“Ever” is a layered novella in both its structure and interpretation. On the surface it is a novella with a post-apocalyptic setting. The life known to people was completely altered because of the appearance of “yawnings”-forms of light that swallow people and surfaces of land. The land has been completely changed and turned disease-ridden sludge and waste. Those who weren’t swallowed by the yawnings got various forms of disease, that destroyed their skin and made their bodies into mutated forms, while making them lose cognitive abilities.
The novella centers around a female protagonist whose house was left preserved from the yawnings. Nevertheless, the house slowly changes and morphs together with other houses, merging the protagonist’s life with other people. The house and the inhabitants slowly merge together as well. The novella shows the slow decline and the merging of the main protagonist together with her house, while she travels from room to room, containing various versions of her past self.
Getting past the surface level of the novella, one can interpret it as a visceral representation of claustrophobia. It is shown through the visual imagery of merging with other people’s bodies and merging with the house, slowly becoming one with the house and towards the end expanding so that there is no more place to move-the body and the house became one.
The novella deals with the exploration of one's self, various versions of oneself throughout the life, shown in the protagonist’s exploration of different rooms, each representing a different version of herself. It also shows the fear from the outside world-the protagonist often times fearfully peers through the keyhole, or the windows, watching the decaying outside world. She never leaves the house. At the end of the novella she is surrounded by windows but can’t see anything through them; she completely isolated herself, turned into her house and the outside doesn’t exist anymore.
When it comes to the structure of the novella, it is written in a way that portrays the confinement with the bracketed sentences and paragraphs. The repetition of certain phrases and sentence shows the effort to keep oneself together, to not forget oneself. It shows the protagonist’s decline and her struggle to not lose herself.
