First published 1963

239 pages

Dystopian, Fiction, Literary

The Wall was my first five star read of the year. I had never seen or heard about it before, but for some reason it caught my eye as I perused the library shelves. It is about a middle-aged woman who is vacationing at a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains. She wakes up one morning to find that an invisible wall separates her from the rest of the world. She is completely alone except for a dog, a cat, and a cow. She goes about surviving in the wilderness while also surviving her loneliness.

This is a fascinating and nuanced book. It strikes me as the kind of book one reads for English class, and it changes your life forever. It is a deeply personal narrative. The reader observes the relationship between a woman and her animals while in isolation. It is a critique of modern civilization, a survival story, and dystopian literary adventure. Not only that, but it is an amazing feminist classic. It orients a woman as the primary force of change; she is truly the protagonist in her life. She does not contend with pressures and standards of modern civilization. She is strikingly practical and capable; the narrative is character driven, and she is that driving force. It is the kind of novel that makes you pause and really absorb what you just read by staring at the wall for an hour.