Our Endless Numbered Days

I received a free copy of Our Endless Numbered Days from the publisher in return for an honest review.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, the premise caught my attention and it turned out to be a pretty intense and vivid read.

The story is told completely from the main character Peggy's point of view and is split into two different intertwining storylines: the summer of 1976 when her father takes her away from all she knows, and 1985 when she's older and has returned home. Peggy's character was written extremely well, it was full of depth with an innocence that draws you in, you can't help but feel for her and become attached to her character.

I was impressed by the writing style. The way the author dropped subtle hints that sparked the imagination without actually detailing what was occurring, was cleverly done. A lot was left to the readers imagination when it came to the pain and suffering of the characters in the book, filling in those blanks allows the reader to paint as grim a situation as their imagination allows. At the time of reading the story I wasn't really aware of this, it wasn't until I had finished that I realised how cleverly the author had manipulated my imagination and my experience of the story.

The way the author builds the world and scenery in the story was also done very well. The descriptions and scenes were very easy to visualise. The author immerses the reader in a way that makes you feel like you are there with the characters, surrounded by all the trees and part of the story.

Our Endless Numbered Days is not a feel good read, it's raw, it's intense but at the same time there are moments of innocence, hope and happiness and you'll find yourself thinking about the story long after you have finished the book.

This novel is well written and engaging, but also infuriatingly unoriginal. I've seen many of the plot points and devices in other works. A few that come to mind are Room, which some reviewers mentioned, Life of Pi, Into the Wild, and Heidi (weirdly, but truly). There have also been recent unfortunately true stories about abducted children and their captors, and the psychological manipulations the victims endure. The book felt like a mashup of all these, and therefore in some ways predictable.

It is well told, however, and the narrator is both psychologically and emotionally round. I'm not sure this makes up for the flatness of the other characters, who remain ciphers. Peggy's father is horrifying, but In a predictable kind of way; we know from the start he is a control freak and an obsessive, but we don't know why. Her mother seems just implausible. It is hard to believe she cares about Peggy in the end and hard to understand when she doesn't in the beginning.

I've seen this book classified as YA. The tale is as dark as can be, and I would not want my teen considering the nightmarish scenario depicted here. In middle age, I found it a little hard to endure reading, and when I was done I wished I hadn't read it, not because it was bad, but because it was so bleak and inexorable.

I'm still thinking about it hours after finishing. This is not necessarily an endorsement. I agree with the reviewers who say it is haunting. But I am not sure they mean it in the same way I do: I feel really irritated by the story, and annoyed that I read it. It is memorable and reminiscent, but in ways I'd much rather forget.

The writing is overall fairly strong. The descriptions of survival in the wilderness are solid but go on a bit too long in parts without much character development and in portions aren't realistic (surviving the first winter with the amount of prep they did). The survival portions did not create a feeling of tension in the way they could've. They were a bit bland and weren't linked enough with who the characters were or became.
I loved that the story did not end at Peggy's escape from the wilderness. I loved the detail and descriptions of what happened to her when she came out. But the very end did seem extremely rushed. Kind of tacked on. I think it was meant to be a plot twist but it was so quick and ended without any resolution. After what the character suffered, that seems cruel.
SPOILER FOLLOWS:
The sex scene in the book was extremely grotesque and horrifying IN RETROSPECT. This was because the character having sex was described as enjoying it totally. For many reasons I find that repulsive and likely very unrealistic given the ultimate reality of the situation and the circumstance.
I am surprised that I haven't read a reviewer who mentioned that aspect of the book. If it weren't for that I would've given the book 4 stars.

This was one unsatisfying novel. I forced my way through to the end.

Peggy, the main character, is a young girl who is a victim in a dysfunctional family. I pitied her but rooted for her not one whit. The book merely has us watching her negotiate an out of touch mother and an infantile child of a father. She is lost to circumstance and we are frustrated that there is no hope. There is little development of the main characters and less payoff in the end. Inventiveness of the plot will never salvage a squirmy dirge such as this. But if you want heart felt observations about living in the forest, knock yourself out. I just don't enjoy sentient beings twisting in the wind, only to crash and burn.

