I put the book down an hour ago, and am feeling quite haunted by B’s experiences. Events escalate on the rig, and we are thrust, with B and the characters around him, into a surreal nightmare. Back at home, things are also growing increasingly strange.

As soon as he arrives, B realises he is not welcome: the staff are hostile, and no one will speak to him. We don’t get a lot of detail about the country he lives in, but we start to suspect that something may not quite be right with the company that runs the oil rig.

This is the story of B, a writer who, at the beginning of the book, is driving south on commission to report on possible labour strikes on an oil rig. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.Wow-this book crept up on me! It drew me in, and did not let go until it was done. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review.

The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Translated from the French, I Who Have Never Known Men is a radiant, austere post-apocalyptic novel that poses profound questions about hope, surrender, beauty, loss, and the meaning of community.ĭisclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. I had nothing else to do in it but continue my journey.” They glimpse scant moments of beauty-a remembered hymn the “changing shapes of the clouds, softly falling rain…slowly moving stars, and a few flowers.”Īs the women age and die, the girl faces the future with the courage of a classic existential hero: “I felt the burden of the inexplicable, of my life, of that world to which I was the sole witness. They also seek hints about the “insoluble mysteries” they face. They find that the world above ground is as sterile as their prison, a “boundless desolate plain, under a sky that is nearly always grey.” In this strange and barren place, the women build homes, care for each other, and search for other survivors. The women free themselves with keys left, by chance, in the lock. She proves her value as the timekeeper, telling time by counting her heartbeats, and mirrors the passing years as she matures from a child to a woman. With no attachment to the past, the girl feels like an outsider. The women share fleeting memories of a time before they don’t know why they were imprisoned, or where they are. In the beginning, the girl is caged with thirty-nine women in a bleak underground bunker, tended by men guards with a boundless supply of food, water, and electricity. Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men is a brilliant, spare science fiction novel in which a curious girl asks what remains after everything has been stripped away.

I who have never known men review