I Who Have Never Known Men

acqueline Harpman’s now 30-year-old “I Who Have Never Known Men,” is a genre-bending masterpiece of a novel. It reads like a horror story rooted in patriarchal megalomania with a sci-fi backdrop. A quarter of the way in, you will not be able to put it down. It is profoundly imaginative and fluid in plot, dialogue, and pace. It reminds me of Plato’s allegory of the cave along with contemporary dystopian stories like “Silo” and “Severance.” Which all makes sense because the questions that Harpman raises in this book are deeply philosophical and universal. The questions are made even more compelling by framing them from the perspective of a protagonist with a uniquely nascent worldview. The unnamed protagonist’s experiences ask us to grapple with concepts like how to frame a concept like freedom when we are so bizarrely constrained? We are made to look unflinchingly at a clinical-level of dehumanization that is not without historical precedence. A fact that the author’s Jewish heritage points to. Building on top of that, we look at the broader list of characters and grapple with how one finds purpose, community, and belonging when you are turned into a grotesque museum exhibit? What is life without the social constructs, mores, interactions, and arts? For me, Harpman suggests that there is an innate inner spark that can be nurtured into a drive to exist. A position which reminds me of Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” In that, deconstructing existence to a simple kernel of the self could be a pathway to knowing your world. Even if only as far as the empirical evidence in front of you allows. All this contemplation gets blown open by a miraculous event that opens up the world within the novel and introduces new forms of pain, isolation, and existential crisis. The second half felt like some new realm of Dante’s Inferno. It is shocking to me that this paradigm-shifting sci-fi and horror combination of a book has not occupied the cultural zeitgeist more. It is spell-blindingly gripping and challenges everything you know about what it means to be human. A must-read and a new favorite of mine.

Paid ten bucks and only received sample and afterword. There is no mechanism to force the books app to give me the entire book. Sorry to report this in a review but I see no other way to warn people that they may want to buy this book elsewhere.

heart-wrenching yet tender. tragic yet full of hope. i devoured this in 2 days.

Amazing read, took me out of my reading slump very quickly. Makes you think very deeply and wishing things were different!

It’s like every thought the narrator has makes you reflect on your own life in some way. It’s unsettling and deeply comforting at the same time. No matter how mundane your life may seem to you it is unlike any other, and holds its own unique value.

A strange, unique, and compelling story

I feel like not enough people know about this short novel. I also had no idea that this book was speculative fiction I really thought it was mostly a feminist novel but to my fortunate surprise this novel had themes of sci fi and absurdism. This novel, especially for the time it was written, is unlike any other. I absolutely love the scenery of this land the reader is on, this desolate, dry and sort of depressing land. I do love that in the end we never fully find out why any of this happened, and usually I don’t like that, but Harpman seems to do it in such a tasteful, graceful and non obnoxious way that it leaves me just thinking about the possibilities days after I’ve finished.

The author wants the reader to be frustrated the entire time and just as confused as the characters are. This is a great example of how books can evoke physical feelings in the readers for example the feeling of being “on the edge of your seat.”

I think I will muse over this for some time to come. I feel the perseverance of humanness highlighted in this work to be very intriguing; the innate expression of ‘human’, existent even in such a vast and questionable world. I found the quiet yet profound nature of the women’s experience to be a very truthful reflection of what I see Womanness to be. The background of the author which was revealed in the Afterward added a major layer of depth to this work that made it even more impactful for me. Thank you!

I’m far to intelligent to read a low IQ book like this, plus the scenes of her fingering herself are rather distasteful. Would not recommend.