I don't like unreliable narrators. I didn't realize, at first, that Peggy was one. Even though she mentions at the start of the book that a doctor said she had Korsakoff's syndrome - meaning malnutrition has messed with her memories - I assumed that it was just because her experiences were so unbelievable that the doctor thought she'd made things up. I also don't like unreliable narrators because the author obviously knows what truly happened. Leaving the reader in the dark about it seems rude.

Peggy's narration does seem childlike, often. While at the beginning of the book, that can be excused because she is eight years old, by the end she is seventeen, yet still talking about things with a child's understanding. I thought that was the effect of Korsakoff's syndrome, not that she was entirely making some things up.

In our endless numbered days, Peggy is effectively kidnapped by her father when she is eight, and taken to some place deep in the German forest. She spends the next nine years alone in the forest with him, trapping squirrels, gathering roots and berries, and growing simple crops in a small vegetable patch. He tells her, repeatedly, making her repeat it back to him, that the rest of the world was destroyed in a massive storm. They are the last two people alive in their small, sheltered valley. She doesn't question it until she sees a man in their forest, and that eventually leads her to find civilization again. The book is told in two timelines, flashing back and forth from her memories of her time in the forest, and the present where she's attempting to re-acclimate to London.

I'm not really sure what to believe; Peggy's memory or what her mother thinks happened. There are just enough oddities to make either story plausible. I think I prefer Peggy's version. But that's the trouble with unreliable narrators; there's no way to actually know. I don't like ending a book frustrated. Books should make you feel things, yes, but frustration is an odd emotion to aim for.

This book is odd.

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller is the second book down my Tin House rabbit hole and the first of two-girl living with a crazy guy out in the forest books. I am also reading The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis and will review it soon. Our Endless Numbered Days is another book that will mess with your mind.

Peggy aka Punzel begins life with her father James, who makes her pack a rucksack to prepare for emergencies and is a survivalist, and her mother, who plays the piano while Peggy's father gets a bit stranger.

One day, when Peggy is 7, her father tells her to pack her rucksack because they are going to live in the woods. James tells Punzel that her mother is dead as is the rest of the world. In order to survive, they must live in this secluded cabin and learn to live off of the land.

The story begins innocently as Punzel (short for Rapunzel) relies on her father and begins learning everything from him to survive. He also does special things for her, such as building weighted piano keys so Punzel can practice the piano. They sleep in the same bed and rely on one another.

Years begin to pass and James' behavior starts getting stranger and stranger. He starts calling Punzel her mother's name and cries out that her mother left him. The more strange her father becomes, the further Punzel begins to travel away from the cabin until one day she finds a pair of shoes in the woods and a man connected to those shoes. For 10 years, her father has been lying to her. What will Punzel do?

The book itself is entirely told through Punzel's eyes and jumps between two points in time. The main narrative progresses as Punzel gets older, but the book also jumps to 10 years later where Peggy is reunited with her mother and her younger brother who happens to be 10 years old. We learn what happened out in the forest, what happened to James, and what life was like for those 10 years.

The great thing about this story is that Peggy aka Punzel becomes an unreliable narrator, simply because she is in a state of arrested development. We will also learn other things which will make her unreliable, but it would be a huge spoiler if I shared them on this blog. As stated in another review, I am a sucker for an unreliable narrator.

There is also a web of lies that float throughout this entire book. People withhold information to each other, like crazy. Not only James telling Punzel that everyone is dead, but there are other lies that float throughout. The great thing is the author doesn't blatantly fill in the blanks for the readers. One must put the pieces together and figure out what the truth is.

I am calling this book one of those books that I absolutely loved, but others may not. It does have some harsh scenes that might not sit well with others. Some may also be frustrated by the need to fill in blanks. I loved it though and cannot wait for Fuller's second book coming out in December.

I gave this one 5 stars!

