This could be seen as the effect of trauma so bad that you can neither bear to recall the past nor contemplate an unchanging future, you can only live in and deal with the present moment. At the start of the novel she tells us that she lives in a perpetual present, that she has no memories. The women she shares the underground bunker with remember a different way of living, before something terrible happens that leaves them incarcerated underground.
She has only ever known the captivity she describes. The narrator of the novel is a blank canvas. Her novel suggests that there are innate things about being human that will always surface, no matter the isolation and denial of humanity that might be imposed. Her practice is evident in this novel, which explores the nature of being human and whether attempts to strip groups of people of their humanity can ever succeed. Harpman returned to Belgium and worked as a psychologist. All of this must have influenced her decision to write this thoughtful, thought-provoking work which deals with the incarceration and dehumanisation of women and men for no known purpose. She grew up in exile at a time when Jews were being murdered in their thousands in the Nazi extermination camps. Her family fled their native Belgium when the Nazi regime invaded. Mackintosh’s intro draws out the key strands of the story and makes a case for the significance of Harpman’s book far better than I can. She, too, suggests that it’s a Sci-Fi work, but also relates it to Herland. Vintage has reissued Ros Schwartz’s translation this year with an excellent introduction to the novel by Sophie Mackintosh. The novel was first published in French in 1995. It felt more dystopian than Sci-Fi to me, more akin to The Handmaid’s Tale, futuristic and speculative.
There’s a vague hint that the characters, who are incarcerated in an underground bunker for the first part of the novel, are no longer on Earth. Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men is filed under Sci-Fi at my local library. Tags 6degrees 20 Books of Summer 1001 Books Africa America Art Australia Autobiography Biography Black culture Black history Blogging about blogging Book review Britain Canada Comedy Crime Dystopia Economics England Fantasy Feminism Film France Germany Graphic novel Historical fiction History Horror Humour Independent Publisher India Influx Press Italy Japan Journalism LGBTQ London Mental health Meta Music Mystery New York Paris Philosophy Picture Prompt Book Bingo Poetry Politics Psychology Racism Randomness Religion Russia Science Science Fiction SciFi Scotland Short stories Six Degrees of Separation Sociology Spain Speculative fiction Sweden Thriller Tokyo Translation Travel United Kingdom USA Wales War Women's Prize for Fiction Women in translation Women in translation month Women read women
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