I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I am grateful to Echo Books for putting this audiobook out in 2024, as this book was originally published in 1995 and didn’t get nearly the awareness it deserved back then. And I am grateful to the Greensboro Public Library for once again doing the subversive thing and adding it to their most recent audiobook acquisitions.

Given the suburban sprawl of this city, I’m in my car a lot. I need engaging audiobooks to stay sane. The story needs to be good and the narrator does, too – it’s important that the narrator ACT the characters, not just read them, or one can easily get lost in the effort required to differentiate between characters. The story and the narrator are good here.

This book is short. As an audiobook, it’s only six hours in its entirety, but it’s six hours of brilliance. I feel honored to have finally joined the small legion of people who are now aware of the genius of this author (and also the translator, who has maintained the integrity of the original French work – it can be extremely challenging to do this when the nuances of a different language can easily be lost in translation).

I’ll read this again at some point, probably in book form, to see what I missed in a listen. Without giving away too much, let’s just say that the manner in which this book is constructed means that the narrator’s experiences are also ours in a way. The hope, the desolation and loneliness, the curiosity, and the desire to know where she is, why she’s there, and whether she’ll ever encounter anyone else alive is something we also hope to discover, and which create an agonizing ache that keep us attached to the story until the very end as we experience a similar anguish as the narrator herself.

I realize that’s not the greatest description of this when this could be applicable to any good story – but I’m trying not to leave spoilers here. If you read this, you’ll understand what I mean. This takes place on a much more “meta” level than the typical desire to know the conclusion of a tale. I’m sure there’s probably a named literary device for this that I don’t know.

I’m still on the lookout for a good speculative fiction book club. If I ever find one, I’ll recommend this one in a heartbeat. It’s incredibly discussion-worthy. Again, I’m glad that someone at Echo Books had the foresight to retrieve this book from relative anonymity and bring it back out into the light for a new generation of readers and listeners.



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