This novel of extreme living and extreme loss is fascinating. Peggy listens to her father and his friends discuss survival scenarios but doesn't think too much about it because it is such an ordinary part of her life. Her mother goes on a business trip, and suddenly her father tells her that they must leave and go to a safe place. After they arrive at the disappointing destination, her father tells her that they are the last two people alive on earth. They live like this for eight years, until one day, she sees another set of shoes and knows that three people are alive.
This novel was unexpected, in so many ways. Claire Fuller created a world that had constricted so severely for Peggy and her father, and yet, to the reader, there is a bit of an idyllic quality to that world. Throughout the novel, there is an underlying tension because the reader knows that father James has lied to his daughter and is living out his own fantasy. But how will it end? I highly recommend this novel to fans of YA, but also to anyone who is looking for a wonderful debut novel, and a new author to anticipate!

As a child, Peggy is taken by her survivalist father to live in a distant cabin in the German countryside, in preparation for an end of the world which never comes. Our Endless Numbered Days relies on some transparent narrative tropes--Peggy's unreliability, her family's predictable secrets--that build suspense but have no payout. What underlies the hollow tension is a more effective, melancholy story; both in isolation and in society, Peggy's survival is convincingly detailed, sympathetic, harrowing without growing exploitive. I'm less pleased with (beware small spoiler!) Reuben's identity--after being ignored, lied to, and denied agency, Peggy's testimony should be given credence, not twisted for the sake of a narrative cliche. Our Endless Numbered Days leaves me ambivalent: it's always readable, often an interesting commentary on dystopias, and possesses a compelling haunted tone; but the flaws are undeniable, and leave me unsatisfied. I don't particularly recommend it.

Eight-year-old Peggy’s father is obsessed with being able to survive in a disaster. She has to practice packing a rucksack and being ready to flee in minutes in case the need arises. Peggy’s mother is a renowned pianist from Germany who tolerates her husband and her friends. But when Peggy’s father tells her to pack her bags one day and they set off from their home in London, she doesn’t know that home will become a remote cottage in the German wilderness and that she won’t see her mother or civilization again for another nine years.

Together, Peggy and her father survive by trapping forest animals, growing vegetables and making do with the few things they found in the cabin and they brought with them. Peggy believes the world outside has ended, and they are the only two people left alive. Her father’s deteriorating mental condition forces a series of events that eventually conclude with her return from the woods.

Told from Peggy’s point of view as a 17 year old recovering from her ordeal and an eight year old experiencing it, Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller is lyrical and heartbreaking and complicated. Peggy’s point of view as a child is superbly captured. Believing her mother and everyone else in the world dead, she trusts her father completely and depends upon him for survival. Yet readers know Peggy leaves the woods for some reason, and the mystery compels the story forward.

Fuller’s descriptions of the forest are vivid and she lets her characters show themselves through small and big actions that bring them fully to life. Despite my skepticism that anywhere in Germany is remote enough (or was in the 1970s and 80s when the story takes place) for there to be no evidence of life outside the clearing (not even an airplane overhead?), I found the story compelling. And while I would have liked to know more about how Peggy reacted to and dealt with her growing body and the changes that puberty brought, I found it a poignant and thought-provoking tale exposing the vulnerability and trust children must place in their parents for their own survival and what happens when that trust is breached.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Peggy is a young girl with some interesting parents. Her mother is a semi-famous concert pianist, who robbed the cradle a bit in marrying her stand-in page turner. Her father, said page-turner, is a bit of a dreamer, and also a hard core Survivalist. One day, he whisks Peggy away from their home to live in an isolated cabin in the woods. And then some stuff happens.

I will start by saying this… hype doesn’t always ruin a book for me, and certainly didn’t in this case. SO many bloggers I respect had read and raved about this, and I also participated in the Twitter chat with Claire Fuller (link above) when I was about half way through, so the hype was real, folks. This book SO did not disappoint.

It starts out pretty slow going, and just quietly lays the ground work in the character development department. So much of the story seems so unbelievable…. and yet, completely believable in the way everything was pristinely executed. The chapters alternate between Peggy’s time in the woods, and the time years later after she has returned home. This creates a dynamic push and pull of the story, where you get to see the “before” and the “after”… but of what…? You’ll have to read it to find out – mic drop.

This book is SO HARD to talk about without spoilers – accidental or otherwise, so I’m going to leave this relatively short and sweet. It’s a beautiful book, with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing, as well as enough ambiguity to allow the reader to fill in the holes with one’s own ideas. Everyone should read this book.

