I Who Have Never Known Men
Reviews
Beautiful prose; each sentence pulls you in to the next. An exploration of female friendship, love, and being human.
this novel is a beautiful—yet unsettling—exploration of what it means to be human.
i found myself on the edge of my seat; the writing is immersive and thought-provoking, effortlessly blending the suspense of the narrative with its philosophical depth. i also think it’s clever that a book examining the meaning of life does not attempt to answer all the questions you may have while reading it. you feel curious before you even know the story and you remain curious long after you turn the last page.
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i believe i need to read more speculative fiction (even if it leaves me in an existential crisis afterward) because i love how the openness of a story allows each reader to take away something unique from it.
What if the reason you survive, despite everything, is because you have no memories of the past? Nothing of importance to anchor you in grief, nothing to make loss linger like a shadow. But in return, you are left with the endless what ifs; adrift in a life that never changes, with no friends, no shelter—just a nameless existence in a vast world of nothingness. And yet, somehow, you hold onto enough dignity to still call it a life because death is nothing but a string of incredible luck, the only certainty in an otherwise shapeless fate.
No, this country belongs to me. I will be its sole owner, and everything here will be mine.
Literally read this in one sitting, and I’m still so shocked by the ending.
A very intriguing and merciless reflection of what it is to be human. I found interesting how she kept saying that she was not as human as the other women, as she was raised in the bunker and didn’t have a life before that. But as the book goes on, she is the most human of all of them by wanting to explore and survive.
Very devastating how she never knew what love was and that it is not only platonic, until Anthea passes and she realizes she loved her.
this was so good, i really enjoyed reading the narrator’s train of thought. i loved how it was essentially her journal; her story. but not knowing what happened might kill me
This book SLAPS! I'm still chewing on it, mentally. Will revisit to review when I'm ready.
Gorgeous writing and deeply profound
i don’t really know how to rate this book or how to feel about it.
i was invested in the story and i felt genuinely sad for the characters
the open ending left a lot to interpret but i think if all the questions were answered it would be a completely different story, one that i might not have enjoyed as much
having an existential crisis now
I'm not sure how to rate this book which seems fitting given that no one in the book was sure about anything
At first I was intimidated by the whole, no chapters, no breaks, one stream of consciousness vibe. But honestly I found that it kept me immersed in the story in a way that was really unique. I know the ending of this is fairly controversial but I loved it
beautiful story
Loved it, such a fantastic story.
I Who Have Never Known Men is a story principally about time, space, existence, and the body. It follows the life of a girl who is raised from childhood in captivity in an underground prison with 39 other women. They are under constant surveillance by patrolling male guards, they aren't to touch or show affection or rebel under the threat of violence. They do not know why they are imprisoned, they do not know of any outside world, or whether the dimming of the lights for night even resembles a 24 hour cycle.
The women in essence live outside of time, the only evidence of time passing being the ageing of those around them. They have some memory of life before their capture, but in captivity their life is unchanging, monotonous, and they adapt to it with a kind of learned helplessness. It is the girl, knowing nothing other than imprisonment, that intuits a sense of time through the counting of her heartbeats, the body itself becoming both a metaphorical and literal clock. Through her non-history we are shown the basic and most true elements of life, all that can be intuited through a sense of others and ones own body.
To the women their existence is merely waiting until death; even attempts at suicide are forbidden and punished with the same violence. The fundamental question posed by the novel is how one orients their life’s meaning when their future is nonexistent and extinction is a real concern. The hopelessness of the women's lives are so painfully obvious, yet they march on, sororal in their sisterhood, even if it is just inertia that is carrying them.
In this fruitless march is there space for love, relationships, friendships, the acquiring of knowledge, anything at all?
The book is a bleak dystopia, and reading certain scenes during my work commute genuinely affected me with a heavy grief that hung in my heart. Parts of this book are almost nightmarish in its existential horror. Harpman’s passive, detached protagonist further serves its warped, confusing world. Her sociological lens takes you out of the immediate character drama and makes more of a universal statement for humanity. It is a very heavy read but a rewarding one nonetheless.
