Sign up
Search
Advanced search settings

Search only in certain items:

Search results
All (135)
Content
People
Apps
Books
Orbs
Movies
Music
Podcasts
Shows
Tabletop Games
Tech
TV
Video Games
YouTube Channels
Videos
    Winterkill

    Winterkill

    C.J. Box

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    Book

    It's hours away from darkness with a bitter winter storm raging when Joe Pickett finds himself deep...

40x40

Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated Our Endless Numbered Days in Books

Sep 26, 2018  
Our Endless Numbered Days
Our Endless Numbered Days
Claire Fuller | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
6
7.5 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
I don't like unreliable narrators. I didn't realize, at first, that Peggy was one. Even though she mentions at the start of the book that a doctor said she had Korsakoff's syndrome - meaning malnutrition has messed with her memories - I assumed that it was just because her experiences were so unbelievable that the doctor thought she'd made things up. I also don't like unreliable narrators because the author obviously knows what truly happened. Leaving the reader in the dark about it seems rude.

Peggy's narration does seem childlike, often. While at the beginning of the book, that can be excused because she is eight years old, by the end she is seventeen, yet still talking about things with a child's understanding. I thought that was the effect of Korsakoff's syndrome, not that she was entirely making some things up.

In our endless numbered days, Peggy is effectively kidnapped by her father when she is eight, and taken to some place deep in the German forest. She spends the next nine years alone in the forest with him, trapping squirrels, gathering roots and berries, and growing simple crops in a small vegetable patch. He tells her, repeatedly, making her repeat it back to him, that the rest of the world was destroyed in a massive storm. They are the last two people alive in their small, sheltered valley. She doesn't question it until she sees a man in their forest, and that eventually leads her to find civilization again. The book is told in two timelines, flashing back and forth from her memories of her time in the forest, and the present where she's attempting to re-acclimate to London.

I'm not really sure what to believe; Peggy's memory or what her mother thinks happened. There are just enough oddities to make either story plausible. I think I prefer Peggy's version. But that's the trouble with unreliable narrators; there's no way to actually know. I don't like ending a book frustrated. Books should make you feel things, yes, but frustration is an odd emotion to aim for.

This book is odd.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com
  
    Morels

    Morels

    7.0 (3 Ratings) Rate It

    Tabletop Game

    The woods are old-growth, dappled with sunlight. Delicious mushrooms beckon from every grove and...