I Who Have Never Known Men
Ratings70
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings70
Average rating4.3
A work of fantasy, I Who Have Never Known Men is the haunting and unforgettable account of a near future on a barren earth where women are kept in underground cages guarded by uniformed groups of men. It is narrated by the youngest of the women, the only one with no memory of what the world was like before the cages, who must teach herself, without books or sexual contact, the essential human emotions of longing, loving, learning, companionship, and dying. Part thriller, part mystery, I Who Have Never Known Men shows us the power of one person without memories to reinvent herself piece by piece, emotion by emotion, in the process teaching us much about what it means to be human.
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2,097 booksWhen you think back on every book you've ever read, what are some of your favorites? These can be from any time of your life – books that resonated with you as a kid, ones that shaped your personal...
Reviews with the most likes.
I don't remember where I found this book or why I wanted to read it. But I was disappointed. Reading this book was honestly exhausting and there is quite literally no pay off. The writing isn't good and very clunky to read. The world building is non-existent, literally nothing is explained throughout, the idiocy of the characters pissed me off to no end.
They mention how different the main character is from the other women about a million times, she is constantly put into the context of how she has never known things, and yet constantly defining her by things from a world she doesn't below. And very bluntly making that contrast, which I think pointless. It could have been so cool, but all the story does is say ‘look how different she is because no men'. There is even a scene where she touches herself but can't ‘go in' because her hymen is ‘blocking' the way. Which isn't how hymens work, by the way. They could have made her totally detached from any gendered expectations. Such a waste of a concept.
Then the story also really went nowhere. Nothing ever happens, the relationships aren't even important, the story is written completely emotionless and nothing about why or how any of this happened gets explained at any point. She just fucking dies and that's it. Waste of my god damn time reading this book.
3.5 ⭐️ this was a really well written novel. I have never read a book where there was not a single male character and it was kinda nice and refreshing. I also loved the resilience of the main character and the other women of the story.
But by the end I was bored. It began to feel extremely repetitive.
A Dystopian post-apocalyptic absurd story with a very sad ending. Very well-written. Some people say it has hope but I can't see where it is. It's full of themes about the meanings of being human like the importance of passing cumulative knowledge, and leaving it in written form even if you were the last human standing and there was no hope of anybody reading it.
