Forty women and one girl, underground in a cage, with no explanation given or forthcoming. Jacqueline Harpman’s novel gives you almost nothing — no backstory, no villain, no resolution — and the group found that strikingly difficult to sit with.
We discussed memory, identity, and what women build when civilisation has been stripped away. The narrator’s lack of any reference point for relationships, touch, or desire gave the session an unexpected direction: what does it mean to have never known anything different? We also talked about Harpman’s own biography — Jewish, her family affected by the Holocaust — and how that shapes the novel’s refusal to explain.