Well, it's not all the time that I'll be enjoying a book that has an open ending. Just like what's written in the afterword, it's like a puzzle that can't be solved and is not supposed to be solved. Every emotion was conveyed in such a painful way and, at the same time, satisfying. This book is really different from the books I've read, and I'm glad that I took the liberty to read it while going through the list of my TBRs.
Such a great read 🙌
• I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late,
that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all.
• If you do something that is forbidden, it is the action that is the target. If you do something that isn't forbidden, and they intervene, then it's not the activity that's attracting atention, it's you yourself'
• To me it feels as if I've always been alone, even among all of you, because l'm so different.
• What does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?
• But if that person comes, they will read them and I will have a time in their mind.
• No life is ordinary, the book seems to say. No life is without hope, without light even during the unimaginable.
• It is human to be afraid of death, of unimaginable pain, and it's another kind of humanity to transcend it.
I have no idea what to rate this or how I feel about it, tomorrow I might wake up and give it 5 stars; but for now, it was a disappointment but the idea was quite interesting.
the main characters writing is fascinating but considering her circumstances, her personality and intelligence level makes no sense.
I think if this had gone a heartwarming route, or the tragic route, or the gruesome route, or the literary route, it would've been better, but instead it's a boring mesh of those things that doesn't actually say much.
the writing tho, it's beautiful and incredibly charming.
Sorrowful, tender, puzzling, and human. I’ll be revisiting this one.
Wow. I can't imagine there being another book like this.
This book kept me on my edge and is extremely thought provoking. So many things in the book make me question the reality and the way life goes now. An extremely good read.
Such a though provoking read! I feel like i just need to sit and reflect on what it is i’ve just read. Beautifully written and has just left me with so many questions. Highly recommend!
The love I have for this book and Jacqueline Harpman, is immeasurable. My favourite read of the year. It was elegant, expressive, disturbing, honest and bittersweet.
Starting it off with the curiosity and wonder about a life she once (barely) lived, and the slow descent into that freedom becoming her demise was a slope that left me feeling so empty.
It was haunting and will continue to haunt me.
Highlights
Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence.
They didn't seem so stupid, because I understood that, having nothing in their lives, they took the little that came and made the best use of it, exploiting the slightest event to nourish their starving spirits.
Quand la mort aurait triomphé de mon regard, je serais comme un monument d'orgueil dressé avec haine devant le silence.
Mon cœur nous servirait d'horloge.
Mais pourquoi traduire alors qu'il devait être si simple d'apprendre les différentes langues et de lire tous les ouvrages qu'on voulait sans passer par un intermédiaire?
‘It is impossible to predict what might happen in a world where you don't know the rules.’
‘If the only thing that differentiates us from animals is the fact that we hide to defecate, then being human rests on very little.’
Death is sometimes so discreet that it steals in noiselessly, stays for only a moment and carries off its prey, and I didn't notice the change.
And what does it matter if I've become mute in a world where there is no one to talk to?
Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering?
perhaps you never have time when you are alone? you only acquire it by watching it go by in others, and since all the women have died, it only affects the scrawny plants growing between the stones and producing, occasionally, just enough flowers to make a single seed which will fall a little way off – not far because the wind is never strong – where it may or may not germinate.
And now, racked with sobs, I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all.
I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.
I thought about it because I was in the habit of considering every angle of a question, and I'd never had any form of entertainment other than thinking.
"In that case, what were men for?" I asked.
My memory begins with my anger.
Sometimes the women pitied me, saying that at least they'd known real life, and I was very jealous of them, but they died, as I am about to die, and what does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?
I have spent my whole life doing I don't know what, but it hasn't made me happy. I have a few drops of blood left, that is the only libation I can offer destiny, which has chosen me.
Then they felt sorry for me, because l'd never experience love, and it was the samne as when they talked about chocolate or the joys of a long, hot bath; I believed them without really being able to imagine what they were talking about.
Sometimes, you can use what you know, but that's not what counts most. I want to know everything there is to know. Not because it's any use, but purely for the pleasure of knowing, and now I demand that you teach me everything you know, even if I’ll never be able to use it.
You have so little idea what it meant to have a destiny that you can't understand what it means to be deprived as we are.
Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering?
I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all.
I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.