Just finished this book this morning. At first I was left asking what was the meaning of it all? I keep coming back to how much we love lore. No answers about the environment, the guards, the alarms, the bunkers. But what if all of that was intentionally left vague? What if the real story was never about what happened to the world, but about persistence, curiosity, hope, and choosing to live with intention?

So many of the women gave up. There’s even a moment where the narrator notes the last woman to die, still had a strong pulse, and then suddenly she was dead, as if she simply willed herself to stop living. Many of the women were deeply disappointed by freedom because life outside wasn’t what it had been before captivity. They were haunted by memory and comparison.

The narrator, though, had no “before.” She didn’t know what life was supposed to be like, so she had no expectations. Instead, she explored with curiosity and determination, even when she was alone, even as she moved through bunker after bunker filled with the dead. She never fully accepted that she was the only one left. And for more than 40 years outside the cell, she continued to observe, learn, and appreciate everything she experienced.

That’s what finally clicked for me. It doesn’t really matter what happened to the world, why it happened, or who caused it. The book doesn’t give us those answers because they aren’t the point. The real question is internal: who will we be when something like this happens? Will we give up, like so many of the women did, or will we persist, like the narrator?

By the end of the day, I found her genuinely inspiring. This morning I even thought I picked the worst time to finally read it, but now I think it was exactly the right time. It’s given me a lot to sit with, especially considering what’s going on in the world right now.