Reviews - I Who Have Never Known Men

41.1k reviews for:

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman

4.24 AVERAGE

lydialovestoread's review against another edition

3.25

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

It’s a post apocalyptic book where 40 women are locking in a cage under the watchful eye of guards. They don’t know where they are, are not allowed to touch, the guards give out rations but don’t talk to them. The main character is younger than the other women and entered the cage as a young girl. She knows nothing about life outside the cage and is only known as “the child”.

It was dark and mysterious, giving few answers and leaving mostly questions. It was recommended by a bookseller in Red Lodge, MT so I bought it off the best sellers shelf but didn’t love it.

duketal's review against another edition

3.75

reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

literately_blonde's review against another edition

3.0

dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I am frustrated. And it's not because of the lack of context surrounding the women's situation at the beginning of the book or the unknown emergency that frees them. I guess I'm unsure about what the book is trying to say. Here are some thoughts pinging around my mind since I've finished:

1. As a woman who has never experienced strong maternal instincts where my own potential children are concerned, I felt uncomfortable with how much emphasis was put on "the womb" for life's greater meaning. In one of my least favorite passages from the novel, one of the women tells the narrator, "What are we, without a future, without children?" I suppose she could be referring to the human race in general, but if she's referring to the women themselves, their lives have the same meaning! There are forty of you--create your own civilization, with a school and division of labor and relationships and it's not so different! In the end, even people in a "regular" society have to hope their memory will live on once they're gone because then it's out of their hands. And the fact that the narrator's particular kind of cancer and lack of a menstrual cycle were mentioned in the very last line of the book felt so underwhelming. You never got a period, but look at what you DID accomplish, the kind of autonomy that so many "regular" women never experience.

2. The narrator's relationship to men was kind of baffling. I know the title is "I Who Have Never Known Men," but that premise is not entirely true. The narrator never had a sexual relationship with a man, and she never heard a man speak, but she did know men--the guards who kept the women caged and maintained their distance completely unless they snapped a whip in the women's direction. And although she did come to view the guards as a kind of victim too (which...I don't know how to feel about that--it's hard to feel any sympathy when so many of them abandoned human beings in their cages during the emergency), I don't get the repeated fixation on "never knowing men." In that especially frustrating passage again, one woman says, "Men mean you are alive, child." Is this referring to a sexual life? Several of the forty women found partners among themselves and created their own. The narrator herself never became comfortable with that--because during her formative years, men had cracked whips whenever the women got close to touching. Is the phrase referring to procreation for the next generation? That wouldn't have mattered to the narrator anyway because she never got a period-- because men kept her in a cage . In so many instances, men were the death of the women in other bunkers who never escaped. I can understand if the men became a stand-in for all the experiences the narrator would never have growing up on the not-Earth, but maybe choosing another stand-in would have fit better. "I Who Have Never Known Dogs"? That would make me sad, certainly.

3. Final gripe, I promise. Somehow, narrator pulled off an attitude of "not like other girls" in a world where the important characters are only women. I know that her upbringing and life experiences differed from them, but her contempt for them wore on me. For instance, her dismissal of their debates about the seemingly small details of their lives bothered me--she lamented her lack of a "normal life" throughout the book, but those discussions were indicative of the kinds of sometimes shallow squabbles that humans engage in, and she wanted no part of them.

All this to say, I did think it was well written, and it certainly gave me lots to think about. I just can't say that any of it was enjoyable.

ekglad's review against another edition

4.0

dark

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I would say this is the lady's version of The Road without being... so graphic and perverse. It's probably been my favorite science fiction written by a female author in at least five years. I think the absence of articulated trauma and the focus on the character's unique journey were incredibly fulfilling.

What a pleasure this was to read!