Ep 729 - I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman

Summary

Overdue Podcast – Episode 729

Book: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Release Date: November 17, 2025

Hosts: Andrew and Craig

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles I Who Have Never Known Men, the 1995 dystopian novel by Jacqueline Harpman. Andrew dives into this recently rediscovered work—once obscure, now a viral sensation on BookTok and beyond—and guides Craig through its haunting plot, ambiguous purpose, and sharp emotional landscape. The hosts explore the novel's history, the context of its resurgence, and its lasting resonance, especially amid recent global tumult.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Background on the Book and Author (07:08–16:32)

• Originally published as La Femme des Sables in French; first English version titled Mistress of Silence before reverting to a literal translation.
• Jacqueline Harpman: Belgian writer, psychoanalyst, Holocaust survivor; major themes include trauma, memory, and the construction of humanity.
• Publication history: Finalist for the Prix Femina (1995), UK/US English editions followed in 1997, surged in popularity post-2019 via BookTok (#BookTok) and indie bookstore interest.

Why the Book Became "Overdue" (15:10–21:02)

• Became a sleeper hit due to interest in dystopian fiction (post-Handmaid’s Tale TV series), plus resonance with feminist and trauma narratives.
• TikTok/booktok communities and Women in Translation Month (August) amplified visibility.
• Noted for its “funky syntax” and striking title, which piques reader curiosity.

Themes, Structure, and Style (21:19–29:37)

• The book defies tidy explanation or lore; intentionally leaves big questions unanswered.
  • "If you were here for the lore, this book is not... interested in giving that to you." – Andrew (22:01)
• Instead, the focus is on the psychological and social: identity, memory, survival, humanity under extreme deprivation.

The Story: Plot Breakdown

• Narrator: Nameless protagonist, the youngest among 40 women, none allowed contact with men.
  • "She has never, she's never talked to a man... she's seen men from a distance, in a very specific context..." – Andrew (26:16)
• Setting: Underground prison where women are monitored by silent, unseen male guards. Conditions are stagnant but not overtly violent; food and medicine are provided, but reasons are never explained.
• Narrative structure: Told as a retrospective memoir; the narrator is writing at the end of her solitary life.

Life in Captivity & Escape (27:33–39:46)

• The women struggle to maintain routine, privacy, and personal dignity in a strictly controlled environment.
• Time manipulation: protagonist invents an internal clock—counting heartbeats—to measure days.
  • "She's inventing her own internal clock... and it causes a lot of excitement because it feels like taking a little bit of power back." – Andrew (38:43)
• Their only knowledge of the outside: fuzzy memories, possibly drug-induced amnesia; details of the great collapse are never clarified.
• Sudden escape: A siren prompts a guard to unlock their door; outside, they find themselves on a vast, featureless plain, alone.

Aftermath: Survival, Exploration, and Meaning (44:30–62:56)

• Exploration yields only more identical bunkers—all dead within, women or men, in separate cages; they alone survived the exodus.
• Attempts to find society or answers are fruitless; no clues, no environmental storytelling, no “lore.”
  • "No environmental storytelling, like, on the walls or in the books... no one finds an audio log..." – Andrew (44:51)
• The group settles in, makes a life, but as years pass, members die—some by natural causes, others by euthanasia performed by the narrator for the suffering.
• The protagonist never discovers sexual attraction or menstruation; she forms only intellectual or emotional bonds (notably with Anthea, a mentor figure).
• As the last survivor, she explores further, buries others, and ultimately finds a solitary, human-constructed bunker—her final resting place.

Book’s Ending and Its Implications (62:56–66:15)

• In her last days, the narrator reflects on existence, humanity, and the meaninglessness-yet-significance of her survival.
  • "She does seem interested in what gets written on the tabula rasa..." – Craig (64:10)
  • The protagonist will die in solitude, having left her story on the hope that someone might one day read it.
• The story closes not with resolution but an open-ended, existential meditation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Book’s Ambiguity:
  • “If you were here for the lore, this book is not... interested in giving that to you.” – Andrew (22:01)
  • “As a good friend of ours once said: the questions are more important than the answers.” – Craig (22:50)
• On Human Tenacity:
  • “I think it's a little bit about human tenacity and our ability to adapt to different, different situations... We've all had to do that.” – Andrew (62:41)
• On the Title’s Meaning:
  • “She has never... talked to a man. She's not known them personally, conversationally, sexually. She has not known men.” – Andrew (26:16)
• The protagonist’s sexuality and physiology:
  • “She’s never had a period... whatever eggs might have been inside her just were not viable...” – Andrew (59:43)
  • “...she has some kind of cervical cancer that is now eating her alive. And it's like this thing I did not even use... is what is killing me. And isn't that interesting?” – Andrew (59:43)
• Comparisons to Other Works:
  • “Ultimately more Waiting for Godot than The Handmaid’s Tale.” – Goodreads reviewer, as read by Craig (68:27)

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Significant Timestamps

• 07:08–16:32 — Harpman’s biography, publishing history
• 16:32–21:02 — Book’s rediscovery and BookTok phenomenon
• 26:06–39:46 — Prison setting, protagonist’s childhood in captivity, invented time
• 44:23–46:06 — Escape and first experiences outside
• 46:22–62:56 — Post-escape: discovery, group’s decline, narrator’s final solitude
• 62:56–66:15 — Reflections as sole survivor, broader interpretation of theme
• 67:15–73:29 — Reviews, Sophie Macintosh’s afterword, discussion on bleakness and ambiguity

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Discussion of Literary Reception

• Sophie Macintosh’s Afterword (70:35–72:47):
  • Praises the novel’s “Dali-esque surrealism,” ambiguity, and the “shining, searching humanity at its core,” despite unrelenting bleakness.
• Critical Reviews:
  • New York Times (1997): Describes it as “about as heavy-hearted as fiction can get,” yet irresistibly compelling.
  • Goodreads reviews highlight both its enigmatic, unresolved storytelling (“frustratingly open-ended”) and its subtle, emotional grip.

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Host Impressions & Final Thoughts

• Andrew finds the book “weird, even-keeled... unsettling, but not traumatic or frightening,” with a lingering sense of “spookiness.”
• Both recognize the novel’s contemporary appeal: it explores adaptation, resilience, and the search for meaning in a world stripped of explanation—all especially resonant after the isolation, disruption, and collective anxiety of recent years.
• The hosts praise the ambiguity and the humanistic core at the heart of the story, as well as the benefit of Sophie Macintosh’s afterword in contextualizing their own reactions.

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Conclusion

This episode provides an insightful tour of I Who Have Never Known Men: its obscure origins, viral revival, enigmatic narrative, and sharp, unsettling power. Its refusal to explain or resolve is, the hosts argue, precisely what makes it stick in the memory—the kind of book that lingers, haunts, and provokes.

Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a Headgun podcast.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah, bought it. Bought an anniversary gift. One of the other gift giving occasions. It's not the holidays, but yeah. I bought a make your own limoncello kit because we went to Italy several, several years ago and had some very nice times sitting and sipping limoncello and just relaxing and not being parents yet.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

That sounds.

[Andrew]

Are you reading? You reading the same copy I'm reading.

[Craig]

The same copy and it looks the same good to me.

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy.

[Andrew]

Away from spoiling spec specific story beats when necessary.

[Craig]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. Really chewing on that one today.

[Craig]

I just thought about each word a little bit harder than I normally do.

[Andrew]

I'm going through a lot of like older episodes of the show as yeah we're doing some part of like an ongoing like cleanup project of a couple of things and so many episodes like well into the like the hundreds and the two hundreds when we start the show it's just like well what do you want to talk about? And it's, it's just, I think it's so Much better now that we just, like, come out of the gate like, this is the name of the show. Maybe we have some dumb stuff to say, but we are gonna. We are gonna turn up the energy right out of the gate. It's gonna set the. It's gonna set a good tone. No matter how we're feeling coming in, you're gonna do something like what you just did, and it's gonna. It's gonna set the floor where it needs to be. Like, energy wise.

[Craig]

I think it's good when a podcast starts and it feels. Feels like you've missed something.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Like the train is leaving the station. You don't know where it's going and you don't know how you got on the train, but here we are. Maybe you're trapped on the train. Maybe you're like 38 to 39 other people.

[Andrew]

The train that you're trapped on is overdue, of course. The podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. Every week, one of us reads a book that we've never read before. Tell the other person about it. The other person brings some author research, some other context, some other fun facts, and we have a conversation that I think aims to be, I don't know, like, dinner party ish in the general. Like, no, you like a dinner party with your. With your medium smart friends who you like, I imagine, who think that they're funny.

[Craig]

I'm imagining the dinner party that is you and I doing a podcast while like, six other people have to sit there quietly eating their, you know, lasagna or whatever.

[Andrew]

I regret to inform you that I do believe we have done that to people. Not for, like, a full hour, ever at once.

[Craig]

No. But not as a stretch podcast.

[Andrew]

No, not as a book podcast. So we could. We could.

[Craig]

But no, you and I have gone, you know, 10 rounds at a. At a dinner party while other people.

[Andrew]

Sit there just sparring, intellectually. Debate me. This week I read I who have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman.

[Craig]

Yeah, Originally published in French.

[Andrew]

I was gonna. I was gonna ask if you could do this, if you could do this for me.

[Craig]

I actually don't have to put too much spin on that one. And when it was first published in English in the UK in 1997, it was called the Mistress of Silence. And they've kind of abandoned that English name since.

[Andrew]

Is there any reasoning for that? Or is it just like, for the obvious reason that I, who have Never Known Men is more interesting.

[Craig]

It is way more interesting. I think the US Publication always embraced the Kind of literal.

[Andrew]

Pretty literal translation. Yeah.

[Craig]

And in the. We will talk about the. This is a book from 1995 published in French by Jacqueline Hartman, a francophone Belgian writer. And I think we'll talk about its like journey back to commercial success and why it's being read among all people of all ages, thanks to bookstores and booktok alike.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Because this, this edition that I read is a paperback that's got an afterword by Sophie McIntosh in it. Who wrot cursed Bread that we read a few months ago and a few other things and that's dated to 2019. You know, it's, it's a recentish push. And then you've implied that something even more recent has happened to kind of bring it into, bring it up onto people's like radar again.

[Craig]

And, and in at least one article that I read, I think it was 20, 2025's the Cut by Emily Gould. How I who have never known Men took over booktok. There is one person in that article who talks about the funky syntax of the title perhaps being key.

[Andrew]

Just, I mean, I think you see this on the shelf and you know I'm talking about ladies. You're like, oh, this is a, this is an optimistic fantasy book about never having. Never having known men.

[Craig]

Listen. And it's in a way, it kind of reminds me of when the coffee gets cold. Like there's just something about a certain ways that translated titles can land if they're a literal. A little more literal than maybe they would have been done decades ago. And it does just kind of like it sticks in your ear a little bit. So Jacqueline Hartman, born 1929, passed away in 20 2012. 20, 2012. What? Sorry, passed away in 2012.

[Andrew]

That's actually, that's another way to talk about 2032. It's 20 2012.

[Craig]

She, as I said, was a French speaking Belgian writer and psychoanalyst. She was the second daughter to parents who exported fabrics to North Africa. They fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded and did not return until after the war was over. I believe her father was a Dutch Jew and much of his family died at various camps in Europe. It was horrible. So they come back after the war. She begins studying medicine at the University Libre de Bruxel in Brussels. I would imagine that's probably what that means. Unfortunately, she had a bout of tuberculosis which led her to not continue her studies for a few years. But she took a stab at writing during that period of time. Wrote a novel that went. Went unpublished and she was treated with penicillin I mostly just want to say medicine is good. People should take good medicine.

[Andrew]

You sent me a thing today about. About the. The Make America Healthy Again. Psychopaths embracing Elizabeth Holmes, who is like, yeah, there's never been a person in medical history who has been such a successfully, like, documented Charlotte. It's like, of. Of course, this scam adjacent movement is like. Well, she was disagreeing with the consensus, so I guess we have to like her.

[Craig]

Yeah, we have to. We're duty bound. We swore an oath.

[Andrew]

Unfortunately, not everybody who disagrees with the consensus has a point about anything.

[Craig]

No. So too bad. Some must. Much of medicine is good, is what I'm here to say. Sure.

[Andrew]

Medicine. Medicine is good. Holocaust is bad. Those are the two points that we've made. We are so far pushing back against a certain kind of consensus in a way.

[Craig]

Goodness. She got back to her studies, though she did not finish medical school at the time. Married a filmmaker, worked on some films with him. They got divorced in 1962. Her first novel was Le Perlation esprit, the App. The Spirit of Apparitions or the Apparition of Spirits. I think her second novel, Brady, receives an award in 1959. And she is writing in a couple of different mediums. She's writing for film, she's writing for radio, she's writing theater reviews. She marries again in 1963, has two daughters. Her third novel, Les Bon Savage, I think that is translated as the noble savage in some places, or the good savages in some places. I don't know what it's about, but that's what it is. Her close editor, she worked with a lot. Renee Juilliard passed away in the early 60s, and so she took a pause from writing, enrolled again at the ULB and studied psychology, got into psychoanalysis and was a practicing therapist for like a decade and a half, two decades, before she finally starts getting back to writing in the 80s. So you then have this, like, run from the 80s until the end of her life where she's just pumping out books. Le man moi trouble, La fille de mentalais, La plage d', Ostend, Le bonner don la cream. That's probably. I don't know how they say crime in French, but it is spelled crime. It's not cream like pastry.