For more, visit www.bookishtendencies.com

A masterful tale that alternates in time, between 1976, when the young protagonist is taken by her survivalist father to live deep in the woods of Germany, and 1985, when she has returned, irrevocably changed, to her life in London with her mother and a younger brother she didn't know existed. Though the description of the harrowing yet routine life with her father in the woods is filled with lush details, I found myself anxiously awaiting a return to the story of how Peggy was coping with life in London at age seventeen, having not seen another person besides her father since she was eight years old. Towards the end, she did connect with the mysterious Reuben, just before she made her way out of the woods, and those encounters with him were heart-wrenching. I had a presentiment before the shock of the ending so it wasn't a complete surprise. I did wish that the story would have continued and had revealed, not only the truth that is alluded to in the final pages, but also how Peggy and her mother, Ute, and her brother, Oskar, continued to thrive (or not) as a family.

Upon reading the synopsis of the book (off-balance survivalist father takes his daughter from the life she knows to live in a forest under the pretense that the world has ended), the strange premise hooked me and I immediately put the book on hold at my library. And… woah! The story is gripping, unsettling, and unnerving. The characters were so well crafted and left me with clear images in my mind of what they looked like, and the writing is haunting and beautiful. I finished the book last night just before bed and am still thinking about the book at 9:00 p.m. the next day. This book is not a light beach read. It also starts a bit slow, but if you like books with descriptive language, well-formed characters, a strong female protagonist narrator...and are OK with feeling unsettled and unnerved by a truly unique story, then I cannot recommend this enough.

What an amazing amount of fantasy and creativity there is in that book. The author’s fertile imagination carries us into a parallel world, into an adventure that is difficult to stomach but easy to follow because her prose is precise, easy flowing and sprinkled with captivating descriptions.
A father runs away with his 8-year-old daughter Peggy into a place hidden in the forest (he kidnaps her away from her life in London, her school, her friends and her German mother Ute, a well known pianist).
The father tells Peggy the rest of the world has been destroyed and they are the only survivors. This gives the story its post-apocalyptic emotional dimension.
Peggy’s father charms her into his survivalist ideology, lies to her and imprisons her during 8 years into his own world. Isolated from society, he degenerates gradually as a human being both physically and mentally. As Peggy becomes an adolescent, she questions her father’s world and rebels.
It is a fascinating and devastating account of child abuse. However the story offers hope. Little Peggy, although deprived of everything, still manages to build up sufficient mental strength to construct and escape into a parallel world that gives her hope – and she survives and gets away from her situation. Snow Beach

This was an outstanding read. This story of a girl taken to the woods to live in isolation with her survivalist father begins with her acclimating to the 'real world' after her ordeal and I thought this was a brilliant way for her story to unfold. As we learn more in flashbacks, it becomes clear that whether or not she returns home is not where the mystery and tension lies, but HOW she gets out of her situation. How does she leave her father? How does she come to understand what is really happening? The ending is pretty harrowing, but following the breadcrumbs of ideas that Fuller deftly drops along the way is RIVETING stuff. I can't wait to dive into her latest novel!

Claire Fuller's debut novel tells the story of an 8-year old whose father, fearing the end-days are approaching, abducts her to live a feral existence in a remote forest in Germany. Her mother, a German concert pianist, had been away on tour when her husband and daughter disappear. She does not see Peggy again for nine years. The story is narrated by the daughter across two time frames, her harrowing existence in Germany and her return to London.

The writing is eloquent and touching, though perhaps the descriptive passages of trees, leaves and other related greenery could have done with a little judicious pruning. For me, the parts of the story set in 1985 when Peggy has returned home were by far the more interesting but these, I felt, were not given their due. This side of the story seemed somehow unresolved. Nevertheless, a far-from-flippant tale that commands attention. 3.5*

Our Endless Numbered Days is a triumphant debut for Claire Fuller. A truly original story, it had me gripped from beginning to end. Peggy 'Punzel' Hillcoat, is taken from the family home by her survivalist father, into the depths of a very deep forest nestling within the embrace of mountains and cut off from the rest of world, which he tells Peggy, has been destroyed. The story is punctuated by chapters that pick up the story nine years later. It manages to be both magical and entirely realistic, a tale of obsession and survival. Highly recommended.

