Review: I Who Have Never Known Men

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

This feels like the kind of book that if I had had to read it in school-- which is likely today given how short it is, it's the perfect length for high school scrutiny-- I probably would've disliked it.

Not that it's bad by any means (actually it's quite good); just that it's intensely focused on a subject that objectively is worth looking into, but not something that personally interests me as much, even though I can see what it's going for.

Basically to appreciate it you need to look past the "why" of things (a lot is left unanswered to both the reader and the narrator) and rather focus on the "what" that actually happens. What is it like to live as a human when stripped of all the hallmark things we traditionally associate with human life on Earth? Culture, the opposite sex, nature, a common sense of time, etc. It's enough to drive anyone mad, but that's in part because we already know what it's like to have all of those things. And then you have a narrator who literally is the embodiment of never having known any of it (the title itself is a misnomer -- it's not men so much as it's everything).

And it's all hopeful and depressing at the same time. If you're someone who likes to see things resolved in one's lifetime then maybe more of the latter. The unanswered questions still bug me even after finishing this and knowing that those answers weren't the point. Kind of like how I felt when I decided to quit the TV show Lost in its final season when I realized where the show was headed.

It's a good read for sure, and I'm glad to have read it. Just maybe thankful I didn't have to write a school paper on it.