The Wall
On holiday in a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains, a middle-aged woman wakes up to find that an invisible wall has descended all around her. With her are a dog, a cow, and a cat—and no one else. Determined to care for the animals and herself, she sets to work as best she can. The story that unfolds is as much about solitude as it is about a woman’s ability to make choices about her life, and what it means to be a caretaker for other living creatures. I was struck especially by how much the narrator’s gender recedes the longer she lives alone, and what that means for us, as readers and voyeurs. There are no chapters, no pauses or breaks in the narrative, just a tale of long days and nights as the narrator grieves, sows, gathers, cares—and lives despite it all.