Four Stars

Best for:
Those who enjoy more philosophical works of fiction. Those who don’t need every question answered.

** Spoilers Below **

In a nutshell:
Our unnamed narrator is a teen girl who finds herself locked in a windowless jail with 39 women. She recalls nothing of her life before arriving here, and this book follows her life.

Worth quoting:
“They’d wanted something all their lives, but now they had it, they didn’t recognise it.”

“What does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?”

Why I chose it:
This book, though original written in the 1990s, has been everywhere I look in the UK, so I finally decided to read it.

Review:
As I said above – spoilers. Because I want to talk about all parts of this book.

First off, we never find out the why of anything in this novel, and that is such strong choice. Much like some of my other favorite books where something unexpected and fairly inexplicable sets off the entire story, we never learn why the women (and the hundreds of others the discover over the years) were kept captive. We don’t know where they are, if they are even still on Earth. We don’t know what the incident was that led to their capture. And we don’t know how the hell the lights are still on after 40 some years…

The book is broken into three parts. The first is when this group of 40 women are living in the cage. The narrator talks about their daily life, and about how they have literally nothing they can do. They are watched by three male guards at a time, who do not speak to them. They are provided basic clothing, very basic food and cooking supplies, and bedding. They do not have privacy ever, including when using the toilet. This goes on for years, with no knowledge of why. So much of this section got me thinking about how one would survive when there is no understanding of why one is even there, and no contact with others. The cruelty of just keeping someone in a cage. It got me thinking about people put in detention in the US for ‘immigration violations’ – just stuck in a limbo where they have no idea where they might be kept, what will happen next. No way to fight back.

The second part comes when the women accidentally gain their freedom. A siren sounds and the guards bolt, and they just so happen to have been in the process of opening the cage for another reason, and they leave the keys. So the second part focuses on the women gaining their freedom, but realizing almost immediately that they are both all alone and that no one is coming back to either save or harm them. They organise themselves and realise that their basic needs will be met, as there is plenty of food to last literal years. But of course they explore, and eventually come across another cage. And another. And no guards. And no survivors, because no one else has the serendipity of the timing of the siren and access to keys.

The third part looks at life once the narrator is the sole remaining survivor. As she was youngest by a lot, over the decades the others die, eventually leaving her completely alone to wander until she, too, dies.

Author Harpman does an incredible job of telling all of this from the perspective of someone who has no frame of reference to ‘before times.’ She can’t read, she doesn’t know math, but more importantly, she doesn’t know human connection. She recoils from physical touch and don’t quite understand why people would be asking questions about things (in the beginning). Once she becomes closer to the rest of the women, the narrator starts to recognise the value of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. She is always wanting to explore further, walk faster. She wants to learn about the world before she knew it, but also learn practical things.

Once the last of her fellow prisoners dies, she’s excited to be alone, to have the full freedom she’s craved her whole life. And this all creates the space to ask the questions related to what it is to be alive, and what is humanity. Obviously humanity is cruelty, given the cages these women (and later, men, we discover) are kept in, and the fact that someone, or some people, created a world with nothing but these cages in bunkers underground. But humanity is also community, and having a purpose, even if that purpose is to find a way to pass the time before death arrives.

Is this a bleak story? Sort of? But it’s also a beautiful story about how people adjust to the life they have, and try to make the best out of it.

Four Stars

Best for:
Those interested in hearing the first-hand accounts of children who grew up in the realm of ‘Mommy Blogging.’ Those interested in how someone can recover from public and private emotional abuse.

In a nutshell:
Shari Franke grew up as the eldest daughter in the ‘Eight Passengers’ YouTube channel run by her mother, Ruby Franke. Ruby is now in prison, and Shari is telling her own story.

Worth quoting:
“In this family, the only safe emotion was no emotion at all.”

Why I chose it:
I was vaguely aware of the Ruby Franke situation, and recently watched the Netflix documentary about it (which Shari participated in). I thought it would be good to hear the story more directly from Shari herself.

Review:
Today is a bank holiday where I live, and I had no plans, so basically other than a break for a couple of chores that required my attention, I listened to this book all day.

Shari Franke is the oldest of six children, and the daughter of Ruby and Kevin (who Shari refers to by their first names throughout, and not as ‘mom’ and ‘dad’), originally known for their very popular YouTube channel that documented the lives of the Mormon family. However, as Shari details, the camera showed a very curated version of life, with Ruby in reality serving as a cold, narcissistic parent focused on making their family look perfect.

And while I think that’s what most folks are aware of if they know about the family at all, much of the focus of Shari’s book is on the abuse that followed even more intensely when Ruby got the family involved in ‘ConnecXions,’ a cult run by Jodi Hildebrandt. Yes, the recording and posting of minor children without their informed consent is creepy (and I genuinely don’t understand the appeal of those channels), but the bizarre controlling behavior stemming from Jodi’s cult is what ultimately leads to Ruby’s downfall and the breakdown of the family.

Ruby is a cruel woman, an abusive woman, and a controlling woman. She spoke to her children and her husband in such a formal, stilted way, weaponizing therapy language and saying things like she ‘invites’ someone to leave the house or ‘invites’ someone to do work on themselves. It’s disturbing, and I can’t imagine using that language to speak with someone one allegedly loves. And I’m certain that there are many parents like Ruby, who see their children not as individuals with rights and feelings and hopes of their own, but purely as extensions of their parents who should submit to their control in all ways.

So gross.

