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m_a_j's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Suicide, and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Terminal illness, Grief, and Cancer
Minor: Blood, Medical content, Miscarriage, and Sexual content
milanaradic's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
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
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Suicide, and Cancer
rainbopagn's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I spend through this in about a day. Harpman’s prose totally drowns you in the story, a bit rambling a times and harshly blunt at others. You leave the book thinking about what makes you human. My one complaint is that we never learn our narrators name. I would have liked to see the women help name her given she was their child, whether they liked it or not.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, Confinement, Cancer, Police brutality, and Terminal illness
amyford's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide attempt, Confinement, Death, Suicide, Cancer, Dementia, and Suicidal thoughts
homosexualstudying's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
4.75
A beautiful writing style. a riveting and gripping concept. challenging and reflecting to read.
almost stopped reading because it got a bit too dark for myself, but i’m so glad i continued.
almost stopped reading because it got a bit too dark for myself, but i’m so glad i continued.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Suicide
Moderate: Medical content, Trafficking, and Cancer
nadiajohnsonbooks's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
In the realm of #speculativefiction I've read a lot of ambiguous endings. In this book, the ending is crystal clear, but the beginning... The beginning is one of the most ambiguous I've ever encountered
The unnamed protagonist is the youngest of 40 women in a cage. None of them remembers how they got there, and while most of them have some recollection of their life before, she was only a child when she was taken and has no memory if anything before the cage
One day, an alarm goes off and their captors flee
The door to the cage is ajar
The child and her companions must then navigate the surface world, which none of them recognize, and build amongst themselves a small society of women
They find other cages, but no survivors
The world Harpman creates is bleak, but it's fascinating to view it through the protagonist's eyes. She has a lot to say about what it's like to exist in a female body, but she (who has never known men) has no conception of gender beyond the limited view of the 39 women she was imprisoned with
She knows nothing of love, either familial or romantic, except what she sees in glimpses
It's important to note that the book was written in the 90s, and the conversations about gender identity that predominated then we're not as nuanced as they are today. Still, I find Harpman's exploration to be both thoughtful and thought provoking
Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, near my mom's hometown, in 1929 to a Jewish family that fled to Casablanca during WWII
Knowing the personal impact of the Holocaust on Harpman and her family makes the dystopian vision she constructed hit even harder
It wasn't always a pleasant book to read, but it will stick with me forever
The unnamed protagonist is the youngest of 40 women in a cage. None of them remembers how they got there, and while most of them have some recollection of their life before, she was only a child when she was taken and has no memory if anything before the cage
One day, an alarm goes off and their captors flee
The door to the cage is ajar
The child and her companions must then navigate the surface world, which none of them recognize, and build amongst themselves a small society of women
They find other cages, but no survivors
The world Harpman creates is bleak, but it's fascinating to view it through the protagonist's eyes. She has a lot to say about what it's like to exist in a female body, but she (who has never known men) has no conception of gender beyond the limited view of the 39 women she was imprisoned with
She knows nothing of love, either familial or romantic, except what she sees in glimpses
It's important to note that the book was written in the 90s, and the conversations about gender identity that predominated then we're not as nuanced as they are today. Still, I find Harpman's exploration to be both thoughtful and thought provoking
Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, near my mom's hometown, in 1929 to a Jewish family that fled to Casablanca during WWII
Knowing the personal impact of the Holocaust on Harpman and her family makes the dystopian vision she constructed hit even harder
It wasn't always a pleasant book to read, but it will stick with me forever
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Cancer, Death, and Confinement
Minor: Fatphobia
rachellen's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
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? It's complicated
5.0
**** SPOILERS AHEAD!****
This is possibly the best book I’ve ever read, so I am amazed to have found it randomly and not through recommendation. It is simply not spoken about enough!
The way that the story is narrated with such few answers yet so many questions leads you to find your own concocted explanations for human atrocity and cruelty such as unearthly beings or greater goods, yet the end of the story showed me that when humans cause pain to others there doesn’t need to be a reason why when the result is all the same.
