Welcome to Litsy!

The details aren‘t clear, neither is the setting, and readers are left to wonder along with the characters (who are all women, stuck in a cage.) The main character is substantially younger than the other women, who all remember a time before they were imprisoned. One day, they are mysteriously freed and venture out to find others. Simple yet I was hooked. I‘m left with more questions than answers which is what I imagine the point of it all.

Thanks for the giveaway opportunity @wanderinglynn Hope your birthday is filled with delight 🎂

The tagged book has lots of great reviews and is one I‘m looking forward to reading.

#49bdaygiveaway

I Who Have Never Known Men is not a book on female rage. Neither does it ask for women‘s rights to the exclusion of men‘s.

The book asks for one thing - the opportunity to love - irrespective of gender.

The women in this book don‘t hate or fear the men - rather they fondly remember their pasts where men and women explored love and life together.

I did like the book. But, I found the obscurity of time to be jarring in placing the narrative.

A haunting, affecting book that will stick with me. The main character is a nameless woman who is kept in an underground bunker with 39 other women. Unlike the others, she was brought here as a young child and has no memories of the world outside this one room. They live a completely restricted, controlled life. It amounts to a treatise on what it means to be human and free. A consuming novel and such a singular and unusual reading experience.

Wow that book is something. A bucket of cold water into the face, but in a bracing and energizing way. Was absolutely hypnotised by the writing and protagonist. It is not fun, but it asks some really interesting questions.

This is more litfic than genre SF, and some of the worldbuilding feels fudged. But that is not the point of the book. Also the ending leaves you dangling. Intentionally and I loved it, but I know some ppl hate that.

A striking, beautifully written book that leaves you with more questions than answers but said a lot about what it is to be human. 5⭐️

Saw @TrishB & @BarbaraBB posts, so read over 2 days. Talk about a character study on what it means to be human.

The part where the women keep finding the same results over & over, but with variations on how things look, whoa! Some of those scenes felt very Lord of the Flies to me, but others definitely not. Gave me perspective on how broadly humans react to same situation.

Would have loved to know more plot details, but those aren‘t the point.

Thought I‘d be reading either a #NFN pick or cozy fantasy next. After that devastating election, though, the tagged book showed up in the mail and I decided to go all in on the dystopian outlook. No idea where this book is going, but I‘m here for the ride.

This quote really hit me, especially when I think of all the people who voted for Trump, and all the people who sat this election out. Being human rests on very little indeed😢

Brilliant, short, dystopian novel. I have so many questions. Really thought provoking.
And that last sentence 🥲
Thanks Barbara 😘

“I have understood nothing about the world in which I live “.

The narrator is a young girl locked up in a cabin with 39 other women. No one knows how or why they are there and who the men are who guard them. One day they can escape and what follows is what is described as “a hollow freedom”. A poignant story that leaves me with many questions and that will stuck with me.

A girl with no name is imprisoned with 39 women. The male guards never speak to them. We watch her grow older in this cage, trying to navigate this unusual life. I found this book fascinating. There are unanswered questions in it that I think will drive some readers crazy, but I really liked it. @BarbaraBB I think you would like this, too.

After seeing @BarbaraBB post about this book, I realized I had never reviewed it even though I continue to think about it months after I read it. A group of women has been imprisoned below ground by men. The youngest does not remember the before times and a sudden incident has the women released into a world where it seems everyone has perished. > more in comments.

I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all…After all, if I was a human being, my story was as important as that of King Lear, or of Prince Hamlet that William Shakespeare had taken the trouble to relate in detail.

Well that was depressing ! If you love dystopian fiction it‘ll be a winner if not you‘ll hate it . Short novella which can be read in a day . It is very well written but still think I‘m being generous giving it a so so

I am reading it with my girlfriend ... I'm excited to hear someone else's take on this because I found it fascinating and philosophical - but so, so dark.

This was fantastic. It's so atmospheric, with a masterful balance of hope and despair. I loved the central mystery of why the woman are being held captive. Are they even on earth? What has happened to the guards? Harpman explores the themes of love, womanhood, loneliness, community, and what it means to be human from the point of view of someone who has only experienced captivity. I know it will stay with me for a long time.

Fantastic! Great bookclub read. So many interesting themes from hope and love and sex and humanity. Highly recommend

One of the most unique books I‘ve ever read. At first I was bored to tears, yet the premise kept me hanging on…once an event happened, I was intrigued. I‘m not going into more detail than that. I will say one thing: what if you knew nothing of your past but being in a cage with 39 women…you were a child and had no reference for anything they spoke about…how would that form you as a human?
If you are into character more than plot, read this.

Daisy judges you.

This book is so good so far

This was hypnotic & quietly compelling. A speculative dystopian novel about a woman who tells us her story of having grown up in captivity in a group of 40 women. I found the images of the barren inner & outer landscape quite surreal, like a Dali painting that was transforming in front of our eyes. Through the young narrator's circumstances the novel asks deep questions about the purpose of personhood, womanhood, existence. Are we always waiting?

This was out of my comfort zone dystopia, but I couldn't put it down.

4.2⭐️ this book may be under 200 pages but it doesn‘t change how powerful it is. I went through some feels with this one, and while I would not call it a tearjerker, some parts left me feeling a little raw.

5/5 🌟

Wow!!! An interesting and sad book that will forever be etched in my mind. 💕

Best type of mail. 📚 📬

I had high expectations when I borrowed this book because it was a whopping 4.23 average rating on Goodreads. When I started the book, it definitely piqued my interest and curiosity. I wanted so badly to know what is outside the bunker.

It could have been a good book if the writer altered the ending. A lot of the writings became repetitive and circled around the same idea. If I could put it into a phrase, it'll be Eat Sleep Work Repeat.

Listen, I understand this pink band is what‘s keeping an RFID in place, and that, in turn, is the reason I can benefit from Inter Library Loans but, c'mon people can we not come up with a better placement?!

"Perhaps you never have time when you are alone? You only acquire it by watching it go by in others, and since all the women have died, it only affects the scrawny plants growing between the stones and producing, occasionally, just enough flowers to make a single seed which will fall a little way off–not far because the wind is never strong–where it may or may not germinate."

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all."

This story is about 40 women, the youngest being a child. The women are imprisoned in a large cage surrounded by guards. None of the women can recollect what has happened or how they ended up there. This book may not be for everyone as it‘s not very climactic, but you become invested in the characters and their quest to find answers -which pulls you through to the very end.

Starting this one this morning. I‘m only a few pages in, and I‘m already intrigued 📖

Flawless in so many ways - the writing, the concepts, the structure. It was a masterclass in so many things that a lot of dystopian fiction gets wrong. Yet at the same time the bleakness really got to me and it was quite hard to make myself read because I found myself dreading turning the pages. The amount of absurdity and how futile so many things here were, and how the moments of tenderness got swallowed up by the bizarre world was hard to read.

I got this great package in the mail today! Thanks @Eyelit - I love the socks and the pins and thank you for the book and the candy. I‘ll be sending a return package in the next couple of weeks 😉

#litsypenpals