I Who Have Never Known Men

Relentlessly, grindingly hopeless. The characters have no hope, the plot has little to surprise or intrigue the reader, and there isn't a satisfying ending. I agree with the reviewers who felt this was more a philosophical exploration than a typical novel. Actually the whole "never knowing men" thing is sort of a red herring because really the book is about what it means to be human, and the gender specific aspects were annoying and shallow.

For example, our narrator has never known anything but the cage she lived in with 39 other women, the handful of male guards who watched them without speaking, and the barren landscape outside. Why then would she only be having orgasms over men? True they are absent or dead men, but that is way more interesting than the fact that they are men! She can only get off on the idea of physical contact, on the carefully elaborated fantasy of a world other than the one she has known, while even embracing her dying friend is a struggle against her fear and disgust of real-world physical contact. That is a super interesting idea to explore rather than some kind of inevitable heteronormativity!

You'll be bored and frustrated and then sad. It does take on an interesting tone though when you find out the author is the child of concentration camp survivors. Plus, a dodgy translation might be to blame for some of the book's woodenness. ( )

I read this thought-provoking dystopian novel in one sitting, then couldn't sleep all night. The storyline is sort of like The Road and Room melded with Lost, but its ideas on freedom and what it means to be human - and female - will stay with me forever. So will the mystery surrounding why and where these women were imprisoned. ( )

Summary: The nameless narrator of I Who Have Never Known Men doesn't remember life outside the cage. Ever since she was young, she's lived in a cage with thirty-nine other women, constantly watched by guards who don't speak. The other women occasionally reminisce about their lives before the cage, but the girl has no such memories to speak of. None of them are sure why they're in a cage, or exactly how long they've been there, or why there was one young girl included with the grown women. Life goes on in these conditions as best it can, never varying, until one day a chance occurrance lets the women escape. But the world they knew is gone, and the task of making their way in this new world falls to the youngest among them, the girl who has never known anything else.

Review: I Who Have Never Known Men is this bizarre little introspective book, a relatively straightforward dystopian sci-fi novel that nevertheless reads more like an extended philosophical musing, a book that is quiet and haunting and heartbreaking and frustrating and thought-provoking, all at the same time. The entire novel asks what it really means to be human; where that humanity comes from, and whether it can survive under the most dehumanizing conditions, or in the complete absence of other people. I don't know that the novel ever comes to any firm conclusions on those points, but it does provide a lot of food for thought (especially given its length), and I can see this book working wonderfully well as a discussion starter for a book club or high school lit class.

This book didn't just leave its philosophical questions unanswered; it also never clarified a lot of its plot points. The plot sticks entirely to the narrator's viewpoint, and the readers aren't given any additional information; we never find out why the women were in the cage, or what happened in the past, or even where they are. This is the sort of thing that typically frustrates the hell out of me, but in this case, I found it less annoying than one might think. Perhaps because all of those worldbuilding-type points are peripheral to the point of the novel; it matters less why she's there than what she's going to do about it.

Overall, while I didn't find it a completely satisfying novel, it packs a lot of narrative heft for such a slim book, and it's definitely the type of book that I'm still going to be thinking about for a long time after I've turned the last page. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I'm having a hard time categorizing this book into a genre, let alone coming up with read-alikes to suggest. Ursula K. LeGuin, maybe? But I don't think this book is only for sci-fi fans; although the basic premise is technically sci-fi, I think the story and the narrative voice will appeal to a much broader range of readers. ( )

This is an exceptionally moving dystopian novel. A group of women, locked in a cage, guarded by men, and allowed no physical contact even with each other. The narrator has no memory of life before this, although her fellow captives do. The book is an emotional and psychological examination of what it means to be human. It is at once haunting and beautiful. It will hold you in its grip while you read it and linger in your memory long after. ( )