Emily May's Reviews > I Who Have Never Known Men

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”

4 1/2 stars. Wow. This tiny, disquieting book carries a sadness that the most popular tearjerkers could never hope to capture.

It sits outside of genre, outside of time, outside of the reality we know, introducing the reader to a world unfamiliar to both them and the unnamed protagonist. The result is a palpable feeling of wonder and loneliness.

I have decided to round up because this book made me feel so deeply, and because I have decided that my personal frustrations are perhaps misguided. There were things that I was hoping for from this book that I didn't get, but then I was never promised them, and, in fact, the past tense narration forewarned I would not get them. So that's my problem.

The story starts in an underground bunker where thirty-nine women and one young girl-- our narrator --are imprisoned in a cage. They don't remember how they got there and they have no idea why they are there. The women remember a life before the cage with families, friends and jobs, but the child remembers only their current existence. They are watched over and fed by male guards who tell them nothing. It seems they are doomed to live and die in this cage... until one day a combination of chance and ingenuity provide an opportunity for freedom.

It is part eerie pastoral dystopia, part a deeply introspective novel about hope, loneliness and the things that give life meaning. The novel swings between the invigorating feeling of hope and the numbing despair of hopelessness.

I found myself wondering at one point if it was supposed to be a metaphor. (view spoiler)[The relentless pursuit of answers, of meaning, in a world that ultimately makes no sense. (hide spoiler)] But perhaps I am overthinking things.

Either way, this short novel sat like a ball of anxiety in my throat from beginning to end. What a sad, evocative little story.