What an amazing book! This is a cross between Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping and Emma Donoghue's Room. Peggy and her survivalist father attempt to make a home in the remote woods of Germany. Fuller's descriptions of nature are beautiful, and she creates a magical isolated world where the suspense builds to a devastating and surprising ending. I'm still haunted by this one even though I finished it a week ago.

I checked out some reviews after I finished, and I was very surprised to see this sometimes labeled as YA. In my view, this isn't really appropriate for young readers, and I think the deliberate prose style (a la M. Robinson) isn't likely to appeal to younger readers either.

Entering die Hutte and its environs can happen one of two ways---you can be trapped by lies that keep you from falling off the earth, or you can read this exceptional novel. Either way, whether captive or captivated, whether for a duration of nine years or the length of a book, there are things you will eventually hear (the notes of silent music)---and learn to understand (how the mind of Peggy Hillcoat created the courage to challenge her world). It all began a short time before the Great Divide, with an eight-year-old giving comfort to her doll ("and Phyllis and I would crawl inside the tent to cuddle, until she stopped crying).

"Dates only make us aware how numbered our days are, how much closer to death we are for each one we cross off...our days will be endless."

This book is the reason I was staring at the ceiling and blinking furiously while holding the shattered pieces of my brain together at midnight. If that's not enough of a recommendation, the title is derived from an Iron and Wine song. There you go.

Our Endless Numbered Days follows a young English girl, Punzel, whose dad takes her on an "adventure" to a remote cabin in Germany after her mom leaves them for several weeks to tour with an orchestra. Their adventure lasts nine years, as Punzel's dad tells her that the world has ended in their absence. The years slip by as they struggle to survive, until the day Punzel finds strange boot prints in the forest. The ensuing plot twist is never completely resolved, leaving me both deeply satisfied and puzzled. If you like books with neat endings, pass this one over. If you're willing to take a chance on a book that stands out from the blur of identical mass market offal that authors keep churning out, please read this one.

This is not a happy book, but as a farm boy once said, "Life is pain, and anyone who says differently is selling something." The story is often bleak and gritty, yet haunting. Fuller manages to offset the dark plot with beautiful language and images that keep the book balanced, from the descriptions of the isolated forest to the image of Punzel learning to play the piano on a primative wooden table in their hut. This book is also written in first person narrative, and as a reader, you trust Punzel's narrative until it's too late. I'm not usually a fan of this narrative style, but it's what makes this book possible.

Our Endless Numbered Days is billed as YA, which I don't understand. A teenage protagonist does not YA make, and many of the situations in this book are very mature/intense. That's not to say teenage readers wouldn't enjoy it, but it struck me as an adult book. I'm afraid many adults will pass this one over because of its prescribed reading level. Don't be one of them. Our Endless Numbered Days is the best book I've read this year.

Could not put this book down, it was spell-binding. The writing was gorgeous and flowed over the page, and the story was so gripping it was hard to go to sleep or to work! I wanted to know more of what happened to Peggy after the book ended, but it was also somewhat appropriate to end where it did, and even though there's a great "twist" at the end, it doesn't feel manufactured or off-key and the author does a good job of just letting it subtly exist. I want her to write many, many more books.

I was completely caught up in this terrific novel. It describes a whole, perfectly-realised world, and is an incredible feat of creative imagination. I loved the powerful simplicity of the writing, the fully-rounded characters, the fairytale clues and secrets that are gradually revealed. And I absolutely loved the impact of the ending, which resonated long after I had finished reading. I am going back to it now to re-read the last few chapters as I rushed them in my haste to find out what happened! Highly recommended.

A compelling, but disturbing story. Disturbing because of the absolute unfitness of the adult characters to be parents. Shocking and absorbing. Yes, an astute reader will see where the story is going, and that did lessen the impact for me ( hence the 4 stars), but still an engrossing book. IMHO, this is NOT an appropriate book for YA, too disturbing. But otherwise, I recommend it if you can handle a story of a child trying to survive a horrific situation.

