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I Who Have Never Known Men
4/5. A short feminist science fiction(?) novel originally written in french in the 90’s, when it acquired a cult following, whereupon it was translated into english a few years ago and acquired a new and different cult following. This is the first person account of a young girl who grew up in a cage with 39 women, all older than her, all of whom remember their former lives, unlike her. They know nothing but each other and the silent guards, until one day everything changes, and they escape to a strange, answerless landscape.
This is good. It manages that trick of being an incredibly bleak story, but told with a lot of tenderness and humanity, so it feels richer and more rewarding than ‘bleak’ implies. This is simply written, yet rewards complex thought. I think the author’s jewishness is important for reading it well, particularly in appreciating why there is never any actual ‘why’ for the atrocities committed here. I also strongly suspect the author had been reading Tiptree, and maybe Le Guin’s “Sur” (very different, and yet related), and maybe Marge Piercy? This feels very much in conversation with a lot of speculative feminist texts of the 80’s in particular, is what I’m saying.
I am less compelled by the reading suggested by the afterword in my english text, which glosses this book as about what a woman might be, should she exist in a world entirely without men. I mean, the title’s right up there, so sure, carry on. I just don’t find that a very rewarding train of thought in this iteration, and think this book is doing a lot of other things that I’d rather pay attention to.
Content notes: Captivity, depictions of mass death aftermath, euthanasia of a sort.
4/5. A short feminist science fiction(?) novel originally written in french in the 90’s, when it acquired a cult following, whereupon it was translated into english a few years ago and acquired a new and different cult following. This is the first person account of a young girl who grew up in a cage with 39 women, all older than her, all of whom remember their former lives, unlike her. They know nothing but each other and the silent guards, until one day everything changes, and they escape to a strange, answerless landscape.
This is good. It manages that trick of being an incredibly bleak story, but told with a lot of tenderness and humanity, so it feels richer and more rewarding than ‘bleak’ implies. This is simply written, yet rewards complex thought. I think the author’s jewishness is important for reading it well, particularly in appreciating why there is never any actual ‘why’ for the atrocities committed here. I also strongly suspect the author had been reading Tiptree, and maybe Le Guin’s “Sur” (very different, and yet related), and maybe Marge Piercy? This feels very much in conversation with a lot of speculative feminist texts of the 80’s in particular, is what I’m saying.
I am less compelled by the reading suggested by the afterword in my english text, which glosses this book as about what a woman might be, should she exist in a world entirely without men. I mean, the title’s right up there, so sure, carry on. I just don’t find that a very rewarding train of thought in this iteration, and think this book is doing a lot of other things that I’d rather pay attention to.
Content notes: Captivity, depictions of mass death aftermath, euthanasia of a sort.