Book Review: Our Endless Numbered Days

Our Endless Numbered Days
Claire Fuller
Tin House Books, 2015
Source: purchased
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

In Our Endless Numbered Days, Claire Fuller presents a beautiful landscape where young Peggy grows up in an isolated cabin with her father.  They left from their London home and traveled to this far away destination when she was only eight and she believes the rest of the world was destroyed. Peggy grows up knowing only what her father tells her, believing they are the only ones left in this world, until she sees evidence of someone else alive in their lonely little world. Coupled with chapters from the present where Peggy is back home in London with her mother, it is evident right away that there is something very wrong.

I had a difficult time with this book because the descriptions of the scenery went on and on.  Although they were beautiful, I found myself skipping over some of those and getting to the sections where something was happening.  Anything.  The beginning of the book was also hard to get through.  It describes her time at home with her father before they left London for the cabin in the woods, but there was an awful lot of background being built in.  From the beginning I knew there was something very very wrong--even more than what is revealed from the blurb on the back.

It wasn't until about halfway through that I even felt the need to get to the end.  I did have an idea of what the "surprise reveal" was pretty early on in the story.  So although I needed to understand how things went down, I was hoping the entire time that I was wrong.  The reveal wasn't even much of a reveal by the time I got to those last two pages.  That's right folks.  You get two pages to deal with this.  And it's intense enough that more than two pages is needed to process everything.  This is coming from someone who guessed it pretty early on.  The ending just soured the entire story for me and what would have been an okay book, became a not great book.  It felt like a desperate attempt at shocking me, even when it didn't (although the reveal is shocking in itself, I wasn't surprised because I had been worried about it from early on).  I felt like someone was trying to trick me, only not very well.

As for the characters, Peggy is stuck in her eight year old understanding of life.  She questions her father, but not quite in the way a 17 year old would.  She still thinks of her best friend from childhood as an eight year old girl and her feelings for her best friend are very childish.  Yet she's living in the body of a seventeen year old girl and not quite understanding everything that she should.  There is a lot that I'm still not sure about with Peggy.

Despite her father being a major catalyst for so much and being the only character Peggy has interactions with for most of the novel, he was almost a side character--but not quite.  He seems to be suffering from bipolar disorder, but if it's truly that or if these manic and depressive episodes are brought on more by their situation I'm not sure.  He did seem to get obsessed with ideas even before he took Peggy out to the wilderness, though.  Nonetheless, he just seemed to be there, something she had to deal with and figure out in order to survive.

Our Endless Numbered Days, although written beautiful, has some pretty big flaws that all come at you in the end.  This one might be finding its way into the donate pile.

Image Source: Goodreads


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Sunday Status: Our Endless Numbered Days

Sunday Status is a weekly (ish) post where I let you know what I'm reading and what I'm thinking about it as I go along.


Our Endless Numbered Days
Claire Fuller
Tin House Books, 2015
Source: Purchased

"'How will we get home, Papa, without a tent?' I said to his back.  He turned around looked at me, confused for a second, but then understanding.
'We are home, Punzel,' he said (144)."

I'm still working on this one from last week.  It's a slow read.  It's going back and forth between the present time and what she's remembering from her past.  Each time we're in the present something new is revealed--something terrifying.  This isn't a scary book (at least not yet) but even from the description you know that something not good happened.  As I read, it becomes more and more apparent that it's probably going to be worse than I had thought.  I need to know what happened to Peggy, but I also don't want to know.


So here's the description from Goodreads:
Peggy Hillcoat is eight years old when her survivalist father, James, takes her from their home in London to a remote hut in the woods and tells her that the rest of the world has been destroyed. Deep in the wilderness, Peggy and James make a life for themselves. They repair the hut, bathe in water from the river, hunt and gather food in the summers and almost starve in the harsh winters. They mark their days only by the sun and the seasons.

When Peggy finds a pair of boots in the forest and begins a search for their owner, she unwittingly begins to unravel the series of events that brought her to the woods and, in doing so, discovers the strength she needs to go back to the home and mother she thought she’d lost.

After Peggy's return to civilization, her mother learns the truth of her escape, of what happened to James on the last night out in the woods, and of the secret that Peggy has carried with her ever since.

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Sunday Status: These Shallow Graves and Our Endless Numbered Days

Sunday Status is a weekly (ish) post where I let you know what I'm reading and what I'm thinking about it as I go along.

These Shallow Graves
Jennifer Donnelly
Random House Delacorte, October 27th, 2015
Source: ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

"For the first time that night, Jo was not just nervous or anxious, but genuinely afraid (178)."

Josephine Monfort's privileged life among the New York aristocrats is shaken up when her father died from an accidental gunshot wound.  Jo knows things don't add up, but for a young girl to ask questions isn't becoming.  She's supposed to mourn her father for six months, accept the proposal from New York's finest bachelor, marry, and settle into a life of having babies and following rules.  Jo has other ideas, instead.  Inspired by Nellie Bly, she is determined to discover the truth behind her father's death--even if it means learning things she might not have wanted to know.

I'm enjoying this look at 1890s young girls and their desires to be more than is expected form them--or more than is accepted from them.  Jo has big ideas, but she also understands how her world works and what she loses just because of her station in life.  She comments on the injustice of it and how her mere presence in certain places leads men to believe she must be a prostitute.  She sighs about how she is expected to become a wife and mother as quickly as possible.  Despite this, when she finds herself in precarious situations where she could be discovered, Jo is frantic to protect her reputation so she doesn't ruin her chances for marriage.  Although I understand why she is so concerned about this--a woman at that time (no matter what her station) had to protect her name and reputation if she wanted to survive.  I still hope to see her break through this and stand up to her family and friend's expectations.


Our Endless Numbered Days
Claire Fuller
Tin House Books, 2015
Source: Purchased

I only just started this at school yesterday.  I haven't too much to say except that it already has a somewhat.... sinister (?) feel to it.  Maybe it's just a wariness because I know the premise and therefore I'm waiting for something to happen.  I don't know.  I'm only about 25 pages in.

So here's the description from Goodreads:
Peggy Hillcoat is eight years old when her survivalist father, James, takes her from their home in London to a remote hut in the woods and tells her that the rest of the world has been destroyed. Deep in the wilderness, Peggy and James make a life for themselves. They repair the hut, bathe in water from the river, hunt and gather food in the summers and almost starve in the harsh winters. They mark their days only by the sun and the seasons.

When Peggy finds a pair of boots in the forest and begins a search for their owner, she unwittingly begins to unravel the series of events that brought her to the woods and, in doing so, discovers the strength she needs to go back to the home and mother she thought she’d lost.

After Peggy's return to civilization, her mother learns the truth of her escape, of what happened to James on the last night out in the woods, and of the secret that Peggy has carried with her ever since.

If you liked this review, consider following me on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus, and please "like" this review below!