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A review by lettersfromgrace
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
5.0
This novel has such incredible brevity and succinctness, balanced perfectly with its ability to bring forth so many levels of analysis.
Firstly, on a superficial level, it is a kind of philosophical treatise that to me, seemed almost existentialist and focused on the nature of freedom, defying convention— as The Child does following the death of her fellow women. This is enjoined with the text’s ethical concerns, over debates like euthanasia and the idea of dignity in death, which greatly interested me as an ethics student.
Secondly, it can be viewed as an allegory in a prismatic volume of ways— capitalism, patriarchy, even the Holocaust— are somewhat symbolised here, in a way that aids the novel towards feeling entirely relevant and human, even in a barren terrain. We realise we are united with The Child regardless of her humanity or not, because like us she experiences pain and despair, but hopes, and lives, and most importantly remembers.
What I think compounds these two themes is really the idea of legacy and how it meets with creativity and hope. The ending felt almost redolent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘Nausea’ in the saving grace of the written form to The Child. This text was also with one of the best closing sentences I have read in a long time.
To The Child,
Firstly, on a superficial level, it is a kind of philosophical treatise that to me, seemed almost existentialist and focused on the nature of freedom, defying convention— as The Child does following the death of her fellow women. This is enjoined with the text’s ethical concerns, over debates like euthanasia and the idea of dignity in death, which greatly interested me as an ethics student.
Secondly, it can be viewed as an allegory in a prismatic volume of ways— capitalism, patriarchy, even the Holocaust— are somewhat symbolised here, in a way that aids the novel towards feeling entirely relevant and human, even in a barren terrain. We realise we are united with The Child regardless of her humanity or not, because like us she experiences pain and despair, but hopes, and lives, and most importantly remembers.
What I think compounds these two themes is really the idea of legacy and how it meets with creativity and hope. The ending felt almost redolent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘Nausea’ in the saving grace of the written form to The Child. This text was also with one of the best closing sentences I have read in a long time.
To The Child,
“The children are always ours, every single one of them … and I am beginning to think that whoever is incapable of recognising this may be incapable of morality.” - James Baldwin