What Is The Compound Book'S Plot Summary And Spoilers?

The Compound by S.A. Bodeen follows a family who has been stuck in a underground bunker for what they thought was the life of their deceased loved ones on the surface. Written in journal form from a young boy’s perspective, readers follow his transition from trying to survive underground to investigating the father of the family who has been controlling them. The biggest reveal of the story is that the father of the family misled his family into believing that the apocalypse had occurred above ground when in reality he had the ability to leave them and choose not to allowing him to protect his family but instead to imprison them.

What follows for the family is a slowly unfolding series of betrayal, pain and hurt, conflict, and in the end, an ugly reveal of the true motives of their father. He was motivated by greed, ego, and fear. And once the facade has been dropped, the family is left to deal with the aftermath of their father’s behavior. This won’t immediately heal, but rather will take time and lead to the exploration of legal, emotional, and moral implications of their father’s behavior. But in the end, it’s a hopeful yet unsettling read that I think the book was meant to be.

The book opens up in a somewhat claustrophobic but strange way. A father has anticipated a world catastrophic disaster and set up a strong walled and fortified compound to house his family for the long term. Within the Compound, the protagonist Eli grows up with his two brothers and their mother. There is much rule, routine and organization within the space, which is run with an iron fist by his father, who has set up a whole system of food, water, education, security etc. all managed by ‘ration cards’ and with set times for ‘exercise’ etc. It is clear that the family’s safety is of utmost importance, and the father’s way of running the space is to control every aspect to the minute detail.

As the story progresses and the ‘Compound’ turns dark, the focus slowly but surely shifts from the family’s struggle to survive to the real story of control. The reader sees things through the eyes of young protagonist Eli who soon realises that there are certain supplies missing, that there are secret rooms within the Compound that he has never seen before and discovers some very surprising and very damaging secrets regarding his father’s actions and words before the lock-down. In fact it becomes apparent that the ‘catastrophe’ that his father warned them about is not quite as his father described. The food and other supplies start to run low. The punishments become more severe and are handed out at random. As tensions start to rise within the Compound, the family starts to turn against each other in fear. I don’t want to give too much away, but in the end it is a desperate Eli who takes the drastic but only step available to him in order to break his father’s control once and for all. When the dust settles and the Compound is finally opened up, the family find themselves in a changed world. But contrary to what they had been led to believe, it is far from the post-apocalyptic irradiated wasteland that they had anticipated. Instead they find a world that is very damaged indeed, but it is also full of life, full of hope and full of fear and uncertainty for the future. As for the father, he is left to face the full weight of the lies, the cruelty and the violence that he unleashed upon his own family in order to maintain his own control over them. A very satisfying read indeed.

I love slow-burn puzzle stories like ‘The Compound’ by Sia Nixon. At first you read it accepting the necessity of the bunker as the narrator does, but then trust is exploited in so many ways. The majority of the book is comprised of details regarding the daily survival of the family within the small space. Boring moments and the ‘rules’ to keep order are outlined in great detail, but the inconsistencies in the Father’s story are slowly highlighted throughout the story, in some cases it is the way the reader slowly changes in sympathy to the Father as he becomes more and more practical, more and more observant and in the end more and more suspicious of those he has taken to protect.

When the truth is finally revealed, the truth is ugly but also somehow very good for a narrative in that it is resolved and worked out. So the father had lied to his family about a nuclear apocalypse, using the perceived danger to keep them imprisoned in the underground compound for financial gain as well as emotional control. When the truth is finally revealed to the family, they are angry, vindictive, and full of hate for the man who had manipulated them for so long. They have confrontations with him and in the end his control over them is ended. However, after that things are not at all neat or good for the family. Instead of immediately falling into arms of each other and being happy that they have been rescued from the underground bunker, things are instead slow and haunting as each family member tries to come to terms with what has happened and to rebuild their lives on the surface of the earth. The way the author treats survival in the story is good, because he shows that survival is not just physical but also of the soul, and that to survive a person must also reclaim their story.