The abandoned identical plains that the women roam somehow are not boring at all. I found myself excited when the lead found a book. It was the first time in 140 pages that she found any paper. I was shocked at how much I had found myself experiencing excitement at her finding what I think are obvious necessities, or background noise objects in my own life.
The ending line was what struck me the most, that the character could end it on such an informal, yet profound note: ‘It is strange that I am dying from a diseased womb, I who have never had periods and who have never known men.’ I interpreted this as a kind of scoff at the fact that this woman’s demise was at the cause of her womb, biologically caused by her birth gender, with which never once benefitted her or served her, other than in death. In a way, after leading such a life of captivity she found strength in her fellow women, an exact experience she would not have gotten if not for her matching gender that found her in that exact cage rather than one of men or another cage of which no one escaped due to lacking of the same luck of the guard’s dropped keys, to then be betrayed by her biological sex was so painful to realise. I found that remarkably unfair at first, yet after I read her tone as unperturbed at this inclination, I felt a lesson in her attitude towards her situation and history. She had lived the life she had left exactly as she wanted to or at least as much as she could have wanted to. That in itself was a victory against her dark, victimised past.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Blood and Death
Minor: Cancer
crybabybea's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
This was like an episode of The Twilight Zone. You're dropped into a dystopian, post-apocalyptic setting with no explanation. The narrator is unreliable due to her complete ignorance, having grown up pretty much entirely in an underground bunker with no human contact except for her 39 fellow prisoners, under guard 24/7. As the events progress, the reader gets more questions than answers, and just like The Twilight Zone, the ending leaves you with nothing but your own thoughts. Don't come into this book expecting crazy action or deep characterization.
It's a deceptively simple story with equally deceptively simple writing. This is the kind of book you can read over and over again and you will discover something new depending on where you are in your life at the time of reading. You can endlessly theorize about what might have happened or what could have gone differently.
For me, I really liked the exploration of loneliness and isolation. Our main character is different from her cellmates because she has absolutely no memory of the outside world or a life before the bunker. She often remarks that she doesn't even feel human because her brain works so differently from the others. I really connected with this story because of it and it made me reflect and think deeply. I think anyone who has experienced isolation or loneliness of any kind would feel similarly.
I also just really liked the tone of this book. It was eerie, disquieting, uncomfortable. The author feeds us threads of hope that turn into a disconcerting uneasiness by the end of the story. It felt lonely and empty in a really immersive way. As well, I liked how it differed from typical post-apocalyptic media. There are dark moments, but the author doesn't resort to brutality and shock factor to try and question humanity. She shows glimmers of hope and light, and shows how people come together and care for each other and give each other what they can when all other hope is gone. She makes you question what makes humanity, not what breaks it.
Just a really great example of what speculative fiction can be and how it can make a reader think and feel.
It's a deceptively simple story with equally deceptively simple writing. This is the kind of book you can read over and over again and you will discover something new depending on where you are in your life at the time of reading. You can endlessly theorize about what might have happened or what could have gone differently.
For me, I really liked the exploration of loneliness and isolation. Our main character is different from her cellmates because she has absolutely no memory of the outside world or a life before the bunker. She often remarks that she doesn't even feel human because her brain works so differently from the others. I really connected with this story because of it and it made me reflect and think deeply. I think anyone who has experienced isolation or loneliness of any kind would feel similarly.
I also just really liked the tone of this book. It was eerie, disquieting, uncomfortable. The author feeds us threads of hope that turn into a disconcerting uneasiness by the end of the story. It felt lonely and empty in a really immersive way. As well, I liked how it differed from typical post-apocalyptic media. There are dark moments, but the author doesn't resort to brutality and shock factor to try and question humanity. She shows glimmers of hope and light, and shows how people come together and care for each other and give each other what they can when all other hope is gone. She makes you question what makes humanity, not what breaks it.
Just a really great example of what speculative fiction can be and how it can make a reader think and feel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement and Death
Moderate: Cancer, Grief, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt
mandareads222's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Confinement, and Cancer
Moderate: Grief, Suicide, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, and Infertility
Minor: Alcohol and Violence
phoevincent's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Deportation, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Genocide, Suicide, Confinement, Death, Terminal illness, Forced institutionalization, and Gore