I Who Have Never Known Men

 this one's for my dad because “five stars needs an explanation” and maybe he's right sometimes and this book at least deserves one. 

this book is very [trying to find a word that isn't beautiful or chilling or sad or harrowing or wondrous but somehow all those words together]. it's somehow detached and also extremely humanised. i think you can feel the empathy the author has for her characters, for the world that they are made to live in, even if the narrator has a hard time verbalising that empathy herself. even has a hard time understanding that what she feels is empathy, and understanding. 

and then at the end, it wraps up inevitably, in a way that makes you want to restart it immediately to re-read the beginning with an understanding you didn't have before.