I just read this book and found it deeply impactful. I’ve seen a lot of discussions about it that take it on its face, however I believe that’s a more fruitful approach is reading it with the same spirit as something akin to Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
Where the strange scenario described is symbolic of deeper human truths that cannot be effectively captured by describing them directly. The absurdist scenario allows you to inhabit and feel these truths more fully through a narrative.
My intuition reading the book is that it is a critique of the post-industrialist modernist world, viewing it as a disaster of sorts. Ivan Illich’s work “Gender” explores a similar theme where he posits that in post-industrial society, the human was reimagined as a genderless mechanical producer of work. This was a tragedy for all humans who existed within a seasonal cycle that varied according to lengthening and shortening days. But it was a particular tragedy for women who exist in bodies that are aligned even more so than men to this natural seasonal cycle of existence due to their experience of periods and the greater reproductive burden placed on them.
You can see this in the novel in terms of how nothing is provided to the women to deal with their menstrual bleeding and the randomized, ever changing schedule that is imposed upon, yet also hidden from them, that has no alignment with a regular day/night cycle. This also aligns with how artificial light, ubiquitous in the modern world has disrupted our natural sleep cycles which used to be much longer.
I could go on with this sort of analysis, but just wanted to share this, as I hadn’t seen many of the discussions about the book across the internet look at it in this particular way.
by FlippantPinapple