Core
The more I think about this one the more I'm convinced that this book rules.
This book has been labelled dystopian, and although that is true on the surface, this book is less interested in exploring and warning of a potential future and more interested in the construction of identity. The premise is that forty people wake up in a cage with no memory as to how that came to be: specifically, thirty-nine women and one child. No one knows the child's parents; no one knows her name; she is only the Child, and she has no memory of the previous world: she only knows the cage, the thirty-nine women, and the (male) guards that watch over them but never speak. Those in the cage have no purpose, there is nothing to do, and their survival is guaranteed: when sick they are handed pills, when hungry they are given food. The novel begins as the Child begins to think, and is presented as her memoir. From the very beginning the Child understands herself as fundamentally different from every other human she can see: she is not like the other women in the cage, and she is not like the guards. The central question the novel is asking, then, isn't "how did this situation occur?"—the book tells you right off the bat that there will be no easy answers—it's "how does a person develop into a subject with no name, no gender, no mirror, no room for human activity, and no purpose?"
If that question sounds interesting to you I think this is absolutely worth a read. If you go in just based on the sci-fi premise however I think it'll be disappointing. But it's a short book, and after sitting on it for a few days I'm convinced I need to reread it. The author was a psychoanalyst and it shows, so I'm curious how much more I'd get out of this after deep-diving into psychoanalysis some more.
The more I think about this one the more I'm convinced that this book rules.
This book has been labelled dystopian, and although that is true on the surface, this book is less interested in exploring and warning of a potential future and more interested in the construction of identity. The premise is that forty people wake up in a cage with no memory as to how that came to be: specifically, thirty-nine women and one child. No one knows the child's parents; no one knows her name; she is only the Child, and she has no memory of the previous world: she only knows the cage, the thirty-nine women, and the (male) guards that watch over them but never speak. Those in the cage have no purpose, there is nothing to do, and their survival is guaranteed: when sick they are handed pills, when hungry they are given food. The novel begins as the Child begins to think, and is presented as her memoir. From the very beginning the Child understands herself as fundamentally different from every other human she can see: she is not like the other women in the cage, and she is not like the guards. The central question the novel is asking, then, isn't "how did this situation occur?"—the book tells you right off the bat that there will be no easy answers—it's "how does a person develop into a subject with no name, no gender, no mirror, no room for human activity, and no purpose?"
If that question sounds interesting to you I think this is absolutely worth a read. If you go in just based on the sci-fi premise however I think it'll be disappointing. But it's a short book, and after sitting on it for a few days I'm convinced I need to reread it. The author was a psychoanalyst and it shows, so I'm curious how much more I'd get out of this after deep-diving into psychoanalysis some more.