Our Endless Numbered Days, by Claire Fuller - Sian
Paul suggested this book to me, since I was asking after books about survivalists, and living off the land – people gathering, foraging, hunting, and all that jazz. I find it peaceful. Grounding. Relaxing.
Boy, did I pick up the wrong book for that! In fairness, Paul did warn me.
Peggy’s father is a survivalist. But he’s also a bit of a lunatic. And when the rest of his survivalist friends go home, shaking off the curiosity to go off the grid and become recluses deep in the woods, Peggy’s father only gets more hyped. He gets obsessive, training Peggy in camping skills, sleeping in a tent in the garden, eating squirrels, and never bathing; even building a bunker beneath their home with all the resources they’d need if the apocalypse came. It drives her mother mad, and in a fit of rage, she leaves home to tour Germany as a classical musician.
So when her back is turned, Peggy’s father takes her away with two packs of resources, to a cabin deep in the woods in Europe, which he calls die Hütte. Peggy isn’t entirely sure what is happening – only that she is tired, confused, and misses her mother. Life in die Hütte isn’t what her father promised it would be. It wasn’t like in the garden, when she could go inside for a glass of water and clean pants if she wanted. They were isolated, vulnerable, and foolish. And to make Peggy as resolute in this decision to disappear into nature as he is, he tells her that the world outside of their forest has disappeared in an apocalypse; her mother with it.
And so Peggy stays. She gathers water, chops fire wood, forages for food, and yearns for meaning in a very primitive life. She finds it in the silent piano her father builds her from wood scraps; in the small shelter she builds herself away from the cabin. And she finds it in a mysterious young boy who suddenly starts wondering through their woods.
Throughout the story, we swap between Peggy’s nine years in die hütte with her father, and forward to the 80s after she rejoins society. It builds so much tension to see two versions of Peggy, two versions of reality that she is torn between.
It is gripping. It is disturbing. It is scary. It is desperate. It is a very easy read, and I could not wait ‘til the end.
I enjoyed it even more than I expected!
- Sian
CW for readers: there are themes of abuse and neglect in this story.