[Andrew]

It's not like. It's not like creme.

[Craig]

No. And then in 1995, her first novel, which would be translated into English, I who have Never Known Men, is published. And she would have several novels after, including 1996's Orlando, I read an interesting review of Orlando in the New York Times from 2025.

[Andrew]

New York Times?

[Craig]

Yeah, that's why I said it that way. MJ Franklin wrote about it in the book review just last month. It's an interesting like gender swap novel that's like a little inspired by Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Seems kind of cool. Like if this, the book we talk about today, sounds remotely interesting, maybe go check that book out. Seems pretty neat. So yeah. And then she's writing in especially like active in the aughts and then unfortunately, you know, passes away in 2012. But a very long career. Kind of two eras. One much longer than the, than the first era. I'm not comparing her to Taylor Swift directly, I'm just using the word eras. Please.

[Andrew]

But this book isn't like it is. As much as the premise of our show is like books you should have read by now. I feel like in some ways this is a quintessential overdue book because it is like 30 years old.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

But I had never heard of it before. I was given it for my birthday by a friend.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Like a month ago. Yeah, not even a month ago. Like a few weeks ago.

[Craig]

So I've got some information on that for you.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So hit me with why this book is having a moment now.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure. So it in 2018. Okay. So originally it's published in France. It's a finalist for the 1995 Pre. Pre Femina. It's awarded to French language works and that are judged by an all female jury, which is kind of neat. And then as I said, it's published in English in 1997, both in the UK and the US and from then on it's kind of a like we'll, we'll print more if people call us like book, but we're not trying to stock it anywhere.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And then in 2018, the UK publisher had been scooped up by Vintage. The rights were at Vintage UK and somebody there just kind of found it on a shelf. Looking around in 2018, the Handmaid's Tale is very hot in Trump 1.0. Here we have a dystopian novel about a community of women.

[Andrew]

And a real girl boss who kind of is making her way in the world.

[Craig]

Uh huh. And Roz Schwartz, who did the translation in 1997 is up to like double check her translation and go at it again, which is kind of fun. She's like the premier, one of the premier English translators of French in the world. She's done like she did A Little Prince in 2010. She's won a bunch of awards. She's on numerous, like, you know, boards and committees about making translation. Translation like a career and a field. So Schwartz is the real deal.

[Andrew]

And not one, not one of these fake translator girls.

[Craig]

Not the Elizabeth Holmes of translation. And. Yes, and as you said, they got Sophie McIntosh to do an afterword.

[Andrew]

You know, you can translate this whole book, Craig, using just one sentence. I have a machine that extracts one sentence from the book and translate the entire thing. No, you can't see it.

[Craig]

Let's go to court about all the texts I sent my boyfriend about it. And then so they publish it in Vintage in UK in 2019. Then Transit Press picks it up. There's. There are press in Oakland, and then it's. By 2024, it's like selling a hundred thousand copies a year. The cut, the, the, the article in the Cut, I want to make sure the thug, it's in there because that's the name of the publication.

[Andrew]

Like the Cheat.

[Craig]

Yep. We were watching. Laura and I were watching the Eagles game today, and they mentioned a guy growing up watching clips of somebody on YouTube. And Laura was like, I feel so old when I watch a video on the Internet. It was Homestar Runner and Hamster dance, not YouTube. Just feeling old today. The article traces a number of different TikTok accounts that talked about it kind of in the early 2000s. You can't point to anyone necessarily as being the culprit. Not the culprit.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It's hard to do that. Like, I always, I always respect the, the people at Know your Meme who try to trace these things back to their. Their genesis.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

It's all, It's. It's often a collective and faceless effort.

[Craig]

They do, like, find a couple big videos and then one of the ones that they talk about is that Maital Rudzinski had started popularizing a Women in translation month in August 2014. And so this got picked up in that. On BookTok in the early 2000 and 20s as well, given Schwartz's work on it and it being a French work translated into English. So then you have stores starting to stock it because people are coming into the store being like, where is this book about the 39 ladies? Or whatever it is?

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

And one of the guys who works at Vintage kind of thanked the booktok community for the book coming into, you know, success. Quote, seeing reading as a communal rather than insular act can, for books be a matter of their life over death. That's a theme that we have seen in other books that we've covered. And is also why, I think, especially in a. In a. An age where many of us are connected to other people that we wouldn't otherwise be connected to over the Internet, like, that is one of the good things that can come out of it. It's like you're reading a book and you can find people who are interested in it.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And then there's another kind of similar article in the Times.com from the United Kingdom that traces the TikTok, you know, publisher fueled success, but also talks to a bunch of authors about what they like about the book. And one of the connections made by author Natasha Siegel is that Siegel's Jewish and she's reading this book, and it's about, you know, women being imprisoned and cut off from the world. And, yeah. Makes the connections to Holocaust narratives. And, of course, that plays into Hartman's family and her family's history. So, like, I think there's another resonance there that is not just the kind of, oh, we're looking for another Handmaid's Tale book. There's, like, other, you know, things that.

[Andrew]

People are gonna experience. It's in there. I don't know that that Harpman is. Is, like. I don't know that her main project for it is to make it any kind of, like, Holocaust allegory. But, yeah, like, given. Given the context, you can't. You can't avoid. Draw those connections. Yeah.

[Craig]

And author that I've liked for the show, Carmen Maria Machado, wrote about this novel in the New Yorker this year and says it is the first novel that I didn't know what to do with. The first novel that, instead of frightening me or thrilling me, gave me an unmooring sense of disquiet. I'll be interested to know how. What you thought about the book, Andrew, because it does seem like it's. If people like it, they like the things that it does and doesn't answer.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And if people don't like it, they don't like what it does and doesn't answer.

[Andrew]

If you were here for the lore, this book is not.

[Craig]

Go away.

[Andrew]

This book is not interested in giving that to you.

[Craig]

Sure. Okay.

[Andrew]

Which I'd say, I mean, I'm not trying to judge people who are here for the lore, but you're often here for the lore. Often. But sometimes it is okay for a thing just to be a bunch of stuff that happens, you know, like some. You know, you don't need every answer to every question.

[Craig]

No, you don't.

[Andrew]

And that doesn't mean the book isn't about anything. It just means, it just means that you are not going to get a lot of fuel for your, for your fan theories in here. Like, it's not, not only is it not interested in telling you that stuff, it's not really interested in leaving a bunch of clues to be like endlessly interpreted in the style of like a mystery box TV show. Like it's, it's not. Yeah, it's just not doing that.

[Craig]

As a good friend of ours once said, the questions are more important than the answers.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Well, let's take a quick break, Andrew, and you can tell me all about whether or not you have known men. Never or ever.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

I have, but I have never known code. So is this for me?

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

I have none.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Now, Andrew, we have known men.