Shari has gone through a lot, but she speaks of it with such empathy and maturity. The final chapter looks at how Shari thinks Ruby got to be where she is, and it’s not a clinical examination, but one that shows Shari has so much compassion for others. I found it especially astute when she discusses what Ruby’s life might have been like if she hadn’t been told that the only avenue available to her was being a mother.

Shari’s maturity and compassion also shown by the fact that she doesn’t name her minor siblings, and doesn’t detail what Ruby did to them, because she wants them to have the control back over their own stories. She speaks with a maturity that I cannot fathom for someone her age who has experienced what she has. And I appreciate how much she relies on her faith. I am not a Christian, and I know that (like pretty much every religion), the LDS church has some serious issues, and even in the book we learn about times when the people in the church let Shari down, but clearly she finds strength, and comfort, and support in her experience of her faith, and that seems to be what kept her going through everything.

Best for:
Fans of the Hunger Games series.

In a nutshell:
This is the story of Haymitch Abernathy’s Hunger Games. The 50th one, the second quarter quell.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I heard good things about it.

Review:
I didn’t read the last prequel, and couldn’t get through the movie – I just didn’t find it to be a good film. Maybe the book was better? But when I saw that this was getting good word of mouth, I knew I wanted to read it.

I don’t want to spoil too much for those who go into it like I did – completely unknowing. But I do appreciate a few things. First, this book is still brutal. I don’t enjoy reading descriptions of the murder of children; Collins however manages to make those deaths serve the purpose of the book. The Capital is a cruel place, and the cruelty is the whole point.

I think Collins does a great job of developing Haymitch’s back story and personality. I get why the mentor version we meet is the way he is. And she also weaves in the stories of others we’ve met before, explaining some relationships and how people end up the way they end up in the later books.

The things that stood out the most to me were the discussions about what people accept, and when people fight back. There are conversations between Plutarch and Haymitch that are so relevant now. The US is dealing with fascism, children continue to be murdered in Gaza, and the UK just this past week had a horrible ruling that takes away rights of some of the most marginalised people in society. What are we willing to do about it? What can we do about it? Not just the collective we, but us as individuals? What sacrifices should we be expected and willing to make? And why do we have to make the sacrifices when the powerful are the ones making things so very bad?

It’s not a hopeful book in the traditional sense, but the hope in it comes from the community, and the ability for each person to play a small part, pushing towards a greater good. And this is not a spoiler – but obviously whatever Haymitch and his community work do in the 50th hunger games doesn’t stop them – there’s a 74th, and a 75th. But it’s a step. And an important one. Sometimes things don’t get better overnight.

Four Stars

Best for:
Those who enjoy a little bit of science fiction and a lot of philosophy.

In a nutshell:
The UK government has a time machine, but instead of traveling into the future, they’ve decided to travel to the past to bring four people to current time to see how they can integrate into the modern era.

Worth quoting:
“Who thinks their job is on the side of right? They fed us all poison from a bottle marked ‘prestige’ and we developed a high tolerance for bitterness.”

“Fitzjames had once asked him how he could approach life-threatening peril and minor annoyances with the same mildness and he’d shrugged. ‘It doesn’t improve my mood to catastrophise, so I don’t.’”

“An underrated symptom of inherited trauma is how socially awkward it is to live with.”

Why I chose it:
I’ve seen it in stores, and then it was the choice for a book subscription I’m in, so figured it was time to read it.

Review:
Ah, what a great read. I read it while on vacation and so was able to inhale it over the course of just a few days.

The book is told mostly from the perspective of the narrator, who I’ll call the Bridge. There are actually five bridges, one assigned to each of the five people brought from the past, including during the plague in the 1600s, as well as the trenches of World War 1. The Bridge who narrates this book is assigned to Graham Gore, a naval man who died in an arctic expedition. Except before he can die, he is saved and brought to the near future, as part of a test to see how people handle moving through time.

The science fiction of it all isn’t the main focus of the book, which I appreciate. Instead, the focus is on all the different aspects of what it is like for people who are brought from their time to now. What are the ethics of this? How does it impact different people? And what happens to the relationships they form in their new reality?

I love books like this. It’s not the same, but it reminded me a bit of ‘The Measure.’ And the writing? The writing is SO GOOD. There’s so much humor, and also humanity, in Bradley’s writing. The ending wasn’t my favorite, which is why this isn’t five stars, but it’s not a bad ending, if that makes sense. Just took away a bit from the rest of the book. But still, so, so good.

4 Stars

Best for:
Those who enjoy a quiet, intimate tale.

In a nutshell:
John is contracted to travel to a remote Scottish island to remove the last inhabitant so that the landlord can use the land to raise sheep.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
This book is very popular in Scotland at the moment, where I live. I took it with me on a trip to the Outer Hebrides, as that just seemed appropriate.

Review:
This book is a slow burn. While the backdrop is the highland clearances, the focus is on one individual, John, who is a minister trying to raise money for his new church. He and his site do not have a lot of funds, so he takes on a job of traveling to a remote Scottish to bring back the only remaining inhabitant, a man named Ivar who doesn’t speak much English.

While there, John has a fall, and Ivar takes him in. Meanwhile, John’s wife Mary decides that perhaps the job John has taken isn’t safe, and chooses to make the journey out to join him.

So much of the story is describing the land, and the lives of John, Mary, and Ivar. It’s about different relationships, against the backdrop of the cruelty of the clearances. It’s about how to communicate when you don’t speak the same language. And it’s about understanding and making changes for the people you care for.