I Who Have Never Known Men (1995) by Jacqueline Harpmen

 Book Review

I Who Have Never Known Men (1995)

by Jacqueline Harpmen

   I was sitting in a dog cafe with my boo this week and we saw a woman reading Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh.   Naturally I asked her what she thought since anyone who takes out a copy of Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh is begging to be asked.  She said she loved it, loved Moshfegh, and the three of us sat there and chatted about books for a minute.  She recommended this book, I Who Have Never Known Men, translated from the French into English in 1998.   I managed to get an eBook copy from the Los Angles Public Library almost immediately.  It was brought back into print in 2020 and the edition I read was from 2022, so I think this would be in the category of "rediscovered classic."  It wasn't ignored back in the 1990's- the New York Times reviewed it (in two sentences, to be fair), and Kirkus compared it to The Handmaid's Tale, which is an apt comparison.

   Harpmen never had another book translated into English and I Who Have Never Known Men was decades ahead of its time.  We know this because The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1985 and didn't really take off until 2016 when the first season of the increasingly ridiculous television show (which is still running!) reminded everyone that the fiction of feminist of dystopia was a pretty rich hunting ground for think pieces.   For me, the craziest part of the revival of Handmaid's Tale was that Atwood published a sequel, The Testaments, in 2019, and that this sequel actually won The Booker Prize- which has to be the biggest make up prize in the history of major literary awards.

  These days, feminist-tinged dystopian fiction could take up a book shelf- I try to read all of it, since the combination of genre and literary concern is a consistent theme on this blog.   It makes sense that I Who Have Never Known Men would be revived in this environment.  I found it a grossly compelling and incredibly dark read.   It's only 175 pages- you can read it in a couple hours.  I actually got up a half hour early to finish it up and I'm sure I won't forget it.