Review: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harper

A modern classic combining dystopia and sisterhood to make a masterpiece.

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@shereadsbooks.sometimes

Dates read: 03/01/26 to 07/01/26

Star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Word to describe: Lasting

Genre: Dystopian fiction, literary classic

In this day and age a world without men sounds like it would lead to a utopia, I mean look at the news its all bleak. But in the world by Jacqueline Harper, men exist they just simply vanish and to our narrator there is nothing more unnerving than a change to all she has ever known.

And men she has known, or at least she has seen them from the balconies above her home (the cage) she and other women have been made to live in is a strange one. No one can recall the time before they entered the cage, or very little is shared between the narrator and the other women due to a largely perceived age gap. Our narrator was so young when she arrived its impossible to know anything else. The other women were already grown so they can remember a time before the cage but are forced to relinquish their reminiscing in fear.

The men arrive in scheduled times, never one at a time, and always bringing food or supplies. They watch over them, and as our narrator ages she begins to fantasise about them. What lives do they live on the outside? She explores sexual attraction without the true words to understand what it is. She asks questions to the other women and without answers she remains defeated dreaming up scenarios in her head with heated lust that she can barely understand.

Then there is a bang. The men disappear and the cage is left open. For some time the women remain, unsure of what may come next but as the time passes they reluctantly leave their cage. The remainder of our tale is following the narrator as she explores her newfound freedom, alongside love, friendship, deep sisterhood, desire, kinship, struggle, and loss.

Jacqueline Harper has created a masterpiece that is so profound it captures the beauty of the world alongside its atrocities. The readers see, through the eyes of the narrator, a longing for more but never achieving it. We feel the desperation and we feel the sadness. But there are moments of true glory, we feel pride in the women of the story and as the narrator ages the true sense of our own mortality is brought to life.

I read I Who Have Never Known Men in a matter of days. The delicious writing style was easy to swallow whole. Each new chapter of life, every time the women achieved greatness or felt deep loss I felt witness to it all. Mirroring other great classics like The Handmaids Tale, I Who Have Never Known Men is one that haunts you.