[Andrew]

We've known men in our time. It's true.

[Craig]

I know a man every time I look in the mirror. So I'm interested to know what it means to have never known men.

[Andrew]

You might. Yeah. Like, so the, the sense that it's used in this book is the protagonist, she has never, she's never talked to a man. She has.

[Craig]

What a blessing man.

[Andrew]

She's like seen men from a distance. Okay, in a very specific context, which we'll talk about. But she is not, she's not known them personally. She's not known them conversationally. She's not known them like sexually. She has not known men. And this is her sense.

[Craig]

This is definitely her choice. This is a thing that she has like, decided to do.

[Andrew]

It's like, no, definitely no. It's not, not her choice at all. Okay, the deal with this book, please, is that we open in a. Some kind of underground prison where 40 women are kept in one big room with kind of mattresses on the floor. They are given food. If they get really desperately ill, they are given medicine. They are kept alive. And they are not, they are not regularly tortured or mistreated. Like, they're not being starved intentionally. Like, somebody seem, it seems like maybe somebody wants to keep them alive. But who that might be, what that reason might be, whether they, whether anyone is even actively thinking about them at all. Like, these are all questions that we never find out the answers to.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Because it is, it is clear from pretty early on that what you're reading is like an account of a bunch of things that happened from the perspective of someone who is like, at the, at the end of like, she is telling us the story from after. From like after everything has happened.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

It's clear that we are not. Like, if a happy ending for you would be the Women out of the cage and everything explained and everybody kind of safe and sound in the home where they're supposed to be. Like, that ending does not come like you were. That's not what this book is going to give you. Which is. It creates this interesting tension because a lot of the book is about exploring this, the. The land that is. So the women do get out.

[Craig]

We'll.

[Andrew]

We'll. I'll go back and backfill some details. But the women do get out, but they are still basically imprisoned because they're out on this, like, kind of featureless plane. All they can find are other cabins where women and men were kept, like 40 to a box, basically. And nobody made it out except for them.

[Craig]

Oh.

[Andrew]

And so a lot of what the book is doing is like as. As our protagonist, as our nameless protagonist explores the world and finds small new things. These things kind of give her hope in a way. They give her brain something new to chew on and new to think about. But it's like nothing is ever explained. You know, that she doesn't like, return to anything that looks anything like a society, so. So you know that the whole time. But you're also, like, with her kind of finding new things and wondering about the new things. And like, you both know that nothing is gonna come of it, but you're also kind of discovering it along with her. Does that make sense?

[Craig]

Well, like you said, she's writing this at the end of whatever, but she is.

[Andrew]

She's. She's at the end of her life when she is writing it.

[Craig]

Okay, but she is like, putting you in the moment when she's like. And this was new and I'd never encount. Encountered it before. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so what was captivity like for her?

[Andrew]

She is one of 40 in this cage. They're all women in the cage, but she is younger than all the rest of them. Like, she not. People were not born into captivity. Like, they. They were. Okay, they did live in society on Earth in a. In what seems like a recognizable form to us. But then something happened and nobody remembers what it is. People sometime sometimes have like a vague memory of like some kind of fire or pandemonium. It's possible that it was some kind of war, some kind of societal collapse. Like, nobody. Nobody knows. It's kind of implied that they've been drugged at some point and the, like, the amount of time that they were drugged for contributes to kind of their fuzzy memories of that period. But like, at some point after whatever it is they come to in this cage, and they've apparently been here for long enough that their life feels kind of normal to them. They have come quite a ways down the road of, like, getting used to whatever their situation is.

[Craig]

Okay, does the girl feel that. Did one of. Was she born there?

[Andrew]

She was not born there, but she was a child there. And she's the only one who is not like a grown woman when she was put into the. Put into the case.

[Craig]

Okay. Okay.

[Andrew]

And so she, like, she has no memories of any kind of before, which is a key part of what, like what the book is. What the book is doing is it's kind of searching for, I think, the humanity in somebody who has not been like, societally conditioned to do the things that we think about when we think about.

[Craig]

Yeah, you know, sure.

[Andrew]

What. What a society does or what, like, what we owe to each other or whatever. But yeah, she is. She is much younger than the rest of them. And as the book opens, she is. She's a teenager. She has gone through some kind of puberty. But, you know, she is. Whether because of stress or because of like, a malnourishment or some other, you know, some other thing, like, it's. It's. It's again, not full. It's not fully.

[Craig]

You're telling me it's not explained.

[Andrew]

Yeah, but she's never. She's never like, had a period. There's like a certain kind of like, sexual maturity that just kind of evades her. It's not that she doesn't have sexual feeling ever, but it's. It does remain like a thing that she's like, physical touch is just not something that she's super interested in and that she does kind of recoil from when she does have an opportunity to do it.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But life in this cage is like, you know, people. People cannot be super emotional. People cannot physically touch. People cann get upset. Like, nobody. We don't see anybody being whipped. But it is said, you know, it's. It's clear that in the past there were things that people did, they were punished for physically that they now do not do anymore. And there are guards, and the guards are male. There are guards who like, never talk to them, never look at them, never do anything except, like, pass them. Whatever, bare minimum sustenance. They're. They're being passed who are ready with, you know, to. To crack the whip when anybody seems to be doing anything that they're not allowed to be doing. And we. So we're in this. We're in this girl's head. She feels apart from the rest of this. Of this group of women, just because they're older than her and especially because they have experience of, like, life in society's adult women. Like, they have been married, they have had sex, they have had kids and families. Like, they had had educations or jobs or whatever it is that, you know, they had all been living lives.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And she never. She was never part of any of this. And so the first big, like, conflict between her and this group is that they are sort of talking about sex and implying that it's something that she can't know about because she wouldn't understand. And she. You know, she feels that they have this secret. And in. In this context where none of them have anything like a secret that they can all keep to themselves that they. That she can't know anything about is, like, them having some kind of power over.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

So she develops, like. She starts fixating on this younger male guard and having what basically amounts to, like, sexual daydreams about him. She talks about an explosion that she has a couple times, which I think is, if it's not like an orgasm, it is, like, in the neighborhood of one.

[Craig]

Love to be in the neighborhood of one.

[Andrew]

I listen. You and me both, bud. So she's sitting and fixating on this guard and thinking these, you know, thoughts about him. And he's coming in, and he's taking her out, and. And he's, like, paying attention to her, and. And it's giving her this little thrill. And the women notice that she is sitting apart from them, like, doing they don't know what. And one of the older women in the group comes over to her and is like, hey, what are you. What are you thinking about? And she realizes, like, hey, I don't have to tell you. Like, I can also have a secret. And that also gives me power over you. And so that's kind of her coming into her self. Okay. As somebody who is, you know, she's not educated, doesn't know things about society, but is maybe a little smarter or more thoughtful than some of the women that she's in the. In the cage with. And after this episode happens, she connects with one of the other women. I think her name is Anthea, but let me double check. Can you type code?

