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"I can allow myself to write the truth; all the people for whom I have lied throughout my life are dead..." writes the heroine of Marlen Haushofer's The Wall, a quite ordinary, unnamed middle-aged woman who awakens to find she is the last living human being. Surmising her solitude is the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of not only survival but also self-renewal. The Wall is at once a simple and moving journal—with talk of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name—and a disturbing meditation on twentieth-century history.
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I really enjoyed the narrator’s flat, almost resigned tone in the face of the extraordinary situation she finds herself in. There’s something strangely effective about how matter-of-factly she describes what has happened, as though there is simply no point in reacting to it anymore. At times I found the narration repetitive, but then again, so were her days: confined within the wall, shaped by the same routines, seasons and small tasks. The lack of chapters did make the book difficult for me to read physically, so I eventually switched to the audiobook.What I loved most was her relationship with the animals. At first, they are necessarily companions and a means of survival in an otherwise empty world, but her affection for them becomes something much deeper. Their lives give her days meaning, and her love for them goes far beyond the practical necessity of having them around.I also think this is a remarkably strong feminist novel for its time. The narrator repeatedly reflects on the artificial standards and expectations imposed on women, and there is something liberating in the fact that, after everyone else has died, she no longer has anyone to lie to — including herself. She no longer needs to perform a version of womanhood that society has taught her to perform. Without other people around to judge her, she is free to simply be a human being: to work, survive, think, feel and exist without constantly measuring herself against ideas of what a woman and a mother should be, or what it means to be feminine. The “real world” strips away those expectations and exposes how constructed so many of them were.Her observations about society more broadly felt very true as well. Once all the artificial rules and hierarchies disappear, what remains is food, shelter, work, nature, companionship and survival — the things that actually matter.Spoiler ahead:Although the narrator tells us from fairly early on that many of the animals will eventually die, and although death is an unavoidable part of the life she has come to accept, Lynx’s death absolutely devastated me. I knew it was coming, but that did absolutely nothing to soften it. I started tearing up almost immediately. It was probably the moment in the book that affected me most painfully.A bleak, quiet and strangely beautiful book about isolation, survival, nature, womanhood and what remains of us when society disappears.
no me imaginé que me iba a impactar tanto. es tan triste. sin necesidad de abstraer demasiado ni de sobreexplicar habla de manera tan conmovedora de la carga mental y amorosa de las mujeres.es hermoso.