I Who Have Never Known Men

I first saw a bit of a buzz around this one in a Slack channel for books at work, and was again reminded of it as I was browsing through the trending books section of Hardcover, so I decided to give it a read. The concept itself is rather intriguing - it follows a group of women locked in a jail for reasons unknown (and the women seem to have lost part of their memory in the events leading up to being jailed). The protagonist, who is the youngest woman locked in the jail, has never known life outside of it and so has never met a man.

I don’t think I was as blown away by it as others have been though. It’s interesting, but the book leaves you with a lot of questions and I didn’t really feel that satisfied with the ending. It’s sort of sci-fi, but I guess I like sci-fi when it actually answers the questions for you.

The women escape after the men disappear and then one by one as time passes, they each die, eventually leaving the youngest. She never figures out how the men escaped (and where to), but they do come across many other jails where other people (either a cell full of women or full of men) have all died. None of this is ever explained either!