Dimples on the Edge

Genre: Absurd, Speculative Fiction

Synopsis: A young woman in an imagined world where all women have been herded into cells and forced to live trapped until a mysterious event.

Story Summary: The girl lives in a cell with 20 other women, all older than her, due to a vaguely remembered event. The cell is monitored by male soldiers, who never speak or interact with the women, beyond occasional whip cracks. Following an unexplained event, the women escape and explore a vast world of nothingness, with the girl aging and contemplating life in this absurd reality.

My feelings about the book: Overall, reading the book was fairly straightforward, with a simple style that reflected the mindset of the protagonist as a young girl. At times, she was haughty & smug, which irked me, but given that we are almost exclusively stuck in her head for the telling of this story, it aligns with the fact that she is the only one of the characters that is of this absurd existence, so she is bound to be more smug. She doesn’t cling to the “old ways” because she never knew them, and she is the one that is able to get the other characters to forge a new path.

At times, I felt a tension within the story, a suspense towards what could possibly happen, but eventually, you settle into the fact that this world is all there is and all there will be. Much like the narrator, you learn that in this world, nothing changes and there are no answers to be had. It is the absurdity of life, that we get placed into a circumstance and then live through it, come what may, with no real hope of answers or understanding. That does not mean that we don’t ultimately hope that our experience can be found by and help others though. There is still the human urge to want to be useful and part of something.

Speculative and absurdist fiction may not be my bag, but I’m glad I gave the novel a try.

Credit to TikTok user @bishopmortimer for the book report & scrapbook idea