*I received this book as an ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
‘Dates only make us
aware of how numbered our days are, how much closer to death we are for each
one we cross off. From now on, Punzel, we’re going to live by the sun and the
seasons.’ He picked me up and spun me around, laughing. ‘Our days will be
endless’
Our Endless Numbered
Days was something a little different for my reading list and I wasn’t sure
what to expect. I ended up reading it mostly in two sittings, completely
immersed in Claire Fuller’s vivid prose and the way the narrative alternates
between time-frames (the time spent in the forest, and the time after the return
to civilisation).
Fuller weaves elements of the post-apocalyptic, the pastoral
(hence the comparisons with Walden and Donoghue’s Room) and even suspenseful/psychological horror into her literary
fiction, which she based on the ‘true’ life story of Robin van Helsum (a Dutch
boy who claimed to have survived in a German forest with his father for 5
years). It’s a fascinating and mysterious premise which Fuller builds upon in
an intriguing way, laying clues and lulling the reader into a false sense of
security of ‘knowing’ what’s going to happen, or feeling as if they have
predicted it (I felt the twists coming but their effect was in no way
diminished). Instead, she has you, the reader, firmly where she wants you –
right to the end.
It is Peggy’s father, James, who whisks
her away to a hut (die Hütte) in the middle of a forest to begin a new life,
away from civilisation. Initially he tells her that her mother, Ute, has died
in a car crash while on tour; and then that civilisation itself has ended, and
they are the only people left alive. The book's timeline begins in the 70s, depicting
the ill-suited marriage of her mother and father and his involvement with a
group of Survivalists who discuss methods for surviving the end of the world
(amidst the historical context of the Cold War and the potential of nuclear
catastrophe).
‘They were members of
the North London Retreaters. Every month they met at our house, arguing and
discussing strategies for surviving the end of the world’
We know it takes Peggy nine years to return to her family –
her mother, very much alive, and a brother she never knew she had - but we do
not know just how much she has been changed or quite exactly what really
happened in those woods until the end. She is by no means a reliable narrator,
spending the formative years of her life alone in the woods with her increasingly
unstable father. We become immersed in the experience of life in die Hütte, as
young Peggy narrates it, delighting in the practical and the gritty aspects of
survival – the skinning of squirrels, the hardships of winter, the descent of
her father into madness and the possibility that they are not alone in those
woods.
‘My father dropped a
pile of foreign coins in her leathery palm and we hurried away. I had no idea
this wind-worn woman, creased and bag-eyed, standing outside her barn with her
cow on a rope, would be the last person I would meet from the real world for
another nine years. Perhaps if I had known, I would have clung to the folds of
her skirt, hooked my fingers over the waistband of her apron and tucked my
knees around one of her stout legs. Stuck fast, like a limpet or a Siamese
twin, I would have been carried with her when she rose in the morning to milk
the cow, or into her kitchen to stir the porridge. If I had known, I might
never have let her go'
In die Hütte, Peggy and her father construct a
makeshift/imitation piano and music becomes both a way to stay sane and a
measure of the descent into insanity.
‘If there was anyone
else out there in all that blackness, a solitary note might flit through
infinity and land on a shoulder to find its way inside that person’s head.’
Physically, Peggy becomes a young woman over those years and
yet she is stuck in a state of timelessness, a feral unreality with a father
who is so consumed by grief that he even sometimes confuses her identity.
The majority of the book is spent in the forest with Peggy
and her father, and it is those sections you’ll want to re-read carefully come
the end of the book. As a reader, you also enter a sense of timelessness as you
read those years, so the change of pace and canter towards the ending is all
the more startling and abrupt, leaving you with plenty to think about. A period
of 8-9 years of daily, ritual survival in such a claustrophobic setting and
without a concept of time or end-goal, could have been a challenge to read. But
the sections in the forest do not lag because of the rich and vivid language
and the interesting dynamic the two characters have with each other,
themselves, and the world around them.
I found one moment particularly poignant and illuminative –
where Peggy’s father tells her a bedtime story with her as the protagonist:
‘She heard the people
of the world fighting with each other … they couldn’t live together happily.
They lied to each other and when people do that, in the end, the world they
have built will always come tumbling down. Punzel hated hearing the people of
the world lie and argue. But one day she woke to find that the angry planet was
silent; all she could hear was the sound of her father chopping wood for the
stove and the animals asking her to come out to play. And Punzel was the
happiest girl in the world.‘
Although he makes his daughter the protagonist, this says so
much about James and whether he can be truly empathised or sympathised with.
For him, there was a kind of apocalypse, one that destroyed everything he
believed and made him renounce his faith in the world and the company of
others. The book is also his tragedy, and the tragedy of a relationship/relationships gone wrong.
In a way, I would have been curious to continue to see what
happened next – how Peggy recovers and assimilates back into everyday existence
– whether she can get her grip back on reality or if the effects and beliefs of
those years have left her with psychological scars that run too deep. Fuller’s
chosen ending nevertheless allows your imagination to run wild, encouraging you
to think more deeply about what has gone on, and it certainly packs an
emotional and psychological punch.
.jpg)
.jpg)
