I Who Have Never Known Men

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.

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.