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“In my imaginary cell, I had to stand up, and now, I had to smile and defy them.��

…Can true freedom exist without understanding? I’m still not sure.

This may be the first book I’ve ever read that has genuinely made me want to put it down at a few points because I felt so disturbed, so shaken. Forty women are kept in an underground bunker, caged, and watched over by a series of guards on a seemingly random rotating schedule. The lights are always on, they cook their own food, the guards do not speak with them, and one of them, our narrator, is unlike the others. She has no memories from a past life, too young to remember any time she may have spent on Earth (view spoiler)[(whether this story is set on Earth is frequently questioned but left unconfirmed) (hide spoiler)], and is truly a product of this new alien landscape that the women find themselves in upon their escape to the surface.

Something that continually struck me was how the narrator doesn’t see herself as fully human. In some ways she’s correct �� she has bypassed socialisation, has been raised devoid of culture or society, and has no memories of the ordinary life the other thirty nine women speak about. She is alien among them and at first resents them, but the author carefully describes her integration into their group without sacrificing her uniqueness. The narrator coming to realise she was incorrect in her assumptions about most of the women and seeking out connections with them, most importantly with Anthea, was one of the most rewarding parts of the novel, and felt very human to me.

Another note of interest was how the narrator was described by everything she lacked. She claims nothing has ever happened to her nor will anything ever happen to her, but we know she’s wrong because things do happen to her. She has never known men, she has no name, nothing has happened to her and she’s not sure she can call herself human. It begs the question of what it is, then, to qualify as human �� apparently simply surviving, simply having lived, isn’t enough. I don’t have a conclusion here, really, and neither does the novel. It introduces so many questions about what it means to live, to love, and to be free, but it answers very few questions regarding the immediate circumstances of the story. We, like the narrator, never do know what’s really happened and why. We’re left with just as many questions as she is, and maybe that’s why it was such a difficult read �� we really do assume her place in this story, ignorant of everything and waiting anxiously, hoping desperately for some kind of revelation and discovery that never arrives.

This hasn’t been a review so much as my musings, but I don’t want to leave anyone thinking this isn’t a hopeful book. There is something defiant about the control the narrator assumes upon her own life once she’s free of the bunker, something human and resilient about her quest for knowledge, sometimes for the understanding and sometimes just for the sake of it. We all try and create illusions of power and hope in desperate situations, something the narrator mocks the other women for initially when really, she does no differently.

I’ll probably re-read this at some point and my thoughts might change. I think this is a book that needs to be sat on for a while.