Wow, what a great story and storyteller! This is the second book I’ve read from this author and I’m super impressed. I’m not sure what actually did or did not happen to Punzel but I was hooked on the characters and plot right from the start. Loved it!!

This book is both beautifully written and hauntingly tragic. 8 year old Peggy is abducted by her father and taken into the woods where she will live out her innocence over the next 9 years, not unlike a Sleeping Beauty. As this dark story unfolds we are treated to further fairy tale elements, the two women they should meet along the road, one with a hissing cat beneath the cloth in her basket and another with the warm cup of milk that sees Peggy spew forth some of the putrid elements yet to come. Like all good fairy tales Peggy clearly needed a handsome prince to lead her to her happily ever after!
Despite the dark tragedy of this tale I enjoyed it immensely. The writing is compelling, the prose is beautiful, the mood evocative, the protagonist so likeable that you will want to protect the motherless child and warn her of the dangers that her childish innocence cannot yet know.
Be warned though, there are dark elements that are so disturbing they will linger with you.

The writing is overall fairly strong. The descriptions of survival in the wilderness are solid but go on a bit too long in parts without much character development and in portions aren't realistic (surviving the first winter with the amount of prep they did). The survival portions did not create a feeling of tension in the way they could've. They were a bit bland and weren't linked enough with who the characters were or became.
I loved that the story did not end at Peggy's escape from the wilderness. I loved the detail and descriptions of what happened to her when she came out. But the very end did seem extremely rushed. Kind of tacked on. I think it was meant to be a plot twist but it was so quick and ended without any resolution. After what the character suffered, that seems cruel.
SPOILER FOLLOWS:
The sex scene in the book was extremely grotesque and horrifying IN RETROSPECT. This was because the character having sex was described as enjoying it totally. For many reasons I find that repulsive and likely very unrealistic given the ultimate reality of the situation and the circumstance.
I am surprised that I haven't read a reviewer who mentioned that aspect of the book. If it weren't for that I would've given the book 4 stars.

Yes, it's a disturbing story, and, yes, the "twist" is guessable very early on, but I found it completely absorbing. The reality of living off the land is not usually this anti-romantic.

The story to me was about lies we tell. Everyone told lies. Peggy told lies to herself. Her father told her some very big ones. However, I think, finally, the biggest lie was Ute's.

Wow!! I'm utterly speechless. This book cast a spell on me - I alternated between being mesmerized and disturbed, and I just couldn't put it down. When I reached the last page, I was not ready for it to be over, and the ending blew me away and yet left a small part of me wondering. This was a fantastic read!!

WOW! What a unique and phenomenal book! Claire Fuller's debut novel is so well-written....I can't wait to read her next book. She really captures the feel of the landscape and emotions of the characters, and I loved the back-and-forth between the present and the past. Fabulous writing!!

As a fan of apocalyptic fiction, I was looking forward to this book and it is certainly an impressive debut. Peggy's story told 9 years apart draws you in. The only part that I felt I had to suspend my disbelief was that I struggled to believe that there is anywhere in Germany where two people could live for 9 years without being seen. The two stories are skillfully intertwined and acts as a beautiful coming of age tale. The story of survivalism is strong and you feel the struggle to live on a day to day basis; the London story is more claustrophobic, Ute wants to protect Peggy but smothers her instead. The ending although to some extent I had guessed, was still shocking and the lead up intense.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the book and look forward to Ms Fuller's next offering. Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book

Couldn't stop reading till I finished. Would think story would be repetitious but it was far from it. Many books I read I could picture being made into a movie and this is one of them. Guess that comes from living in LA and watching so many over 36 years of living there.

Haunting and beautifully written - I felt like I was there with her in the vast German forest. I'm confused as to why some readers were so surprised by the ending. I saw what was coming for awhile. Not that it made the book any less satisfying.
Update: Still thinking about this book and it's been several days since I've finished it. That's a sign of a great book! I want to re-read it with the Iron & Wine album of the same title. ;-) And listen to the classical song that Ute and Punzel play on their piano! You can find it on YouTube, etc.

