Jaqueline Harpman - I who have never known men

 A perhaps post-apocalyptic science fiction about one woman's stride across earth spaces in a world where she is the only one left behind. It's a story of survival in the sense that surviving is to keep going, keep pressing on, keep looking for life on a barren land. At the very beginning I found it hilarious that Harpman writes (the book came out in 1995 in French) that the captive women only had vegetables to eat and how this was a sign of total depravity. For those modern day perhaps ultra feminist readers who might have taken upon themselves a vegan way of life, I smile at the thought of that circle of readers. Non the less, the main character who is nameless, later finds frozen meat of various kinds and together with her survived companions eat the meat for strength, so much for veganism. 

I've understood that this particular book as it came out in English in 1997 and later again in 2019 has in the past year 2023 by chance of book-Toc and other online phenomena became popular and well liked again. I can see the ingredients for a cult book, I can understand why radical feminist like it, I too can be radical and feminist but not in the same sentence. The weird fantasy of the last man (or woman) left behind and the even more weirder fantasy of a world without men, the old amazon women myth come to life, doesn't thrill me or excite me, it's a sad picture and Harpman describes that well. 

The main character is insightful she realizes that because she wasn't held as a child, she wasn't hugged or brought up to understand family connection, tradition and the concepts of the old world, that made her in a way "less human" rightly so. She was lonely but she didn't understand what that solitude really did to her. 

I'd recommend the book for anyone who wants to experience a post-apocalyptic dystopian adventure from a female loners perspective. However the book isn't all that people mean to say it is, it isn't in my opinion "a small miracle" or even groundbreaking.