A thought provoking letter to humanity, I Who Have Never Known Men asks of that humanity what exactly makes it unique.

Set in a world unbeknownst to the characters or the reader whether or not it is earth, the narrator takes us through her life as a captive in an underground bunker. Eventually, as a result of events confusing and unknown, she and 39 other women manage to escape their cage and emerge above ground, only to find that they are the only human beings left on the planet they inhabit. Stuck in this world alone, they have to survive their loneliness and endure even with little hope for a fulfilling future.

I appreciated this piece as a reminder of our humanity. The narrator, due to the circumstances of her upbringing, reads as monotone (though she is a fully developed character), and describes herself as lacking the experiences that give the other women surrounding her their joie de vivre. She doesn’t remember normal life on earth, whereas the others do, and this serves as the lens though which she views their world, their actions, and their motivations. It is because of this lack of connection to what the other women, and myself as the reader, consider to make us human that makes her read as monotone to me. I was deeply interested in what made her unique and her experiences in the bunker and afterwards, but I felt it hard to connect to her perspective because it felt so alien and robotic. I enjoyed her experiences of discovering love and what it meant to the other women to be alive.

This is such a personal thing, but I really didn’t enjoy the way the text was structured without chapters. I am someone who must read to the end of a chapter before stopping (mostly because these are the natural breaks in the narrative and come after some sort of memorable revelation or event), and not having designated rest stops made me feel like I couldn’t put it down. It should also be noted that I didn’t particularly want to put it down because I wanted to keep reading and find out what would happen next, but as a busy person with a life and responsibilities, it would have been nice to be able to break it up into chunks like chapters. I also want to acknowledge, however, that I totally understand why it was written in this way and think it was a great commentary on the passage of time (which is such a huge theme in the text), I’m just kind of a sensitive baby about chapters.

I also expected to be disappointed by the fact that this book was so short — this, however, was not the case. I thought it was a greatly concise package and I appreciated that it was so short and yet the narrative spanned so many years (again, a great commentary on the passage of time as it related to the characters).

Overall, I definitely enjoyed this one for the ideas it put forth and the style of the writing. It will definitely stick with me, which I cannot say for all of the speculative fiction that I have read. Highly recommend for anyone looking for a thought-provoking narrative that simultaneously feels far far away and next door.