I read a good book recently. It came to me by surprise, and I knew nothing about it going in. Some people have said it reminds them of Piranesi, but I disagree. It never made me feel as suffocated as Piranesi did. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is a 1995 sci-fi dystopian novel:
It follows thirty-nine adult women and a young, unnamed narrator who have no memory of their past and are kept imprisoned in an underground cage by silent male guards. When the guards suddenly abandon them, the women escape into a desolate, lifeless world. From there, the novel shifts into an existential exploration of isolation, freedom, and what it means to be human, as the women—and eventually only the narrator—try to survive in this barren wasteland.
Not as sprawling or messy as Dostoevsky, this book gave me the same feeling as The Road by Cormac McCarthy or Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It quietly dismantles your assumptions and leaves you staring at the ceiling, wondering what remains when everything else has been stripped away.
It made me question my existence on a Saturday afternoon, which is perhaps the highest compliment I can give a book. I am still thinking about it days later.
If I can no longer share anything with anyone, what is the point of my existence?
I have always taken pride in my ability to embrace solitude. Over time, I have accepted that my difficulty in connecting with others is simply part of how I am wired. But the book left me wondering: if there were no one to share my thoughts with, through conversation, writing, art, or any other medium, would those thoughts still matter?
Would a poem still be a poem if no one ever read it? Would a story still have meaning if it remained untold? Would love, grief, joy, or curiosity carry the same weight if they existed only within the boundaries of a single mind?
Part of me wants to believe that meaning can exist independently, that a life can be worthwhile simply because it is lived. Yet another part wonders whether meaning is something we create together, whether our thoughts become real only when they are witnessed, received, or echoed back by another person.
Perhaps that is what unsettled me most about this novel. It is not merely about isolation. It asks what remains of our humanity when there is no audience, no community, and no one left to remember us. And whether meaning is something we possess, or something we give to one another.
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As someone who has spent most of her life writing, I found myself carrying that question long after I finished the book. We often say that we write for ourselves, but do we really? If there is no reader, no witness, no possibility of being understood, does the act still hold the same meaning?
When I write, who am I writing to?
Tu lah, writers are funny in that sense, we call it solitude bagai, then spend hundreds of pages trying to reach someone. Kemooon sisterr.
