1976: Peggy Hillcoat is eight. She spends her summer camping with her father, playing her beloved record of The Railway Children and listening to her mother's grand piano, but her pretty life is about to change. Her survivalist father, who has been stockpiling provisions for the end which is surely coming soon, takes her from London to a cabin in a remote European forest. There he tells Peggy the rest of the world has disappeared. Her life is reduced to a piano which makes music but no sound, a forest where all that grows is a means of survival. And a tiny wooden hut that is Everything.
An interesting intersection between nature writing and thriller.
4 stars
Simultaneously the fairytale of a girl and her father living alone in an isolated cottage in the woods, and a tragedy of abduction and mental illness. Written primarily from the perspective of the young girl, the quality of the prose captures the developing awareness of the narrator’s situation very well. The pacing and narrative structure was a little… fluid shall we say, which I wouldn’t necessarily say is a negative thing, considering the nature of the narrator and the subject matter. A great debut, I’m looking forward to reading her subsequent novels.
Review of 'Our Endless Numbered Days' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Beautifully written, this tale does not glamourize living as a survivalist. Young Peggy may enjoy living outside in the garden at home but when she is wrenched away from her life into a remote area of Germany, it’s no longer a game. The winters are harsh, made worse with the lack of food. They spend weeks curing squirrel meat and drying mushrooms, only to still find themselves starving and desperate for spring. Even when food is plentiful, it’s limited in variety.
Set in the late 70s to 1985, it’s a time when people could get lost. Today, modern communications means it would be hard to truly vanish, even harder to trick a child into believing the world was gone. It was also around the peak of the survivalist movement, with groups worried about socio-economic collapse or the threat of nuclear war. These were the people building fallout shelters in their …
Beautifully written, this tale does not glamourize living as a survivalist. Young Peggy may enjoy living outside in the garden at home but when she is wrenched away from her life into a remote area of Germany, it’s no longer a game. The winters are harsh, made worse with the lack of food. They spend weeks curing squirrel meat and drying mushrooms, only to still find themselves starving and desperate for spring. Even when food is plentiful, it’s limited in variety.
Set in the late 70s to 1985, it’s a time when people could get lost. Today, modern communications means it would be hard to truly vanish, even harder to trick a child into believing the world was gone. It was also around the peak of the survivalist movement, with groups worried about socio-economic collapse or the threat of nuclear war. These were the people building fallout shelters in their gardens, or moving to remote locations which would be both safer and provide sustenance.
The difference in Our Many Numbered Days, is the fact that the end of the world hasn’t happened. Yet Peggy believes her and her dad are the only two people left in the world. From her point of view, the apocalypse has happened. At the start of the story, it’s 1985 and Peggy has returned home. We know she survives (although generally a given with first-person narration) and it is never hidden from the reader that her dad lied. Although never explored, I did get the idea that her dad was suffering from bipolar disorder.
Fairly early on, Peggy tells the reader she is suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome, caused by a vitamin B1 deficiency. This is a huge to clue to her reliability as a narrator, or lack of it, although one I think many would miss (though not if you’ve been watching lots of House lately, like me). I did work out what was going on sooner rather than later because of this, however it’s not the only hint. I think this condition can also explain a lot of her behaviour towards the end, where you might think a rational person would cotton on.
Something small that I particularly liked is Ute’s dialogue. Although she has lived in London for many years and speaks excellent English, it’s not her mother tongue. Her dialogue reflects that in little slip ups and off wordings, but not so much to caricaturise her. Actually there's lots of excellent elements to this story, including the Rapunzel connection which took me a while to realise, depite Peggy taking on her name.
