Reviews

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

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hollyatree's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

bookworm32's review

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adventurous challenging dark hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Read for my local bookstore’s Lost in Translation book club where each month is a new pick from another country. This book was sparse and beautiful. What does it mean to be human? How would a person or a group move forward if they were the only ones on the planet in some post war or dystopian era.

Forty women in an underground bunker, kept in a cage and watched over by masked/faceless guards. One day, as the guards are turning the key to open the cage to deliver meal time provisions, a siren goes off and the guards quickly leave. The women immediately free themselves and make their way through a corridor and up one hundred stairs to the outside world. There is no trace of the guards or any other humans.

What follows is thought provoking, sometimes unsettling, but often simple and beautiful. Told through the narrator- the youngest who was kept prisoner. Merely a small child when the group was placed in the bunker and around 15 years old at the time of their freedom. It is an account of a person who only knows the before world through the eyes of the other women. Although she never lived a life filled with the things the older women talk of and miss and grieve, the narrator becomes pivotal to their survival and a bridge to the new life after the siren.