A review by reubenalbatross
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Wow. What a book. So beautifully written, and so existential. 

The only reason this isn’t a 5-star read is for three REALLY annoying points. All three really should have been picked up by an editor, and I don’t know if Harpman or Schwartz is to blame in the first instance, but they infuriated me. In a book where every single item the women used was really important, and described in detail (especially within the bunker), the following mistakes/omissions really should not have made it through the edit: 

1.       It was never said what they used as a stove in the cage, which, again, is wild to me because it was literally one of two fixtures in their cell. It says that they cooked in big pots, and could only boil food. She doesn’t ever mention a source of heat in relation to suicide attempts, so I assume it wasn’t fire/gas, which only leaves electric. But even then, some variation besides boiling their food would have been possible? Frying with water? Food directly on the heat source? They had literally nothing else to do in there, surely they could have been a little more creative? Every other cooking fire/stove in the book was mentioned in detail, but not the most important one.  

2.       Towards the end she finds a bar of soap, and doesn’t know she has to wet her hands to use it. That would have been fine and well if she hadn’t already told us multiple times that they had a stable supply of soap at all times??? There’s no mention of the soap in the bunker being a different kind, so why the sudden complete ignorance of how to use it? She also uses it to wash her hair, and her thoughts about it make it seem like she/the women had never done that before. Why the fuck not? 20-ish years, and not 1 of 40 women thought to wash their hair with soap? I know their brains were a bit fucked, but come on? 

3.       In this same scene she also finds a mirror, and states “I had never seen myself”. Excuse me?? A still pan of water in sunlight is plenty to be able to see yourself and your “expressions”, which apparently she’d never seen before?? Again, that number of women, that amount of time, surely someone would have thought of that??? 

Clearly, the fact that these points only knocked .25 stars off my rating show how much I truly loved this book. A stunner and a half.