Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

 

Our Endless Numbered Days

by Claire Fuller

When Peggy Hillcoat was eight years old her father, James, took her into the woods in Germany from their comfortable home in London and told her the world had ended, that it was just the two of them left. Everyone else, including her mother Ute, was gone.

For nine years the two of them live off the land while staying in a cabin they call die Hütte. In London James had been part of a grassroots end of days prepper group. Peggy battles impending starvation, blizzards, and loneliness with only her father for company. And he is slowly losing his mind. As the years go on, James begins to have ideas of killing himself and Peggy as well, whom he sometimes mistakes for his wife. Which, in the end, leads to a devastating finale for both James and Peggy.

Interwoven with this story is Peggy's life after it all with Ute back in London, where she now has a little brother and is coming to terms with life once again surrounded by comforts and other people. What she remembers about what happened to her takes the reader to the shocking conclusion.

This was a beautifully told story, with hints of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, though in a much more fertile and magical fairy tale like setting. Peggy, wanting to be called Punzel, is an interesting character who lives inside her own imagination much of the time. The setting is quiet, yet full of foreboding and mounting tension. The descriptions are beautifully written, vivid and alive. I would live in the setting of this novel. Peggy's father's collapse was well done and subtle as it reached its climax. The atmosphere, devastating and nostalgic.

Our Endless Numbered Days is easily a 4 star read, my first foray into Claire Fuller's writing, and I can't wait to read the next.