I Who Have Never Known Men

by , ,

Audiobook

English language

Published July 22, 2021 by Random House.

ISBN:
978-1-5291-9144-8
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5 stars (2 reviews)

Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.

13 editions

reviewed I Who Have Never Known Men by Sophie Mackintosh

Philosophical Thought Experiment with Sci-Fi Dystopia Trappings

No rating

This is dressed as a sci-fi dystopia, but was very much a meditation on what it means to be human when stripped away from society and what society tells us to value. The protagonist has to carve out meaning in a world that's empty of meaning and conventional sources of it.

I surmised fairly early that this was too artsy/European to give an answer as to the premise, and I was correct.

The book generally was feminist, but less gender-specific and more universal than I expected. Late in the novel she reads Shakespeare and Don Quixote, and it's interesting to me that, never having heard a man's voice, she likely would have imagined all of the characters sounding like women.

Found it strange that the other women never named the protagonist.

Audiobook narration was well done and the reader did not try to perform in a way that was distracting.

avatar for 3ivin6@books.babb.no

rated it

5 stars

Subjects

  • Fiction, fantasy, general
  • New York Times reviewed

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