A group of 40 women has spent years imprisoned in an underground bunker, with only bizarre memories of their previous lives. I found myself in the same situation as them—knowing nothing, not even how much time had passed or how many pages I'd turned, and searching for, sadly, unanswered questions of why and where they were. What I love most is the main narrator, described as the youngest arrival, who is pitied for not knowing the meaning of love and being a "real human." In a place where everything that makes them feel human has been stripped away, and the rest have resigned themselves to waiting for the end, the narrator tries to understand what it means to be human. I felt the book was about what it is like to discover meaning and purpose on your own, without the influence or guidance of society you belong.
From the start, I counted my steps. My heartbeats had been my unit of time, my steps would be my unit of length.
Sometimes, I used to sit under the sky, on a clear night, and gaze at the stars, saying, in my croaky voice: 'Lord, if you're up there somewhere, and you aren't too busy, come and say a few words to me, because I'm very lonely and it would make me so happy.' Nothing happened. So I reckon that humanity – which I wonder whether I belong to – really had a very vivid imagination.
Perhaps I have tried to create time through writing these pages. I begin, I fill them with words, I pile them up, and I still don't exist because nobody is reading them. I am writing them for some unknown reader who will probably never come. But if that person comes, they will read them and I will have a time in their mind. They will have my thoughts in them.
I felt as if this pain would never be appeased, that it had me in its grip for ever, that it would prevent me from devoting myself to anything else, and that I was allowing it to do so.