I Who Have Never Known Men

The questions this book makes you think about, beyond the mystery of the story itself, are what make this book a thought-provoking one. You end up considering what makes us human if you strip away most culture, education, and technology. You wonder what you would do in this situation over and over again. You wonder what kind of purpose life would have or what purpose you could give it in this scenario.

Sometimes it got a bit dull with the level of detail about calculations she was making or the intricacies of the schedule. The nature of the story also makes it a bit repetitive at times. She names multiple other women but they all blur together for me except for Anthea.

I enjoyed the introspective style. I love being inside a character’s head - even more so when it’s someone who thinks so differently because of her extreme circumstances. Harpman makes good use of her narrator’s perspective because she challenges the norms that the rest of the women miss or want to recreate, like privacy on the toilet. The narrator doesn’t remember anything different, so doesn’t feel the same way about it, and you wonder where the need for privacy came from. When did that first come up in human history?