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And they actually. I don't need time coded at all.

[Craig]

You found it right away?

[Andrew]

I found it right away. Even though it's a paper book and I don't have a control f. Anthea or Anthea, I don't know how you want to pronounce it. Is it A N, T, A N, T, E, H, E, A? Yes.

[Craig]

Oh, yeah, okay.

[Andrew]

A N, T, H, E, A. Yeah, okay. But she is, you know, she is closer to middle age, but does connect with the. Our protagonist in a sort of intellectual way that, like, they are more on the same wavelength than the protagonist and the rest of the women in this cage are. She kind of becomes like a sort of a mentor figure. Not necessarily a mother, certainly not like a lover or anything like that, but somebody who she finds some kind of kinship with.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

And so they are in this cage and they're living out this existence, and the protagonist is kind of chafing that they. Their lives are so limited and so finite, and they only have the same kind of, you know, they. They are given a big bucket of, like, potatoes or whatever. And the women are going to have the same argument about, like, how to prepare potatoes with water that they've had a million times. And things have just taken such a predictable little rut. And she. I think she is talking with. With Anthea when this comes up. I'm just going to pronounce it however I want in the.

[Craig]

Please do.

[Andrew]

You can, like. It can be Schrodinger's pronunciation.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You can pick the one that you like at all talking about. They. They, you know, on the. On the outside a day had 24 hours. And it seems like things, you know, like the guards change at what seems like pretty random intervals. They're fed at pretty random intervals and only twice a day. Also, instead of three times, the lights seem like they're kind of turned out at random intervals. And so she, armed with the knowledge that the, like, arresting heartbeat, arresting heart rate for humans is 72 beats per minute. She is. She is told, she begins counting her own heartbeats. And listen, I. I have an apple watch that is telling me stuff about my heart rate all the time. And I. So I know that. That you can. You can. Your heart rate can spike for any or no reason. Like, if you have to, like, talk at a meeting or something, like, you're. You could get the little higher heart.

[Craig]

Rate watching the eagles. You know, we're gonna.

[Andrew]

Watching the eagles that. I mean, obviously you don't have the birds in the prison. Just too bad.

[Craig]

Unfortunate. But she's inventing her own, like, swat.

[Andrew]

She's inventing her own. She's inventing her own internal clock where she's gonna count her heartbeats and use that to, like, sort of math out what the actual time is. And she tells Anthea about this, and they tell the other women about this, like, sort of covertly, and it causes a lot of excitement because it's like one. It feels like them taking a little bit of power back in a way, because, you know, they are being kept underground. And clearly they are like these intervals are being kept random to kind of mess with them and keep them. Keep them off guard or keep them from feeling comfortable.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Or, you know, like they have any. Any semblance of a routine or anything. And so it feels like they're doing that. And it also gives them, like, something new to think and talk about for the first time in a while. And anytime. Anytime that happens, it causes a big buzz.

[Craig]

I bet.

[Andrew]

Like any. Anytime somebody has a new thought that can get passed around and chewed on by all the rest of them, it's a big deal.

[Craig]

Yeah. This so far reminds me of the. This is. I read this book a long time ago, Dawn. It was the first of the Lilith's Brood xenogenesis books by Octavia Butler. And the first third to half of that book, I think I could be misremembering, is our main character just, like, in what appears to be a prison cell, while aliens are, like, you know, interacting with her. And it is incredibly disorienting. She has no idea really where she came from or how she got there. And the. The lack of any concept of what is happening beyond the walls is just so, like. It's so total and, like, kind of really messes with your sense of self. So, like, that.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

That. This. That book, I think. I don't know if it was that book specifically. Butler came up in some of the, like, comps for this novel. Obviously, the Handmaid's Tale did. And the. For the thing I'm thinking about with the Handmaid's Tale is the. I don't recall that novel dealing much with anybody who. You didn't remember the Fall. Like, that seems to kind of be the. One of the unique things about this book is that it's.

[Andrew]

Yeah. The Handmaids has happened, like, recently enough. Change. The change happened recently enough, and it's dropping enough little, like, context clues for you. It's not. It's not interested in spelling things out to the excruciating level of detail that the show was. Yeah. I only watched the first couple of.

[Craig]

Years of that, like, season two. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Yeah. But. Yeah. Yeah. There's, like, everybody who you're dealing with knows that things used to be another way.

[Craig]

Yes. Yes. Not here.

[Andrew]

No, not here.

[Craig]

Yeah. Okay.

[Andrew]

Like, you know, all the Other women, of course, knew that. Knew that they used to have other lives, But.

[Craig]

But even that has been rendered fuzzy, which is kind of interesting.

[Andrew]

That's been. Well, and. And they don't. Like, they remember their lives. They don't remember the transition. And so, you know, hands made handmaids. You know, there. There's. Obviously, there's been a lot of effort taken on the part of the regime to kind of suppress and erase that history, and that's why you're reading that.

[Craig]

Book in the first place.

[Andrew]

It's kind of being recorded as this covert little thing. But, yeah, here it's not like that there's been a transition is all that you really need to know, because it's not like the book is not explaining itself to you more than. More than that.

[Craig]

Okay, so they invented time again.

[Andrew]

So they've. They've invented time. And this is, you know, this is setting up a dynamic where she is. She's feeling a little. She's still feeling apart from the group, and she's, you know, feeling apart from the group because she is younger than the rest of them because she has no memory of the society. And these. These other little subtle cues that they all can use to relate to each other that she cannot use. Sure.

[Craig]

Pop songs, lyrics to Beatles music.

[Andrew]

I. I mean, nobody talks about the Beatles at any. At any point, but sure, I. You know, I assume that they. Yeah, sometimes they do talk about meme references, episode. Episodes of the Golden Girls or whatever it is.

[Craig]

What are those? Like, she doesn't get it. Yeah, she doesn't remember Vine. Please.

[Andrew]

She doesn't remember Vine. Nobody.

[Craig]

Everybody's in this cage is going, remember Vine?

[Andrew]

So one day an alarm goes off, and a guard that is down there sort of reaches over and unlocks the door to the cage. And then they all book it and leave. And the women are sort of stunned, stunned by this. Don't know what to do with this. And they, led by our protagonist and Anthea and a couple of others, decide gingerly to step out of the cage and then to go up the stairs and kind of explore the rest of the bunker and then go to the. Like, the ground floor and leave. And it turns out that they are. You know, they're being kept under some kind of cabin on this vast, featureless plane. I mean, mostly featureless. Like, there are a couple. There's some flowers they find sometimes, and there are references to insects, and there are trees, but it's. You know, imagine stepping out and seeing the Windows XP screensaver kill.

[Craig]

But maybe a little Drab. Like, maybe a little worse.

