**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, theref**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on suicide, euthanasia, physical deterioration due to illness, & others.
The narrator without a name writes to us on papers hidden in a bunker, assumedly kept there to house the invisible puppeteers that rule the world she walks through; ignorantly holding inventory of the bushes, water streams & void of life that crosses her path throughout her daily journey. Yet, at the end, when she has learnt to read, write & reflect on everything that has transpired in her life—desolate, solicitous, hollow, & muted—the narrator has no ill will for the questions that have exceeded the roster of a human’s ability to carry things left unsaid.
In this book, the reader finds a story from the perspective of a person without a name as she recalls the years of her life spent in a world that she cannot understand nor are there clues to explain it. This leaves this review a difficult one for me to embark on writing. Where is there a solid place to start when critiquing a piece of work that has at once beautifully painted a landscape that the mind automatically fills with the normalcy we see in our own, yet reminds us swiftly & without qualms that everything we cherish is no longer available to us in this realm? How does one put into words what Harpman has exceedingly done with the human vernacular; communicating in such stellar fashion the empathy one feels for familiarity in such extreme & unfathomable situations?
As always, I shall attempt to start at the beginning, as there seems no other place to commence.
The narrator of this book is introduced to the reader as she nears the end of her memoir. Having found herself in what we come to recognize & know as a bunker of sorts, she sits within the rooms known to her throughout the later years of her life as a home, & recollects the events that led her to where she is. Having been taken from an original place that she cannot call to mind, alongside 39 other women, the narrator grows to the age of about 14 or 15 in a prison cell. Though it seems that Harpman has described a prison cell, the likes of which I cannot truly call to mind, she has given the reader sufficient details to understand that the place in which all these women live is nothing but scarce & demeaning.
This is the first point of praise that I would like to give Harpman. Her uncompromising & unfaltering ability to describe a world that appears—for all intents & purposes—desolate, while simultaneously giving the reader the ability to illustrate a world that is large & overwhelming, is superb. The words employed throughout this book & the prose designated to craft the story are exquisite. I have no doubt that Harpman recognized that one does not need to put forth eternally long & tongue-twisting words to describe what the catatonic emotions & experiences of all the characters within this story were. A true talent with words resides in the mind of the individual who can purpose vocabulary in such a way as to enthral every person with ease.
The women who reside in this prison cell have lost most of their memories of the lives they led before their captivity. The reader gleams moments of small reflection upon which the characters seem to hold fond feelings; a marriage to a kind man, children that they loved, the hopes they held for career growth, & the social rules they abided by. The impoverished recollections lead the reader to immediately feel a longing for further information & details, both of which are never granted to us. So much is said with so little. Imminently we are given the opportunity to feel nostalgia for all the darkened memories we hold in our own minds. Just as the women in the prison cell, so too do we hold things in the recesses of our minds that we cannot quite call to the forefront. Suppose someone asked us what life was like prior to this very instant & suppose they asked us to describe in colourful details everything that transpired; how would we go about doing that?
Each of the women believes that their experiences or abilities to recall their past lives—the lives they led before being imprisoned—have been altered by force. They do not believe that they have simply forgotten what they experienced by the sheer distance of time but, that someone had been poisoning them; their memories forcefully shadowed into places their minds cannot reach. We are never given confirmation or a refusal of these assumptions as it does not ultimately dictate the weight of the plot for the reader to be explained everything in formulaic reasoning. Suffice it for the reader to know that the happiness they felt within their bones has been stolen from them, replaced with the singular existence they share in the cell.
39 women reside in a prison cell & are prevented from touching, crowding together & are simultaneously permitted no privacy when using the toilet. The employment & threat of violence has kept them submissive to this way of life, one that is contrary to what has come to be known as necessities of human existence. The narrator herself has grown into her teen years without being caressed or coddled; never truly developing a longing for human contact she retains the inmate impulse to seek out the reciprocity of another person. When the cataclysmic event takes place, one that we are never granted an explanation for, the women are free from the cell yet are never free from the imprisonment that took them away from what they loved.
