Cover image from Goodreads.com
The narrator was put in a cage along with 39 women. Being a child herself, she shouldn’t have been there but nonetheless was still caged with them. Just as she reaches puberty, a siren goes off and the guards leave abruptly, leaving the keys dangling in the lock. Now freed, the forty women trek outside for the first time in over a decade.
This novel is compelling, written from the point of view of the young girl over the course of her lifetime. She has no memory of life before the cage so she has nothing to compare the world to, but finds some delight in listening to the stories of the women as they walk across the landscape in hopes of finding others like them.
In their travels they find other underground cages filled with 40 people each, always only men or only women. These 40 women eventually settle into a kind of village where they live out their lives, never encountering another living soul. Once the last of them has died, the narrator continues on her own.
I was frustrated with the novel in that while these women find other cages and food stores for those cages, there’s no way the food would be viable after a decade. Sure, the cans would be good, but frozen food does go bad and the mere idea of fresh food after two or three years is just too far-fetched. Also, the reason they were put in cages is never explained, the siren isn’t explained, and while the landscape seems bleak, there are enough trees for wood so it can’t be that bleak.
In addition, when the women exit their prison and go outside, there’s no trace of the guards. No tire tracks, nothing. There’s also no power plant or water plant, even though power is running to every prison and each one also has running water. This was a lot to handwave away for me.
Still, the narrator’s journey is interesting.
Should Be Writing 