Our Search for Meaning: A Review of I Who Have Never Known Men

Brief Synopsis

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman follows a young girl who, for as long as she can remember, has lived imprisoned underground alongside thirty-nine women and guarded by silent men. She is the youngest prisoner, known only as “the child”. The other women have little memory of the world before captivity and no understanding of why they are imprisoned. When an unexpected event leads to their escape, the women find themselves in a vast, empty world devoid of answers. The novel follows the child’s lifelong search for meaning, knowledge and understanding in a reality that never reveals itself.

Our Relationship with the Unknown

This book has mixed reviews, but I absolutely loved it! As a therapist, I was particularly drawn to the child's relentless pursuit of understanding. Her need to know has many dimensions and we see how it is what keeps her engaged with life. Her longing for more and her questions give her a reason to keep going. This is illustrated further as we see another woman gradually lose her desire to understand or hope for something different and eventually die. I felt that through the child’s determined search for answers, the novel explores our deeply human relationship with the unknown.

This theme made me think about the anxiety I often encounter with my clients in therapy. Many people arrive wanting relief from anxiety, and understandably so. Anxiety can become exhausting when it dominates our lives. Yet underneath anxiety is often our very human desire to conquer the unknown; to understand what might happen and how we can prepare for it. The goal is a life that makes sense; one that feels safe and fulfilling. Anxiety is therefore not simply a malfunction. It is our attempt to gain knowledge in service of survival, and when people come to therapy, this powerful part of human nature has simply moved into an extreme role.

My job is to help people tolerate not knowing what will happen next, and trust themselves to respond when it does. However, I remain careful not to villainise anxiety. Anxiety wants certainty, and while that is not possible, it doesn’t mean anxiety is wrong. It is important to recognise the survival intention behind it, and the child in this novel reminded me of that. Her search for answers is not described as a flaw or source of suffering, but human.

We are a species driven by curiosity. We do not simply survive; we seek understanding. We ask questions about where we came from, why things happen and what it all means. We build knowledge collectively and pass it to one another, and throughout the book, the child eagerly learns from the women around her. Later, when she is alone, she continues reading, writing and observing to create her own meanings. Even without anyone to share her discoveries with, she continues to learn. We see how knowledge has value in our survival but it is not simply a survival mechanism, it is one that allows us to thrive. We take great joy in learning and creating, and so does the child, even when she is stripped of everything that we think makes us human.

Our Experience of Not Knowing

Our need for knowledge and answers became even more apparent when I read reviews of this book. Many readers were furious with the ending because it does not provide explanations for the imprisonment, the guards and the empty world. Yet the novel never promises these answers. In fact, it repeatedly states that they never come, hence why I was so struck by the reviews that could not accept this ending. I saw frustration in these reviews mirroring the child's own struggle, and a fundamental part of our human nature. The book does not simply describe humanity's deep discomfort with the unknown; it evokes it within the audience. Readers found the absence of answers almost unbearable, illustrating just how profoundly distressed we can be with this idea of never knowing. 

This discomfort reveals how our relationship with the unknown does not only appear as anxiety, it can also emerge as anger. When uncertainty threatens our sense of order, understanding or safety, we often push against it. We demand explanations. We want reality to make sense. In this way, both anxiety and anger can be understood as responses to the same problem: we do not know, and we do not like not knowing. When these themes show up in therapy, and they often do, my job is to build an appreciation for these complex parts of our human nature, alongside an ability to cope what doesnt feel right. This comes from developing trust in our abilities to handle whatever may come.

Humanity and Death

Death is another theme in this novel where I found myself examining our human nature. The child lives in a world where almost everything is uncertain, yet death remains the one certainty she can rely upon. We see how a life that is full of questions, and relatively void of connections, leads the child to spend very little time wondering about what comes after death. Yet many of us feel the opposite. We know death is inevitable, but we are uncomfortable with it and we often focus on what might come afterwards. In contrast, the child remains concerned with understanding the life she is currently living. Death is one of the only things that makes sense in her world, giving the child a very clear of view on something most of us feel disconcerted about.

The book’s theme of death also highlights our innate respect for the dead. Throughout history and across cultures, humans have devoted time, energy and ritual to caring for those who have died. We bury our loved ones, tell stories about them, preserve their belongings and create ceremonies to mark their passing. These acts serve no practical purpose for the dead themselves, yet they feel deeply important to us. In I Who Have Never Known Men, the child writes "I decided to bury the skeletons, because I wanted to show that whatever had happened to us, we belonged to the same kind, to those who honour the dead” (p.160).

Despite living in a world stripped of social structures, traditions and explanations, this instinct remains. The dead are not discarded or forgotten. They are cared for and remembered. I interpreted this as our relationship with the dead being about more than grief. It reflects our human tie to connection and our recognition that a person's value does not disappear when their life ends. Even in a world where almost everything familiar has been lost, the act of honouring the dead and the lives they lived remains an expression of humanity itself.

Concluding Thoughts

This book presents humanity in such a powerful way. There are questions we may never answer. We may never fully understand life, death, ourselves or the world around us. Yet our innate needs for connection and meaning still matter and are not something to overcome. They are predispositions to experience, they are what make us human.

I Who Have Never Known Men has so much relevance for therapy. This book and therapy itself do not provide certainty, but instead help us develop a different relationship with uncertainty; both invite us to live alongside absence and the unknown. Through the child's respect, curiosity, determination and refusal to stop searching, I am reminded that being human is not about finding every answer and every connection. It is about continuing to engage with the questions and with each other.