My goodness. Welcome to the bleakest novel ever written. I thought I was well versed in the bleak: being a fan of miserable Russian classics, grim ol’ Cormac McCarthy, and dystopian nightmares like ‘We’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, but none of these come close to the dark, hopeless futility of Harpman’s classic. I felt like I was trapped in the background of a lost Salvador Dali painting, i.e. a world that made no sense, in which the Holocaust was forever on repeat, and the bewildered ‘but why?’ constantly on the lips of the characters and reader is met only by the muteness of a madman.
Do not make the mistake I did and read this at 4am. You will have a life wobble.
The trouble is once you start it is hard to stop. Harpman’s writing is compelling; and the situation of the characters, though awful, is so odd that you just can’t help needing to know where this is all leading.
Forty women trapped in a cell. They do escape but…
You have been warned.
Buy it here: I Who Have Never Known Men a book by Jacqueline Harpman and Ros Schwartz – Bookshop.org UK