“I Who Have Never Known Men” by Jacqueline Harpman is a dystopian novel that traces the life of a woman in an empty world. As early as the narrator can remember, she has lived in a cell within a bunker, with only 39 other women. Every day follows the same routine of sleep, meals, and the changing shifts of the silent guards who keep them under constant surveillance. As the youngest woman by many years, she has none of the memories of a previous life that the other women have, and wishes she could understand the experiences they talk about. Even among the only people who could possibly understand her, she is isolated by her age, struggling to make sense of what has happened to her. One day, however, it all changes, and the characters are thrust into a strange, unknown world where all that they can rely on is each other.
Harpman’s writing style can be blunt at times, and is consequently very vivid and emotionally impactful. This book is hauntingly bleak, but very poignant, and conveys such strong feelings that it leaves you in shock as you finish it. There is no happy ending, but there are moments of profound joy and friendship. It is captivating, and once you pick it up, you won’t want to put it down until you’ve finished it, but even then, you’ll be contemplating the many questions it leaves you with.
The plot is not the main element, but it is still compelling and original. Because the plot is essentially the sequence of events of one woman’s life, it does lag and relies on the characters to keep up the pace. The plot is clearer at the beginning, when the characters have goals, but fizzles out towards the end of the novel, which is largely the thought process of the narrator.
Rather than focusing on the individual personalities of many of the characters, much of the novel is focused on the dynamics between them. It focuses on how they react differently to the strange world around them, and to a life that they never envisioned. Some of them are hopeful, while others despair, but ultimately they form a tight-knit community with each other as they adjust to their new reality, and the book explores these connections. We learn little factual information about the characters and their previous lives, but get to know them on a more emotional level. This is because all of what the reader knows is based on observations of their actions conveyed by the narrator.
This is not a book for everyone, but it is hard to accurately portray the experience of reading it. If you are even slightly curious, it is definitely worth picking up, especially considering it is only 164 pages long. It is not as much a plot-driven book as an emotionally-driven one, so you shouldn’t read it expecting a satisfying science fiction arc, but rather one that leans into elements of literary fiction to create a bleak and visceral novel.