality is unmatched. I feel like the narrator is a real person and while we both have questions about the world, sometimes in life you don’t get the answer, or the answers don’t make sense, and that is the way things work.