‘I Who Have Never Known Men’ is a speculative dystopian with a harrowing concept; 40 women not remembering what happened for them to be taken or the early years of captivity, but living guarded in a cage situated in the bunker with no knowledge of who their captors are, what they desire, or what happened on the surface that led to their captivity. The nameless narrator knows even less, having been taken as a child therefore having no prior experience of the world before the cage and having never known a man, the few male guards never interacting with their prisoners. After years, a chance event leads to their freedom and the women must seek answers to what led to their circumstance and learn to survive in an apocalyptic world they have had no experience of. 

The amount of questions and the dystopian setting this book created were really engaging and it was therefore a powerful concept, however some of the tropes used and the lack of answers I found frustrating. The protagonist being a woman who has only lived in captivity meant her knowledge and thoughts were extremely limited and hence was a little flat a character with nothing backing her motivations. The book also used tropes of writing to a reader the narrator believes doesn’t exist, and many comments from the narrator to foreshadow coming events as she is writing her past experiences but these were either frustrating ‘you wouldn’t believe what happened next’ in style, or not at all subtle ‘little did she know this is how she’d die’ in their tone. While some things such as this were made so obvious, somehow the extent of ambiguity was a fall-short, as there was so little knowledge that the protagonist and therefore reader had that despite an interesting and ambiguous setting and ending leaving the reader wondering how these circumstances came together, we get so little clues throughout the book that it is impossible to even piece together ones own theory. The concept was great and there were some wonderful passages and commentaries on survival, purpose of life and the passing of time, just wish it was expanded a bit more, especially during the early phase of imprisonment.