Reviews

A beautiful (and nihilistic) book that ruminates on human nature, loneliness, womanhood, death, hope, growing up, and similar serious topics. The point of the book is the reflection itself, so if you’re hoping for a book that has a nice ending tied up in a bow that explains everything, this isn’t it. I wouldn’t say this author is unique in her reflections on these topics, but the book took on an entirely new meaning for me when I learned in the afterword that the author fled the Nazis. Also impressively progressive for the time when it was written. I would recommend to anyone who likes coming of age stories, dystopian literature, and books that interweave philosophy.

krisheiney's review

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“After all, if I was a human being, my story was as important as that of King Lear or of Prince Hamlet that William Shakespeare had taken the trouble to relate in detail.”

I am blown away by this book. Our narrator, the child, relates her story with such power and tenderness, and despite being alone—the lone child with no past before the bunker, she who has only known 39 women—she forges such a strong connection to us, her readers. The circumstances of this story are shrouded in mystery, but the humanity at its center is clear and tangible. Who are we when the trappings of society around us are stripped away?

emilyrodriguez's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

miss_chief's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

ikai's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective sad 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

4.0

I don't think I've ever resorted to the "it's complicated" option so many times in a Storygraph review!

I encountered this book while searching for a way to fulfill a reading challenge (which did exactly what it was meant to: I don't think I'd have ever learned of this book without the prompt to seek out a readalong).

It's always odd to read something in translation, not knowing whether strangenesses you encounter are effects of cultural knowledge gaps, the author's intent, or the translator's choice, but I still found this book to be perfectly and intentionally strange. It was thought-provoking along a number of different avenues, and I appreciated the afterword by Sophie Mackintosh for clarifying some of those paths I'd been fumbling down.

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