Book Recommendation: I Who Have Never Known Men (Women in Translation Month)

Posted On August 2, 2023

Hi Readers! Happy August to all the Swifties! I am being super quick and happy with my reading this month. I read a book and here is its review all in two days’ time! For August’s Women in Translation Month I read I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated from the French by Ros Schwartz. I had seen this book around for a long time. I picked it up out of pure chance and couldn’t stop reading it. I was intrigued by its premise because it was written in 1995 in a science fictionesque dytopian world by a woman author, all of which was perhaps unheard of, at the time.

~~GOODREADS DESCRIPTION~~

“As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker.”

A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered… if indeed there were crimes.

The youngest of forty—a child with no name and no past—she survives for some purpose long forgotten in a world ravaged and wasted. In this reality where intimacy is forbidden—in the unrelenting sameness of the artificial days and nights—she knows nothing of books and time, of needs and feelings.

Then everything changes… and nothing changes.

A young woman who has never known men—a child who knows of no history before the bars and restraints—must now reinvent herself, piece by piece, in a place she has never been… and in the face of the most challenging and terrifying of unknowns: freedom.

~~TRIGGER WARNINGS~~

This book has a lot of triggers, so here are the trigger warnings for I Who Have Never Known Men. Death, Confinement, Suicide, Torture.

~~THOUGHTS~~

Reading a book like this always makes me feel similar to the protagonist. In this case, it was utterly bleak with a constant aura of hopelessness revolving around me. I read the book in two days and during all this time, I had that doomed sort of sadness play touch-and-go with my mind. This book, though short, has a clear-cut linear story. There are thirty-nine women and a girl in a bunker. One day there is a siren leading to the freedom of these caged women from the bunker. They get out only to realize they are all alone in the world which may or may not be Earth. They explore their terrain for two years finding bunker after bunker of forty corpses and then finally settle down. One by one these women die. Twenty-two years after they get out, only the child is alive, and she explores the place alone. She comes across a luxurious kind of a bunker and spends the next twenty years in it. It is bleak. It is hopeless. It is doomed. It is sad.

But, what I took from this bleak-hopeless-doomed-sad book was something profound. I feel that this is yet another kind of prose where each reader will have their own takeaways on how they live their lives. I saw how the women had a routine when they were in the bunker. I saw how when they were free, they tasted freedom and were happy for a while, but then yet again they had a routine. It spoke volumes to me because I realized how freedom can come with its constraints. Just because they were free of their cage, did not mean their freedom had independence. They were still bound by the act that put them there in the first place. They were bound to a place which they were unsure was Earth or some other planet. They were bound to each other. They were bound forever. This freedom with restraint can be perceived as either happy or sad depending on how you perceive your life.

The child and the readers not being able to understand what exactly happened until the end was bleak-hopeless-doomed-sad but it was also remarkably revolutionary. To leave something so concrete to the story unsolved leaves space. A lot of space for readers to explore their thoughts, whimsy their quirks, play along or play by the inessential rules, and to truly understand yourself. What do you think happened?

Just because no one knew how much you fought, how you struggled, how you waged on and conquered your fears, does that mean you didn’t?

Just because a piece of knowledge is of no use to you, does not mean you will not be keen about learning it?

Just because you can’t talk about your grief, does not mean there is none?

Just because you don’t know your purpose yet, does not mean you don’t have one?

Just because all your days look similar, does not mean you will never have exceptional ones?

Just because no one is around to witness how you live your life, does that mean it does not matter how you live your life?

Yes, just because a book is bleak-hopeless-doomed-sad, does not mean it cannot also be fascinating-hopeful-ambitious-touching?

~~TO READ OR NOT TO READ IT~~

I Who Have Never Known Men is a brilliantly written novel which certainly deserves a much wider audience. Yes, you need to be in the right headspace to read this, because if you are in a dark place yourself then you will reach an even darker space if you read this book. You should not read this book if you are feeling negative, sad or depressed. You should not read this book if any of the topics in it trigger you. But, aside from that, after reading the blurb, if you feel like reading it, you certainly should! There isn’t any book like this and the fact that it was so ahead of its time makes me respect it more. Sure, I would have loved more in the way of a plot, but the spaces left for imagination made up for it, in a way. I would definitely recommend this book. I have rated I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated from the French by Ros Schwartz at 4/5 stars!

Until next time,