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.

The most beautifully written ending I have ever witnessed. The prose is immaculate, it's described as ‘cool water' in the introduction, and I agree. It has a smooth, breezy, calm, collected flow to it until the very end when Jacqueline Harpman starts firing on all cylinders. The writing and passion are dialed up to a whole new level and pure emotion emanates from deep within the heart. She saved the best for the last and you feel the ignition, nothing is held back. It's fiery, magnificent and hauntingly poetic. It felt personal, like she did not want to go down without a fight. That as this bleak tale set in a bleak world draws to its eventual end and the spark starts to fizzle out, some aftershocks must be left that will continue to reverberate for years to come.

Perhaps never to go down without a fight is what this book is about, at least that is what I will take away from it. No matter if the world is stripped away of all its familiar warmth and comfort and be basically rendered sterile, we can find a way to look death right in the eye and exhibit beauty even in the direst of circumstances.

How does the electricity work? Where does the food come from? How are they able to breathe if this is a non-earth planet? Why does the sun look like ours but the seasons never change? Where did everybody go? Is this purgatory/hell? This book is really only concerned with the philosophical exploration rather than the practical workings of the world which is fine, but personally I would have been slightly more satisfied if even a little bit of the inner workings were revealed. The writing really is excellent - you live in the mundane so completely that any little discovery seems like a huge reveal until you realise you actually are no closer to any understanding about what is going on. I am still thinking about this book days later which must be a good thing.

I liked this. I mean, it’s a bit strange but also quite interesting. The narrator tells her left’s story. She grew up in an underground bunker, one of 40 women who were caged and guarded by men who never speak to them. They are allowed no privacy or occupation, and are not even allowed to touch each other. The other women are older and remember life before the bunker.

One day everything changes.

The narrator isn’t really a likable character, and the story is quite slow, but it is interesting. I’m going to have to look into what else this author has written.

Notre narratrice sans nom est la seule enfante dans un groupe de quarante femmes. Elles sont captes dans un prison souterraine. Elles dorment, elles mangent, elles excretent, suivi par les gardes. C'est une vie sans une sphere privee et sans les attouchements. C'est la seule vie notre narratrice connait parce qu'elle etait trop jeune quand l'evenment mysterieux s'est passe. Toutes leurs compagnons de cellule ne veulent pas et ne saient pas parler de ce qu'est s'est passait. Mais notre narratrice veul comprendre, et c'est la ou la livre commence ...

Ma memoire commence avec ma colere.

.. l'unique plaisir que je pusse obtenir etait celui, si rare, de la curiosite satisfaite.

Haunting, glaringly original and enthralling.

How does one tell a story constructed of a lifetime so bleak and uneventful that it really should be very boring, in a way that is gripping, stimulating, and profound? In a world teeming with questions and devoid of answers, how does Harpman sustain the reader's hope and curiosity vicariously through her narrator?

It's magic.

I wish I understood French so that I could experience it all over again in a new way with all the nuance of the original. This might just be my best read of the year.