[Andrew]

Maybe a little drab, Maybe a little yellow.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But that is what you were seeing for, like, miles in every direction. And there's no trace of the guards. The guards have left no, like, personal effects. There is definitely no book. Like, there's no environmental storytelling, like, on the walls or in the books or.

[Craig]

No. What is the weakness?

[Andrew]

No one is the weakness. There. There are no, like, nobody finds an audio log that they pick up and can listen to to get any context about any of the. Any of the stuff that's happened. Sure. Just the guards. The guards are gone, and it does not seem like they're coming back.

[Craig]

Hmm. Okay.

[Andrew]

The women are now, you know, they're out of their cage, and they're doing just fine.

[Craig]

I get it.

[Andrew]

Well, you're, like. You're allowed to have your little. Your little. Hey.

[Craig]

But, like. But, like, despite of. Despite all their rage, how are they feeling?

[Andrew]

Mm. So they're out. They're out of their cage. They're not just rats in a cage anymore. They're out of their cage.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And they're eating, and they're like, hey, we can dig a hole in the ground and we can have, like, a little bathroom that we make again. They can sort of reclaim some creature comforts and, like, modesty and other things that they had trained themselves to do without in the. In the cage where nobody could. Nobody could pee in peace.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure. Privacy is important.

[Andrew]

But it's okay. So they do that for a couple days, and then they're like, okay, let's go look around. Like, surely we can walk. We can just pick a direction and walk. And if we walk for long enough, we'll find a town or we'll find something.

[Craig]

That's how every RPG starts. You just go and you find town.

[Andrew]

So the whole rest of the book is. So for a while, they travel around and they find other cabins, and it seems like every one of these cabins is kind of identical to the one that they were in. Sometimes the cages have 40 women. Sometimes they have 40 men. A couple of times, they'll find one that has, like, 39 or 38. And they're just left to. To wonder, like, why the. The. This particular cage was missing a couple of people. If, like, somebody had just died or somebody was being, like, transported somewhere else. They don't know when they're finding, like.

[Craig]

30 or 40 people. Are they live people?

[Andrew]

No, they're all dead.

[Craig]

Oh, they're all always dead. They.

[Andrew]

So they are. They were. You know, they're hoping to find more people who like them were let out. And it seems it is revealed to you over the course of this book that whatever sequence of events that led to their. The cage being unlocked at the exact moment as this, like, siren goes off and all the guards peace out, like, it was a fluke. Like, it only happened to them. They never find anybody else.

[Craig]

Huh. Okay.

[Andrew]

And they. So they do this for a while. They're having a little bit of trouble traveling around because some of the women are a little bit older and they just can't make it as far. So they. After a couple of years of kind of, you know, exploring and living this nomadic existence and not finding anything, they pick a cabin and kind of settle down outside of it. They start building, like, little. Little huts for themselves because they all, you know, none of them were, like, had, like, super specialized education or occupations or anything, but they can all kind of cobble together what they remember about a lot of stuff and kind of get by that way with a lot of, like, the basics, and they just kind of post up and make a little mini society. And they basically live this way for, like, a couple of decades. And the women, like, more of the women start dying. The entire middle part of the book is kind of the protagonist living through the deaths of many of the. Many of the women. Like, she ends up being somebody who helps to kill women who are. Who are, like, suffering.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

In their death throw. Like, she. She gives them that little bit of mercy. Like, as they are. As they are exploring these cabins, they also, you know, they also develop little rituals about, you know, they cannot. They cannot unlock the cages because. No, there are no. They're usually not keys around. And there's, like, no point anyway because everybody's just been dead for so long. But they can, you know, they can. They can close the door. They can. Yeah. Go down and pay respects. Just, like, observe the people and then close the door to the cage and give them some small amount of honor or whatever in that way. But all the women die eventually, except for the protagonist who's writing it all down. It's the hardest for when Anthea goes because she does realize that this is the closest I have come to loving somebody. But she is, you know, after. After this last. After the last woman dies, she kind of feels freed a little bit because it's like. It's just me. We. We settled down before. You know, if it had just been me, I would have kept exploring. I would have kept going.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

I would not have settled down at the same time as Everybody settled down. She was built different, like freed of the, of the need to like participate in this little society that they had all formed themselves. She strikes out again and starts exploring again. And this is so I, so I said, you know, early in the, early in the episode that a lot of what the, the book is, is just like watching her kind of discover like stumble upon new, new things that are like, they're interesting to her because they're novel, but they do not to us, the audience, really help explain anything.

[Craig]

Oh, sure, yeah.

[Andrew]

About like the world or about the book. The most like, significant or the first significant interesting thing that she finds that's like different from just finding cabins is she finds a bus on a road and the bus is full of like, it's got like 20 people in it or something. They have all kind of died upright. But she, like, a few months before this happened, she kind of, she has this thought and so much of this book is just like, she had a thought and it was a new thought and she was like, oh, whoa, that was a new thought. That's, that's kind of blown. That's kind of opened things up for me.

[Craig]

Oh, yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

In a way I wasn't expecting. So it occurred to her to think, you know, maybe. Maybe the guards were also victims in this too. Maybe they are also being driven to do things, things they don't understand by people who are not like, explaining themselves. And that's one explanation for why the guards would have just like so fully disappeared and why they would not have like interacted with the, with the women in, in any way. You know, they've got, they've got their own stuff going on. And so she finds this bus and is filled with the dead skeletons of what used to be guards. And they've all got these little packs and you know, and they've got. The packs have like a gun and a couple. And some like, food and some other things. It's clearly like some kind of like standard issue kit that all these guards are given when they take this job.

[Craig]

The gun, the guard bag. Here it is. Yeah.

[Andrew]

The guard bag.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

This is your orientation tote bag.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

And there is, there is a book in each one of these bags, Craig. And I know, I know what you're thinking. Oh, this is the, this is the book that is going to give you the like, the manifesto of the leadership of whatever.

[Craig]

Oh, sure.

[Andrew]

Society is. No.

[Craig]

Can she read?

[Andrew]

She can, she can read. She can. They sort of taught her, the other women taught her what they knew and then she has enough to kind of cobble it together.

[Craig]

All right, sorry.

[Andrew]

It's a book about, It's a book about gardening.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

It might as well be that. It might as well be that square foot gardening book by that guy. By Mel.

[Craig]

Mel's gardening. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Who does the, who does the mix?

[Craig]

Yeah, might have been. Might as well be the Mel's mix book.

[Andrew]

So she goes, she goes through all this stuff and she just like acknowledges the newness of this, of this situation. She is like, maybe I will follow this road that this bus was on and I will find something at the end of it and I will, you know, I will, I will bury the, the bodies that were on this bus because I, I have come to an understanding of the guards as being victims also. And you know, just in case somebody following along, you know, they're leaving little like symbols to. So they can. One so that if, if anybody else finds just in case just the market, they will know, they will know that somebody else is out there. And also, because everything just kind of looks the same, they can also have a record of where they had. They had been. So they don't like accidentally.

