Rating: 10/10
This book? I can't. I thought it was AMAZING. For so much to be packed into such a small book was just insane to me. The sheer enormity of such a short book is mind-boggling. It is incredibly hard to comprehend what is happening and I am so glad that I read it. This is going into my mental "favorite books" shelf. Let me explain the premise of this WILD book.
Soren Johansson, a middle-aged, Mormon, geologist dies and goes to Hell. He's baffled, he was always faithful and active in his religion and he doesn't understand what happened. What happened was that he chose the wrong religion, if he knew more about Zoroastrianism he would understand what is to come next. The demon behind the desk reveals that he has to go to Hell, but Hell isn't infinite as everyone had believed. Hell is just a penance, to pay for all the wrong you've done. Once you've paid that penance, you may move on. Our protagonist is sent to the Library of Babel for his penance. He's not alone, there are others around, but they all have the same goal: find the book in the library that describes their whole life in perfect detail. The problem with that is that the Library of Babel not only contains every book ever written, it also contains every book that could ever possibly be written. Each one is 410 pages, with forty lines of text per page with eighty characters per line. If the story is longer than that, then it is broken down into volumes, each is the same length and they all look exactly the same. When I say every book that could possibly be written, I mean EVERY book, much of the books in the library are complete gibberish. Picture it like this: in the library there is a copy of The Stand by: Stephen King (obviously broken into more than one volume). The original copy is there, there is also a copy where the first word is different, there is a copy where the second word is different. There is a copy that is longer than the original, there is a copy that is shorter than the original, theres a copy written by Nora Roberts. The point is, if it could be done, it is there.
The sheer enormity of the task of looking at that many books is almost overwhelming to think about. It isn't an infinite number, but it is a finite number so large, that it isn't really comprehensible. There was a quote in the book that described it pretty perfectly,
"Finite does not mean much if you can't tell any practical difference between it and infinite."
It's true isn't it? There are so many books in this place, that even trying to think about it is mind-boggling. The author even gave us his estimate of how many books are in this library: 95^1,312,000. Ninety five to the one million, three hundred and twelve thousand power. That is even more electrons than there are in the universe. Building on this estimate means that this library is 7.16^1,297,369 light-years wide and deep. You have nothing but time in this here but can you imagine how long it would take to search through every book in this place to find the perfect retelling of your life story? How many volumes would it encompass? Would it need to be from your perspective? Your loved one's perspective? Your cat's perspective? Does it need to be in days, months, years, minutes, etc..? Its a truly hard look at what infinity really is and what you would do if you were faced with an enormous amount of time to accomplish an almost insurmountable task.
This is a hard look at religion and the afterlife and what really happens when we die. Hell means different things to different people, what if you picked the wrong religion? How would you even know? The sheer amount of questions inspired by this text alone is wild. This book is only 110 pages, a novella really but you're left with more of an impression from this book than any of the huge books that I've ever read. The things these people do when they're trapped in this seemingly endless nightmare also resonates. These people make friends, enemies, take lovers, and cope the best way they can. Some cope by forming religions within Hell (what a concept though right?). This is a harrowing tale of how people cope in harsh, stressful situations where they have nobody to rely on but themselves. This wasn't the afterlife that they expected, but its the one that they got. The enormity of their task and their circumstances is staggering. But it also begs the question: is it really that bad? As far as penance goes, you're not burning in a lake of fire, but you're faced with this Herculean task and nothing but time to complete it. You don't even know for sure what happens when you complete it.
"Who knows, maybe in a hundred billion years I'll find my book. I'll stick it in the slot and boom, I'll find out that, no, Zoroastrianism isn't the truth either, but it was really the Baptists who were right all along and this is just part of God's preliminary salvo into an eternity of horrors. So it's bam, splash, and I find myself in a sea of boiling sulfur. Or maybe this is some strange philosopher's Hell where we have to experience every possible Hell that can or ever has been expressed."
This would be a gut-wrenching experience to have to take in where all you can do is hope that the outcome will be worth it. In the mean time, all you could do is the task at hand. And for how long even? A billion years? A trillion years? Maybe only one year. You don't know and that is part of the horror in this scenario. It's horrific because it's so immense that you can't even encapsulate it in words. And yet, you'd have to endure it anyway. You'd have to find something to hold on to. You can't die again (not permanently), so what else can you do but persevere and carry on. Carry on surrounded by a sea of people who look and think and act just like you. This hell only contains people of one race, who lived in a set time period, who were of similar moral background. If that's all there is, then you eventually wouldn't even care to know the stories of those around you because they would blur together.
In short, I loved this book. It gave you something to really sit and think about. Peck did an amazing job and this is honestly one of the scariest stories I've ever read. The sheer enormity of it which leaves so much to be unknown, the lack of closure is just frightening. There's also the possibility that this could really happen. If it did, what could you do but push through and hope to carry on without going completely mad? Read this book if you want a short read that will probably stick with you for a long time. I read the e-book, but I'll probably buy the physical book just so I can own it.
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