I Who Have Never Known Men: a simple yet impactful novella that will always be placed on my bedside table and not just for its beautiful and aesthetic front cover.

To take you back, one evening whilst doom-scrolling through TikTok,  I came across BookTok – a shift from my usual brain-rotting content. Being reviewed was Jaqueline Harpman’s 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men (original title Moi qui n’ai pas connu les hommes). I soon clicked on a review and then another, and another until I was itching to buy the book.

With over 5.6 million videos under the book’s hashtag, it’s safe to say that Harpman’s novella has received a multitude of attention; and for good reason.

Synopsis

We’re first introduced to forty women trapped in a bunker who are being constantly surveilled by male, uncommunicative guards. The women have no idea of how and why they’re incarcerated. Amongst this group, we find the youngest, an unnamed girl who, unlike the others, has no recollection of her life before being imprisoned. Being in a cage with thirty-nine women is all she has known. She is the novella’s narrator and protagonist.

One day, an alarm blares and by sheer luck, the prison door is left open. All the guards flee, allowing the women to escape. They’re soon met with an outlandish plain, not resembling a place they had seen before. Days, months, and years pass with finding little clues of why they were imprisoned, where they are and where everyone else went. The reader, as well as the characters, are left to fathom their existence within this alien world.

Analysis and Comparison

Unlike the usual dystopian speculative fiction I’ve read, like Collins’s The Hunger Games franchise, the reader is given a solid context of the environment with sizable developing plot lines, such as the knowledge of Panem, its Capital, thirteen districts.

However, I Who Have Never Known Men contributes little to no context and even fewer answers about their environment. The narrative instead progresses subtly through the mundane and without extravagant plot twists and climaxes.

Harpman got me running through different corridors of possible answers which ultimately led to dead ends, leaving you thirsty, disorientated and thoroughly disappointed.

Each breadcrumb Harpman would leave, like the first sighting of the bus, another bunker, and the new tracks, all dried up and left the reader as clueless as ever. From turning me into a vigilant detective to trying to piece together the setting, we realise that the story is lying within the raw, sometimes repetitive, internal monologue that the protagonist is providing us.

Despite the ambiguity and unobtrusive turn-of-events, I was captivated from beginning to end. When I went about my days, the thought of Harpman’s novella haunted the back of my mind and I could imagine the narrative so vividly.

Themes and Interpretation

Harpman’s narrative is cryptic, poetic and haunting though I believe that was what Harpman strived to achieve; to make the reader feel foreign, detached and missing structures that keep us firmly placed within normality.

This leads me to the interpretation of I Who Have Never Known Men. What I and many others took from the enigmatic narrative is that when an individual is stripped of all normality, it leaves us to observe what it means to be human. This ends up asking the question:

Who are we without the reality that we have created?

I’ll leave you to decide because I sadly don’t have the answer.

The characters, especially the unnamed female protagonist, are beautifully thought out and raw. To me, the protagonist sounded androgynous and childlike despite her increasing age. This led me to question our own socially conceived life stages of old age, childhood and adulthood. It also got me questioning gender and how we perceive masculinity and femininity. I thought this added to the unfamiliarity of the world Harpman was effectively creating.

If you like to work hard and decode a book’s underlying concept, I Who Have Never Known Men will satisfy that inquisitor within you. If you’re someone who’s a lover of twists, turns and thrilling plot developments, this might not be the one for you.

The reason for my rating is as much as I love a mystery to solve, I felt as though it may have been too much of a mystery. It led me to feel empty and tormented by its ambiguity. However, Harpman’s writing style and extremely original concept put the rating at a good spot.

All in all, I’m very grateful that my TikTok algorithm suggested this book.

Tread carefully and don’t expect an adrenaline-inducing melodramatic dystopia – you may be disappointed. Instead, read between the lines. You may be surprised at what you’ll find.