I Who Have Never Known Men

The same refusal to explain anything, the cage, the guards, the vanished world, reads to a large minority as a cheat rather than a deliberate choice. One reviewer calls it flatly “one of those annoying open endings with zero answers,” and another compares the prose unfavorably to being “written about a leaf blowing in the damn wind.” A sharper complaint targets the book’s politics: despite its feminist reputation, one reader calls it “one of the most reactionary works I have read lately,” arguing the bond between the captive women reads as a lesser substitute for men rather than a real alternative. A few resent the consensus itself, with one reviewer venting “everyone who gave it 5 stars is lying to me,” unconvinced the near-uniform praise matches what’s actually on the page.