Anyone read I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman?

[SaraCrewe06]

Just finished reading this and would love to discuss it. Very unusual read.

Yes..I read it and thought it was bollocks.
It's very very well reviewed etc...and I read a lot of dystopian future genre.
Still thought it was trite, contrived and silly

I loved it.

I loved it.

I wanted to know the backstory but thought it was more poetic not knowing because the narrator doesn’t know either. I still think about it. I even worked out how far they walked over the years to see if it was possible they were on Earth (they weren’t)

I found it really haunting and disturbing and I wanted to know how it all came about. It stayed with me for a while.

One of my favourite books.

It’s on my list … Guess I could bump it up the running order …

I loved it, found it both distrubing and unable to put down.

Same. I was left feeling quite duped and angry that I wasted my time on it. A completely pointless book.

I loved it. I kept hoping she will find other humans eventually...

Disturbing and I didn’t like it. I found it implausible that she could learn to read and write from letters scratched in dust and then later read and write novels on her own. Also the whole setting was too weird. Is it an allegory for something? But I’m not sure what.

i thought i would really enjoy it but i came away quite confused and annoyed
bit of a disappointment for me

Yes I did it as an audio book. I actually enjoyed the book but I like a book where you know from the start it’s going nowhere good. However when I thought it over later I was not sure about what it said about women’s capabilities.

I was really intrigued by it, I read it in one sitting and couldn’t stop thinking about it for days afterwards.

SPOILER ALERT

I also loved it but had that mild sense of disappointment that there wasn’t a huge sense of closure. I was rooting for for her to find another human, find out the answers.
I guess that may have been the intention of the author, to offer few answers and make the reader come to their own conclusions.
I love that someone has calculated the distances travelled!
For me, the planet wasn’t Earth.
Why do we think the women (and some men) were sent and kept there?

I read it and I found it frustrating and a bit dull.
I am not great with books that give absolutely no answers at all. This read like the Author had a really good idea for a book, but couldn’t come up with a good idea for “why” so just completely left that bit.

There should have been a bit of an explanation and I found that I felt quite cheated

I read it in the original language and it is so beautifully written…not sure what the English translation is like

Maybe to populate another planet? The sudden departure of the men was interesting, like they’d been found out.

Also beautifully written

That’s an interesting idea about the men rushing off.
I wonder if the group that escaped had been men what would have happened. More in-fighting?

Yeah I think more violence

I loved it (it was a thread on here about feminist dystopian novels that put me onto it in the first place - my favourite genre!) I thought it was quite clear from the beginning that it was designed to pose more questions than it would answer.

@ChelseaBagger
I’ve also enjoyed some feminist dystopian novels. Could you recommend me some more?
I’ve recently read Vox and Femlandia.

@SaraCrewe06 I can recommend some--obvs you will have read The Handmaid's Tale and the Testaments? I would also recommend 'The School for Good Mothers', 'The Farm', 'Babel' (not totally about women, but race/gender elements to the story), 'The Power', 'Red Clocks', 'Only Ever Yours', 'The End of Men' and 'The Silence Project'.

Can't wait to see what others add to the list!

'Gather the Daughters.'

Also here for more recommendations!