Part dystopia, part speculative fiction, translated from French. Our book of the month is I Who Have Never Known Men and we give you our Big Review below.
***Our Big Reviews are written from the point of view that you have read the book. If this is not yet you, bookmark the page and come back once you have***
I Who Have Never Known Men – the blurb
‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changed’
Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before.
As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl – the fortieth prisoner – sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.
The Handmaid’s Tale?
At 188 pages this is a scant book but Harpman doesn’t need reams to pack a punch. Our narrator, the youngest in a group of imprisoned women, sets the scene pretty quickly and pretty effectively. The women have been imprisoned for a number of years. Kept in a cage where they live in fear of the guards and their whips. They are fed, provided with clothes and soap but little else and have no explanation of why they were imprisoned. It wasn’t because of war, neither had infection. The men who guard them do not give anything away and do not seem to want anything from the women. So why exactly are they imprisoned? Having read The Handmaid’s Tale recently I was immediately looking for similarities. Especially as fertility was mentioned by our narrator pretty early on. But, as I found out, I was wrong.
The Road?
The plot thickens when the women, due to sheer chance, escape from their cage and emerge only to find….nothing. They have no idea of where they are with some even questioning whether they are on Earth at all. There are echoes of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and even Emma Donaghue’s Room as our nameless narrator climbs stairs for the first time and sees the sky. I could only imagine their horror, their confusion, their disappointment when they found the next bunker, then the next.
What is it that drives you?
The book certainly raises more questions than it answers. I liked the pacing and whereas I was really disenchanted with The Road, I liked I Who Have Never Known Men. Maybe as there was no small boy doomed to be an orphan in a cannibalistic world? I’m not sure if I liked our narrator, there wasn’t much about her to like but she made a good character to drive the story forward. She was brief leaving you to draw your own conclusions. With no great reveal you are forced to examine what is it that drives us forward? What is it that keeps us going when hope has gone?
I Who Have Never Known Men is an excellent book to ponder. To remove yourself for a while once read and reflect. Everything about it says depressing yet somehow it wasn’t. I read it in two days and enjoyed it. I cant wait to hear what the book club make of it when we eventually next meet up.
Get Involved
If you would like to get involved with our book of the month try answering our book club questions published every month. Just search in our footnotes section for the ‘Get Involved’ articles. We review a new book every month so keep your eyes peeled for the Lowdown on March’s book of the month soon.