[Craig]

That's honestly more important, I think.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And it's like this, this landscape is so like the weather is mild all the time there, There are kind of seasons insofar as like sometimes it's a little warmer and drier and sometimes it's a little cooler and wetter. But nobody looking up in the sky can find like any constellations that they're familiar with. Like, there are no signs of like airplanes or any other like any of the things that you would see when you looked up into the sky.

[Craig]

Yeah. Neat.

[Andrew]

And so it's like, is this, is Earth? Like, is this even our plan? Another question that is, that is brought up but never ever answered. Yeah, there, there are some books about astronautics that she finds at one point that does the. If you wanted to read into that, that this is some kind of like space faring thing and they are indeed not on Earth anymore. Like I think you could, you could use that to support whatever case you wanted to make. But truly.

[Craig]

But there's never like a space zebra skeleton or something. No.

[Andrew]

And like, and truly it never like mattered. It doesn't matter. It wouldn't, it wouldn't matter if it was. If it was true or not. It's just like selling to you how totally unmoored everybody is. Like nobody, nobody can identify literally anything that connects them to the, even the planet that they used to live on. That's how different their situation is is now.

[Craig]

Okay, sure, I buy that. It's interesting, like thinking about this as a dystopia novel or whatever, kind of.

[Andrew]

What doesn't it.

[Craig]

It's not even.

[Andrew]

Or utopia, like, imply the existence of a society. Well, and that's.

[Craig]

That's kind of what's interesting about it. Like, it is.

[Andrew]

Isn't that what the topia part.

[Craig]

That's what the topia means.

[Andrew]

Like. Like a fruitopia is a fruit society.

[Craig]

Oh my goodness. Stankonia is a stinky society. It does have a thing that I find compelling about some versions of this where it's like there's a great change. And then often in dystopia it is like, and here's why the great change happened. And that's what explains why the society you live in, dear reader, is terrible.

[Andrew]

Topia just means place. So I guess it could be. It could be some kind of topia.

[Craig]

Zootopia, maybe the other.

[Andrew]

Like an. Like an atopia, like the. Like the absence of utopia.

[Craig]

Yeah, I like that It. This is like an interesting version of kind of the. And then what do we build after? Which is often an underexplored or underrepresented version of this genre.

[Andrew]

It's not even what.

[Craig]

It's not even that, like, it's kind.

[Andrew]

Of that for a little bit. It's just like we're all marking time till we die and like, just in case we find something else, but like nobody really. And some of several of the women die because of. Because of a lack of hope, basically a lack of things to look forward to. They just kind of lose the will to keep existing because it just seems so unlikely that they'll ever get back to anything that they would recognize as society. And yet. So she tries to follow this road, eventually just kind of peters out and becomes overgrown and nothing comes of it. And as she is, you know, she begins sort of trying to keep track of just like where the cabins are in relation to each other. She starts traveling in kind of a serpentine pattern instead of a straight line to kind of of cast a wider net. And as she's doing this, she comes upon kind of a mound of rocks. And it's like, well, obviously this is not naturally occurring. I got to see what's underneath this. And what she finds is this like metal manhole covered thing, basically. And she turns it and lifts it off and it's this little bunker. And it is not like a prison like what she was in or you know, what she's seen a Million times. But it is some kind of nice room with, like, a nice bathroom and a kitchen and furniture. And she's realizing that she's seeing for the first time, like, something that humans made for their own. Like. Oh, yeah, pleasure and edification. And so she. She just kind of posts up in this little. Little bunker. She reads the handful of books that are on the shelf, even though many of them have things in them like astronautics that she just cannot possibly understand because she doesn't have context for, like, most math.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Or anything like that. And she, you know, she keeps exploring around for as long as she can, but eventually she realizes that she is. She also is getting old and she's dying. She reckons that by the time she finds this bunker, she's like 40, give or take. 40 years old? Give or take, sure. And then by the time she's in her mid-60s, she has some. Probably some form of cancer, and she's just kind of slowly fading. So she has decided to write down just, like, the record of everything that happened to her and leave it just in case there's anybody who ever comes and finds it. And, yeah, like, it's. The title is a. You know, it's about how there are just women in this cage, obviously. But it's also like, she does find herself at different times. Like, she. She, like many of the women, like, pair up after they get out of the cage and start having, you know, like, sexual relationships. Like, I think the. The quote that is used once is like, they're doing what they can for each other.

[Craig]

Oh, sure.

[Andrew]

And she is never interested in that, but she does. You know, she had the. The explosion or the eruption or whatever it was that. That we talked about a little bit earlier. And then she can also, like, thinking about theoretical men is as close as she ever comes to having, like, a sexual feeling. And it's just, she's. She's finding it interesting that she never had a period. Like, it seemed like whatever. Whatever eggs might have been inside her. Like, they just. They just were not viable or they never, you know, they never became viable. And she has some kind of, like, a cervical cancer that is now eating her alive. And it's like this thing that I did not even use or need because I have never known men is what is killing me. And isn't that interesting? And that's kind of the note that the book ends on.

[Craig]

Interesting.

[Andrew]

She's gonna die in her little bunker. She's gonna go quietly and upright in her little bed, and maybe somebody will find her and note that she seemed like she died with a little bit of dignity or individuality intact because she had noticed in a couple of the cages people who, she knows the difference between people who died in a panic and people who kind of died peacefully were able to quietly accept it. And she makes a distinction in her head between those two kinds of people. But yeah, that's just kind of the book is. It's your, your. You are with this person who doesn't know anything about like humanity or society. And. But, but what you do see is her. You know, she still, even when, even after all the women have died, like she, she buries them, she does not leave them out. Like, she always, not only does she always close the, the door to the, the prison when she finds a new cabin, but like the one time that she finds a cabin and it becomes more interested in something other than that, like she feels bad about it and like, makes a note to like redouble her efforts to do that. Yeah, like she, she's still kind of finding those little bits of like, ways to see and, and honor other people, even though she's got no, you know, she, she's not more to like morality or religion or society in any way that we would understand it, but she's still got these things in her that are like driving her to, to act that way. So it's like, it's, it's a little bit about that. I think it's a. And this is just because of the last like decade that we had. We've had. I think it's a little bit about human tenacity and our ability to adapt to different, different.

[Craig]

Yeah, situations.

