randomprogrammer 's review for:

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
3.0

What a strange book. I'm kinda...neutral about it? I wonder how it reads in the original french? In english, it's a bit stilted and rambling..which I suppose makes sense. It is very original, and I like what the author does with the plot, but it kinda strikes me as an undergraduate's first artistic writing project. At ~200 pages, it was already quite short, but I rather felt it could have been shorter. I figure some people might find it deeply insightful or symbolic or something. There were certainly a couple nice quotes, but I can't say that it gave me any particular intellectual excitement.

I'm tempted to say that its weird lack of a message was a virtue, but what then is the point of writing? Anyone can scribble to no end.

I don't regret the couple hours of reading, but I definitely won't be recommending this to anyone.