This particular aspect of the story is one that I pondered very deeply. Being a person, myself, that does not feel the longing for closeness with another human being—not being drawn to touch or being held, rather not enjoying that practice—I wondered how long I should be able to go on in sustaining that if I were taken at this moment, to live in a cell where I had no free will to choose whether or not I could hug someone else. The narrator saw her formative years drift by in the environment of prevention & control, therefore she knew no different. The adult women, on the other hand, knew what it was like to share in an embrace or to hold someone’s hand; closeness represents a variety of things that are intended to offer comfort & love to another. Would anyone of us be able to see ourselves living solicitous within a group?
Many of us do that right now, in this life, where nothing is dictated to us or forced onto our lives such as to the women in this book. Many authors have sought to explain the experience of a person who feels alone among many & I have found it to be personally enjoyable when I find authors who seek the opposite. I appreciate it when someone with the talent for words & crafting of stories, writes about people who are individualized; when a story explores the solitude of a person who is not lonely because they enjoy themselves & they seek not the necessities that others feel drawn to possess. I find these stories oddly comforting & rewarding to read. The human condition is vast in its experiences. I am glad that mine can be found in the pages of a book without the author attempting to elicit sympathy for something that does not pang me.
This is not to say that I can speak to everything that the narrator experiences as I found myself feeling a longing to find her bunker & a small hope that someone might suddenly come upon her before her time was up. Why would I feel this way when logic tells me that she is certainly alone in this life? What was it about a nameless person that drew me to feel such a connection? Does reading about a negative situation lead one automatically to sentiments of forlorn sorrow? Does one need to connect with a character in a story to feel empathy for them & their situation or is it enough to recognize the depth of the human psyche’s abilities to understand?
Can the reader truly begin to imagine what these women must have felt upon coming upon the other bunkers which housed the prison cells of 39 people each time, all of whom were dead & decomposing? Can one truly understand, without living the experience, what it must be like to wander without purpose or knowledge of where one is meant to go? I have an inkling that this particular part of the story is something many individual readers may relate to. The narrator did not know her world & the reader may feel sorrow for her yet, how much do we know & understand our own world? Some people have gone to the moon & yet, for many people, the universe resides cooped within their property lines. Does this make either situation bad or good? I suppose that it depends on whom you ask & at what point in time, during their lives, you seek them out to ponder the question.
In reality, this book merits a full study; deconstructing each experience, the placement of every bush, the defining of every singular thought, yet, I think that every person should be drawn to this story if only to find a part of themselves within the plot. A nameless entity is not unknown, though we cannot put it into words. The narrator, though she does not have a born name—a government identifier, a religious nomenclature—is just as much an individual human being as Anthea, the person she loved. The love that is able to blossom within the relationships that the women share encourages the reader to reflect on their own experiences. Though the world may be bleak & though we cannot always call to mind the things that have brought us happiness, there are always unheard words in the heart, in the mind, that can leave us settled & comforted.
When all is said & done, I find myself left in silence; a droning quiet that permits me the time to reflect on every instance that is shared between myself & the narrator. I should hope to find myself reading this story again when the time is right, just as the narrator came across her home when she least expected it, so too do I hope to remember the deliberation & contemplation that was elicited within me upon my first read.
Philosophical works do not need to feel overwhelming, though they often leave one feeling debilitated. How can one possibly contemplate every single detail in a single sitting? There is so much to question & connect; too many instances of detail & depth. Without these stories, I should find myself very much resembling the narrator; alone with my thoughts that limit the awareness, I hold of the world, residing in the crevices of my mind.
Thank you to Edelweiss+, Transit Books, & Jacqueline Harpman for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
Special praise for Ros Schwartz & her superbly enthralling translation of the original French text into English....more
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