I Who Have Never Known Men
Collector's Edition
In Jacqueline Harpman’s riveting novel I Who Have Never Known Men, a girl emerges from dehumanizing confinement into a troubled and deserted landscape.
Following a terrifying event called “the disaster,” thirty-nine women are held in an underground bunker. They are denied privacy and basic dignities. They live under the surveillance of whip-brandishing guards.
A lonely, nameless child is housed among the group, though the women are forbidden to comfort or hold her. At first, the girl’s innate detachment distances her from her fellow captives. When a subsequent disaster leads to the group’s release, though, the girl helps the women navigate the postapocalyptic, seemingly unpeopled world.
The girl is a fascinating and lucid narrator who covets facts and knowledge while struggling to comprehend pre-disaster concepts like religion, music, and romantic love. Though she experiences adolescent attraction to the youngest guard, her lack of traditional gender conditioning later allows her to excel at exploration, innovation, and construction.
Beyond the book’s misogynistic violations lurk further horrors: The freed women are shocked to discover another locked facility heaped with the bodies of abandoned prisoners, all men. Reprehensible classism is revealed when the narrator enters the former underground quarters of the elite, descending a spiral staircase to find lovely furnishings, books, and stockpiles of food and wine. As the girl matures and outlives her older companions, she resists her increasing and plaintive isolation by writing a personal testament, hoping to share her experiences with other possible survivors and become a “reality in someone’s mind.”
In the formidable novel I Who Have Never Known Men, a resolute and compelling heroine challenges her dystopian fate with valor and intelligence.
Reviewed by
Meg Nola
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