Wow!! I'm utterly speechless. This book cast a spell on me - I alternated between being mesmerized and disturbed, and I just couldn't put it down. When I reached the last page, I was not ready for it to be over, and the ending blew me away and yet left a small part of me wondering. This was a fantastic read!!

WOW! What a unique and phenomenal book! Claire Fuller's debut novel is so well-written....I can't wait to read her next book. She really captures the feel of the landscape and emotions of the characters, and I loved the back-and-forth between the present and the past. Fabulous writing!!

I read the first chapter of Our Endless Numbered Days one evening and finished the entire novel the next evening. If I hadn't needed to take time out for my own writing, I would have finished it in one sitting. What happens in Peggy/Punzel's life is incredibly compelling. Each page makes the reader wonder what will happen next. What else can go wrong? How will she survive? Could I live this way? Claire has woven an intricate web of deceit and survival.

As a fan of apocalyptic fiction, I was looking forward to this book and it is certainly an impressive debut. Peggy's story told 9 years apart draws you in. The only part that I felt I had to suspend my disbelief was that I struggled to believe that there is anywhere in Germany where two people could live for 9 years without being seen. The two stories are skillfully intertwined and acts as a beautiful coming of age tale. The story of survivalism is strong and you feel the struggle to live on a day to day basis; the London story is more claustrophobic, Ute wants to protect Peggy but smothers her instead. The ending although to some extent I had guessed, was still shocking and the lead up intense.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the book and look forward to Ms Fuller's next offering. Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book

Claire Fuller's Our Endless Numbered Days is a breathtaking tale of survival, both physical and emotional. The story unravels slowly as we are introduced to Peggy recovering the life she lost and thought was gone forever. Her life with her father in die Hütte and the culmination of events that lead to her return to her London home kept me awake reading and then thinking about the world and characters Fuller created and the questions such a story leaves us.

Couldn't stop reading till I finished. Would think story would be repetitious but it was far from it. Many books I read I could picture being made into a movie and this is one of them. Guess that comes from living in LA and watching so many over 36 years of living there.

Haunting and beautifully written - I felt like I was there with her in the vast German forest. I'm confused as to why some readers were so surprised by the ending. I saw what was coming for awhile. Not that it made the book any less satisfying.
Update: Still thinking about this book and it's been several days since I've finished it. That's a sign of a great book! I want to re-read it with the Iron & Wine album of the same title. ;-) And listen to the classical song that Ute and Punzel play on their piano! You can find it on YouTube, etc.

Wow, just wow...what a wonderful written novel. Seeing the plot unfold through just the main character's eyes helps lead you in, helps you to understand why some things happened as they did, and in the end brings you to the realization that the reality of the situation could be different than what you were presented. The descriptions of the scenes alone and the way they painted the landscape are worth a read of its own separate from the plot. I hope that Claire Fuller has another descriptive story as an encore.

Excellently written with beautiful details. The metaphors etc. are beautiful and, thankfully, not cliche. The quoted reviews on the book are accurate - I really did feel like it was impossible to put down. If you read it and feel the start is slow (some people say it is), keep reading; it is well worth it. One thing I like about the book is that we already know the ending - Peggy returns home. The interesting part is all those years in between the departure and the return.

Our Endless Numbered Days, nominated for the Desmond Elliot first novel prize, doesn't read like a debut. Immersive, unremittingly tense and suspenseful, the writing is that of someone utterly in control of her fictitious world. It packs a powerful, psychological punch at the end with not one but two twists - neither of which I saw coming. Highly recommended.

I could not put this book down. Completely engaging and horrifying all at once, to imagine that a father could take his daughter into the woods for nine years, convincing her that the world had ended and they were the last two alive. The author moves the story along with chapters that go between Peggy's time in the woods as well as her re-entry back home, and she does a brilliant job capturing the voice of both an 8-year-old who's youth has been stolen from her, as well as a 17-year-old who never had the chance to properly grow up. Do yourself a favor and read the physical book: the cover, binding, and pages are all gorgeously manufactured. A digital copy won't do it justice.

Absolutely fabulous book! Her prose paints a picture and has its own momentum. I found this was one that I couldn't read with the typical household distractions - it demanded my full attention. Bravo Claire Fuller! Fabulous debut!