Uniek verhaal

Such an exceptional novel! I have never read anything like it. Is it a dystopian story? Not necessarily. Is Earth the planet where the story takes place? Probably not, but you can’t establish that for sure. Our protagonist, who was raised from childhood onwards locked-up in an underground cage with thirty-nine women, has no knowledge of life beyond the cage. She is called Child and it is exceptional that she is there alive and well and supposedly only by pure accident. The women are closely observed by guards who snap whips but who never mistreat the women physically. By sheer incidental luck the women can escape to the world above after at least fifteen years of imprisonment. It is devastating to read that they only find numerous cages wherever they go, all holding thirty-nine dead people, both women or male. They were obviously the only lucky ones.

The author, Jacqueline Harpman, must have been an extraordinary woman. I cannot phantom how she could so realistically imagine what would develop in the mind of a youngster who is experiencing the world without bars for the first time in her life.

What a special story this is! It is odd that it is not devastating to read, just very alien. This novel proved to be so dissimilar to any novel I ever read.