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justxjules 's review for:
I Who Have Never Known Men
by Jacqueline Harpman
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
A nice little mysterious story about existence. The narrator of this audio book was magnificent, I really liked her voice.
The story itself is good, very low-key but still entertaining. The setting is interesting and unsettling. It reminded me of "The Cube" as well as similar movies, somehow. I like those stories, so I don't really mind getting no answers. That said, the world seemed to be set up very conveniently to keep our characters fed. This in combination with a few other things made me think that the answer to the mystery was "so the story can happen", which irked me a bit. But maybe I just lack imagination. As I said, I don't mind there being no answers in the story, but the author should know the answers and this world just feels like she doesn't.
Well, since I already started, here are my other complaints that prevented me from giving this book 5*:
- The author makes a point to say that there are no insects in the world, only to then describe there being insects multiple times after that. This isn't the only inconsistency.
- These women spend decades together in a community of 40 and only after TWENTY YEARS they start telling each other about themselves and their lives and backstory and whatnot. You can't make me believe that.
- They never give our protagonist a name??? Excuse me? Why not? What?!
- The women avoid explaining to the protagonist what sex is for decades because "What's the point?" But have no issue explaining jigsaw puzzles and other stupid shit. Made no sense to me. They can't all be puritanical stuck-ups.
Enough ranting. I still enjoyed it quite a bit.
The story itself is good, very low-key but still entertaining. The setting is interesting and unsettling. It reminded me of "The Cube" as well as similar movies, somehow. I like those stories, so I don't really mind getting no answers. That said, the world seemed to be set up very conveniently to keep our characters fed. This in combination with a few other things made me think that the answer to the mystery was "so the story can happen", which irked me a bit. But maybe I just lack imagination. As I said, I don't mind there being no answers in the story, but the author should know the answers and this world just feels like she doesn't.
Well, since I already started, here are my other complaints that prevented me from giving this book 5*:
- The author makes a point to say that there are no insects in the world, only to then describe there being insects multiple times after that. This isn't the only inconsistency.
- These women spend decades together in a community of 40 and only after TWENTY YEARS they start telling each other about themselves and their lives and backstory and whatnot. You can't make me believe that.
- They never give our protagonist a name??? Excuse me? Why not? What?!
- The women avoid explaining to the protagonist what sex is for decades because "What's the point?" But have no issue explaining jigsaw puzzles and other stupid shit. Made no sense to me. They can't all be puritanical stuck-ups.
Enough ranting. I still enjoyed it quite a bit.