I just wrote this long answer to a post, but as it expresses my feelings about this book, I want to share it as a general post too ☺️

This book will not leave me for a long time and I think I'll need to reread it every 10 years or so!

_I don't feel like there is something to be solved, but I really enjoyed the delicious uncertainty of it all. That is the kind of weird that tickles my brain unlike anything else. I love that we don't need to know, to understand or to grasp the strangeness and the WHY of this world. Having sais that, I still enjoyed speculating! What kind of desaster (against which gas masks would have protected them, or not?) would have killed everyone instantly, without destroying their bodies in the least? What kind of desaster could have been warned against early enough for the guards to leave what seems to be the entire planet, but not early enough for the people on the bus to take shelter? What caused the inhabitant of the last bunker to abandon it, but mark it with a mountain of stones? Doesn't this mean they planned to return at some point in the future? Why would the "prisoners" be held in cages on a planet or in a far remote area that necessitates a near infinite amount of food to be stored, which means it is unlikely to be produced nearby, when they could just as well have been held somewhere near working food production? Why hold them prisoners at all? They're not being harvested for organs or being experimented with in any apparent way that would hint to there being a reason.

To me, the senselessness of it all is almost part of the plot. Without everything that happens in the readers' heads, all the mystery, the questions, the wondering, this book wouldn't be half as interesting and powerful. Like in life, you don't get the answer. You don't learn why or how, and every snippet of information opens up more questions. This feels so much more satisfying than any explanation the author could have given.

_Without wanting to project the author's life on her work of art, I'm willing to see the senseless horrors of the holocaust in part reflected in this novel. There are catalysts for, but no sense in hate and in treating people like objects. In being imprisoned for no purpose than to die behind bars or at the hands of your guards or captors. In the destructions of huge parts of the homes and existences of so many people, the environment they live in. Growing up with this being your reality and normalcy (like the unnamed main character), it seems natural to me to be seeking answers for unanswerable things and seeking the enigmatic.

_In my head, the main character wrote for the universe, and that is us, the readers. No one person found and copied her notes, she wrote them down for herself, to give meaning and substance to her fading existence, and for them to exist as an imprint after she leaves. The other women had a life before, she has a life after.