Reviews with content warning for Death - Yo que nunca supe de los hombres

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Yo que nunca supe de los hombres by Jacqueline Harpman

297 reviews

faehriss's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Absolutely stunning piece of literature, which is only enriched after learning the context of Jacqueline Harpman being the child of a family fleeing from the Nazi's in WW2. Spoilers of overarching plot in relation to authorial context:

The way the MC grows up knowing only of life in confinement and spends her whole life trying to make sense of her imprisonment only to find no answers that make any of it make sense is a beautiful parallel to the real life experiences of many and is handled in a truly sensitive and exceptional manner here.

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rachellen's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

**** SPOILERS AHEAD!****

This is possibly the best book I’ve ever read, so I am amazed to have found it randomly and not through recommendation. It is simply not spoken about enough!

The way that the story is narrated with such few answers yet so many questions leads you to find your own concocted explanations for human atrocity and cruelty such as unearthly beings or greater goods, yet the end of the story showed me that when humans cause pain to others there doesn’t need to be a reason why when the result is all the same.

The abandoned identical plains that the women roam somehow are not boring at all. I found myself excited when the lead found a book. It was the first time in 140 pages that she found any paper. I was shocked at how much I had found myself experiencing excitement at her finding what I think are obvious necessities, or background noise objects in my own life.

The ending line was what struck me the most, that the character could end it on such an informal, yet profound note: ‘It is strange that I am dying from a diseased womb, I who have never had periods and who have never known men.’ I interpreted this as a kind of scoff at the fact that this woman’s demise was at the cause of her womb, biologically caused by her birth gender, with which never once benefitted her or served her, other than in death. In a way, after leading such a life of captivity she found strength in her fellow women, an exact experience she would not have gotten if not for her matching gender that found her in that exact cage rather than one of men or another cage of which no one escaped due to lacking of the same luck of the guard’s dropped keys, to then be betrayed by her biological sex was so painful to realise. I found that remarkably unfair at first, yet after I read her tone as unperturbed at this inclination, I felt a lesson in her attitude towards her situation and history. She had lived the life she had left exactly as she wanted to or at least as much as she could have wanted to. That in itself was a victory against her dark, victimised past.

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wytnie's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

I liked it but i feel some things may have gone over my head and i'd love to read it again or get other peoples opinions on what happened.

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cassidy_rain's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.5

“We had survived the prison, the plain and the loss of all hope, but the women had discovered that survival is no more than putting off the moment of death.“

“We were doing nothing, we were going nowhere, we were nobody.”

What a though provoking novel. I Who Have Never Known Men is a very open ended and philosophical story about a group of women who are trapped in a guarded underground bunker, until, by sheer chance, they are able to escape. It reads almost like a diary (there’s no chapters); our narrator being the youngest of the women in the bunker. She has a unique experience, as she’s the only one who’s entire existence (or at least what she remembers) has been spent in this captivity, so she has no real memories or knowledge of the outside world.

When I read the synopsis for this I was super intrigued and I loved the concept! I thought the writing style was wonderful. I also loved the narrators voice, it’s very distinct and unique. We truly get her perception of the world- and how that perception changes with her theories and discoveries. It’s very complex and conflicting. The tone is overall quite bleak, but there’s somehow also a hopeful feeling that prevails. Despite spanning through decades in less than 200 pages, I found the pacing to be quite slow. That said, it will definitely leave you thinking and with lots of questions.

I understand that the novel is written this way on purpose, to provoke questions and feelings. For me, I disliked the open-endedness. I would have personally liked more explanation and closure. If this is one that has caught your eye I would definitely recommend you give it a try though!

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siraels's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I don't think a book has ever made me feel so isolated, gloomy and distressed but it also made me feel so many things that I could not rate it in any other way than five stars.

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ewwa18's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

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

4.0

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crybabybea's review against another edition

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dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This was like an episode of The Twilight Zone. You're dropped into a dystopian, post-apocalyptic setting with no explanation. The narrator is unreliable due to her complete ignorance, having grown up pretty much entirely in an underground bunker with no human contact except for her 39 fellow prisoners, under guard 24/7. As the events progress, the reader gets more questions than answers, and just like The Twilight Zone, the ending leaves you with nothing but your own thoughts. Don't come into this book expecting crazy action or deep characterization.

It's a deceptively simple story with equally deceptively simple writing. This is the kind of book you can read over and over again and you will discover something new depending on where you are in your life at the time of reading. You can endlessly theorize about what might have happened or what could have gone differently.

For me, I really liked the exploration of loneliness and isolation. Our main character is different from her cellmates because she has absolutely no memory of the outside world or a life before the bunker. She often remarks that she doesn't even feel human because her brain works so differently from the others. I really connected with this story because of it and it made me reflect and think deeply. I think anyone who has experienced isolation or loneliness of any kind would feel similarly.

I also just really liked the tone of this book. It was eerie, disquieting, uncomfortable. The author feeds us threads of hope that turn into a disconcerting uneasiness by the end of the story. It felt lonely and empty in a really immersive way. As well, I liked how it differed from typical post-apocalyptic media. There are dark moments, but the author doesn't resort to brutality and shock factor to try and question humanity. She shows glimmers of hope and light, and shows how people come together and care for each other and give each other what they can when all other hope is gone. She makes you question what makes humanity, not what breaks it.

Just a really great example of what speculative fiction can be and how it can make a reader think and feel.

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