I Who Have Never Known Men - Review and Analysis
Jaqueline Harpman's otherworldy dystopia has blown up recently. Is the resurgence justified?
Hugonauts: The Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time · Cody Troyer, Brent Gaisford
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Show Notes
Seen through the eyes of a main character who can't remember anything from life before the prison, you get to explore this strange, grim world from first principles. Its an alien way to explore an alien place, and the mystery just keeps getting deeper all the way through. The ending makes this a stylistically divisive book - you're gonna love it or you're gonna hate it.
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As always, no spoilers until the end when we get into the full plot explanation and discussion.
Similar books we recommend:
- The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison
This episode is sponsored by Mindstock by Richard Yonk, available here.
If you want to jump around, here are the timestamps for the episode:
- 00:00 Intro
- 01:00 Book setup
- 01:45 Sponsor - Mindstock by Richard Yonck
- 2:17 Our review 4/5
- 3:50 Must be dystopia, journal time
- 5:00 Environmental storytelling
- 8:21 Hyper rational main character?
- 11:29 Harpman's family in the holocaust
- 17:15 Shadow of the Colossus
- 18:15 The Buried Giant
- 19:02 The Handmaid's Tale
- 19:46 Book of the Unnamed Midwife
- 20:54 Spoilers section - book summary
- 22:44 Spoilers section - discussion