Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

However, as this coming-of-age story shows, truth can be relative (or, often, what's most convenient for those involved).'I came across this abandoned cabin on a visit to California.

Similar to the found boots and footprints that lead a teenage Peggy to discover the truth of her situation, Fuller's haunting descriptions and carefully paced plot lead the reader to discover a story not so much about wretchedness, but about resilience. Yet knowing this outcome doesn't take away from the suspense.

From this point on, they must live in the cabin, bathe in the river, grow and hunt food and rely only on each other.įuller's decision to let Peggy tell the story from two time periods - as a young woman living in London and during her nine years in the wilderness - makes it clear from the beginning that Peggy eventually escapes her increasingly deranged father. But shortly after arriving in the woods, James tells Peggy that her mother is dead and the world destroyed from the raging storm they witnessed from the forest. Many times before, while Peggy's mother, Ute, was touring as a concert pianist, James and Peggy camped in the back yard. Like the others in the group, he has built a fallout shelter in his house and is preparing for the nuclear war he's sure is coming. Peggy, the narrator of the story, is 8 when her father takes her on a camping trip to 'die Hütte,' a remote ramshackle cabin in a forest in Germany, 'held in the mountain's embrace … a mountain range that spread as far the horizon.' James is a survivalist a member of the North London Retreaters. It's realistic, harrowing, immersive and poetic. Fuller, a British writer and sculptor, has crafted a novel that will be remembered long after the last page is finished.

Reading Claire Fuller's 'Our Endless Numbered Days,' I find it hard not to wonder whether, horribly, there actually might be a daughter and father like Peggy and James Hillcoat living hidden, out in some woods, the daughter an unsuspecting kidnap victim of her mentally ill parent.

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller