Book Review: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

"As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker."
A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.
The youngest of forty—a child with no name and no past—she survives for some purpose long forgotten in a world ravaged and wasted. In this reality where intimacy is forbidden—in the unrelenting sameness of the artificial days and nights—she knows nothing of books and time, of needs and feelings.
Then everything changes... and nothing changes.
A young woman who has never known men—a child who knows of no history before the bars and restraints—must now reinvent herself, piece by piece, in a place she has never been... and in the face of the most challenging and terrifying of unknowns: freedom.

I like dystopias in literature because they always present unthinkable situations with terrible consequences, prompting me to think about our own society and where we may be headed if common sense doesn’t prevail.

It’s not clear whether the situation of these women is a real dystopia or if they somehow fell through the cracks of a different society. Our protagonist lives in a cage in a basement with another 39 women. They are all older than her and remember a previous life, but our protagonist is much younger and doesn’t remember anything but her life in the cage. One day, an alarm sounds, and the guards escape, but one leaves the key in the cage door, allowing the women to escape to a world of never-ending plains and similar basements to the one where they were confined.

This is one of the books that keeps the mystery until the very end, and it’s one of the reasons that kept me glued to my Kindle. Some of the women suspect they are not on Earth, but although these and other questions are never answered, I didn’t feel cheated by it. I think this book has been a great exercise in imagination, where the reader tries to answer the same questions Jacqueline Harmpan asked herself. And what if they are on a different planet? Has humanity unlocked space travel? Why were the women prisoners? Where have the guards gone after the alarms went off?

I had mixed feelings about the main character. There is a definite otherness that separates her from the rest. She is younger, doesn’t know a previous life, and doesn’t feel the need to be with the others, but nevertheless, she helps them whenever she can. Even though she helps them, the lack of empathy in her thoughts is something I found a bit disturbing. At times, I wondered if this character was autistic-coded, but not all of this character’s traits could be explained by autism. I related to her in some aspects but not others, but all autistics are different.

There is something key to the narrative that was too much for my suspension of disbelief. The main character learns to count time by counting her heartbeats, using this to measure the duration of days where they live or the length of the guards’ shifts. First, humans are terribly at estimating time (especially autistic individuals, but we don’t really know if this character is autistic), our heartbeat can vary A LOT (just try to measure it resting in bed or after doing some cardio), and it’s humanly impossible to keep counting while you’re asleep. Yes, our main character knew how many hours passed while she was sleeping because somehow she kept counting her heartbeats. All is well with this, though. Sometimes we need to accept facts that authors are sending our way, and this character’s otherness extended to the fact that she could accurately estimate time even while sleeping.

I liked how women survived in the world outside without access to any more resources than what they found in the abandoned basements and what they remembered about the old world. I was tremendously curious about all the things they found, and I never stopped asking questions, which, despite the fact that they were never answered, didn’t deter me from deeply enjoying this book.

I may try other books by Jacqueline Harpman, especially the ones where she talks about her country, Belgium. I lived there for five years when I was younger, and that’s where I met my now-husband.

Story (Plot)
Overall:

lomeraniel

My name is Elena. Since I was a little child I loved science fiction and fantasy, and I can’t resist a good novel. In 2015, while wait I started to listen to audiobooks and I discovered the pleasure in being able to read while doing my daily tasks, so there’s always an audiobook playing on my phone. If you see me with my Bluetooth headphones on, please be gentle, I get easily startled.

I live with my boyfriend, which I met during my six-year stay in Belgium, four cockatiels, eight lovebirds, and a hamster in Madrid, Spain; and I like to spend my free time knitting and sewing while listening to audiobooks.