[Andrew]

Like they, they had adapted to life in the cage. It wasn't, it wasn't like they were happy, but they had gotten to a place where they could like have some kind of an equilibrium and like figure out how to live their day to day life.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And I think the last decade with like the, you know, political instability, the pandemic, all of it has been an exercise in like figuring out how to, how to adapt and how to get by and how to like find, you know, what you can find to make yourself and other people around you happy in like, less than ideal circumstances. And like, you know, there is something, it's. You never want to like, give into that so far that you, you forget that there are like, better things or like good changes that you want to like push for. But also, you know, it's, it is neat that our brains can do that for us or to us you know.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yes. No, I'm glad you said it. That Said that. Because that also is like, probably part of what people are responding to with this book in the last five years.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I think it's not. It's not coincidental that. That this is when it. Yeah, that's. That's the context of this kind of refines an audience in.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

For now. Now they're gonna get that overdue bump.

[Craig]

So now they are.

[Andrew]

Wells are gonna shoot through the stratosphere.

[Craig]

It is worse. Yeah. It is just interesting to me that she was the stratosphere first. That she was just like, yeah, I'm gonna pick this kind of unnamed central trauma and then what. It. What would the person without that explicit that trauma do? Like just as a kind of a thought experiment, obviously intentional that. That this horrible. Whatever. Horrible event and this horrible captivity is put upon these people, but that she does seem interested in kind of the. What gets written on the tabula rasa. Like what.

[Andrew]

Yeah, but it's.

[Craig]

It's just like, what does it feel to read the book?

[Andrew]

It's an interesting, weird little book. Like, the whole thing is so even keeled.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Which is really interesting. Like, a couple of times something is explained to you in a way that sort of evokes the. The horror of what you are seeing. Like when you come down to a, you know, a cabin and you're just assaulted by the stink of like 40 dead bodies. Like. But I think that it is written from, you know, decades in the future. Gives it this kind of matter of factness and calmness that I don't think the. Like, if you want to go back to Handmaids, like, I think Handmaids has a lot of, like, it makes you feel the trauma in a lot of spots.

[Craig]

That often seems like the. The Handmaid's goal in her telling.

[Andrew]

Yeah. That's part of its project, I think. Yeah. But this book is not. This book is not really doing that with you as much, I don't think. Like, it is not. It's not trying to scare you. It's. I think it is unsettling.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

In a lot of ways. But yeah, it's. Yeah, that's. It's. It's a very, like, calm, smooth, even read.

[Craig]

And. You know what I mean, Even thinking about Handmaids. And then I want to share some quick reviews from.

[Andrew]

Yeah, do that. Because I think I'm. I think I'm.

[Craig]

Yeah. Done just even thinking about Handmaids. Like the. There is that like kind of afterward frame narrative thing where there's like people out of university talking about it and like that seems included to give you the even keeled version. Like a nod to the emotionally removed discourse of the historical events.

[Andrew]

Sure. Yes.

[Craig]

To contrast it with the Handmaid's more visceral version. And this is neither. This is a person at the end of their life going, yeah, this is what happened. And like, I was different the whole time anyway. So, yeah, it would be.

[Andrew]

It would be different if you were getting a little like afterward from the perspective of somebody who'd found this, this document like 60 years after or whatever. Ye. Like, that's what, that's what Handmaids does. Let's not do that.

[Craig]

So I do have some reviews for you, Andrew, to respond to. The first is not starred in any way. It is from 1997. It's from the New York Times.

[Andrew]

New York Times again.

[Craig]

Times. It's a brief review by Sally Eckhoff in September of 97, which was like, you know, this is an interesting book. Whatever the quote that I think is interesting is, it's about as heavy hearted as fiction can get. But all the loneliness and oblivion of a deserted world won't stop us from following the narrator as far as she can go. So finding it compelling, but maybe not knowing what to do with the emotions of the book.

[Andrew]

It's not uplifting.

[Craig]

No, that's.

[Andrew]

That's for sure.

[Craig]

But I do have two reviews from a website that awards stars with their reviews. Andrew.

[Andrew]

And what's the. What's the like Max number of stars and what's the number of stars?

[Craig]

At these reviews, they're usually. You can go from one to five stars. And these stars, there's only three of them. And it's from Goodreads.

[Andrew]

Oh, it's from Goodreads. So they're three star Goodreads review.

[Craig]

Roman Clodia says. An enigmatic book, haunting and mysterious, but ultimately, frustratingly open ended. If you're the kind of reader who needs to have things tied up and explained by the end, then step away now. We have no idea why these women have been incarcerated in a bunker, who their male guards are, why the siren goes off, what has happened to the outside world, even whether they're still on earth. Ultimately more Waiting for Godot than the Handmaid's Tale. I found this weirdly compelling. Three and a half stars, as I would have liked a bit more material to work with.

[Andrew]

I know that we have. We think about Waiting for Godot slightly differently, you and I. Yeah, it's a very good place, I think that it is. Not that I don't like it. I think that you like it better than I. I respect it, but I do not find it interesting to sit through.

[Craig]

Sure, it may. I mean, it made people boo and scream and cry when it first premiered. That's part of the point.

[Andrew]

I just don't know that we need a play where it's like, well, you're talking about it, aren't you? Like, I just don't know that we need one that's like that.

[Craig]

No, there weren't that many.

[Andrew]

But I do. I do think that that comparison is like, it's. I get it, but I don't.

[Craig]

I don't think this is not as abstract as a Beckett novel, though. Like, this is this as kind of.

[Andrew]

You can still identify, like, what it's about, even if technically nothing happens.

[Craig]

I think this even more than that. Not the about. I think this is, like, you can identify where people are in space. Like, there are Beckett novels where you, like, am I a head? Am I a person? Am I just a voice in the world in, like, you know, nowheresville? This is a little more developed than that. And then the other review from Chloe. 3.25 stars. That's not allowed. Quote. Honestly, the afterword says it best. Quote. Nothing is explained, but nothing needs to be. Did you have any thoughts on the afterward? Did you read the Sophie Macintosh afterward?

[Andrew]

I did read the afterward, and I think it is. It's nice to have somebody there at the end of the book to be like, listen, I know what you just read. And this is. Yeah. I also think it's. It's kind of an unmooring, like. Yeah, I don't think it. I don't. It was helpful to have somebody there with me right at the end to kind of help me sort through the thoughts that I was having about it. Yeah.

[Craig]

Yeah. No, I've worked on product, like, theater productions, where we pointedly did talk backs at the end of every show because it was kind of a bleaker piece of work and people liked that. Like, the craft was good. The performances were clearly talented and captivating. But if you left that room without, like, taking in the experience with at least one other person, you might think you hated it because it, like, didn't make you feel good. Right. So to, like, I can just.

[Andrew]

I can just read.

[Craig]

Yeah. Tell me a little bit about what Macintosh said.

[Andrew]

And this is, you know, not to. Not to put that Goodreads person on blast, but they are maybe lifting from this a little bit. This is from Sophie McIntosh. How much of our humanity is intrinsic. How much remains when all else is stripped away? The story and the world the novel takes place in is pared down to the point of frustration. It possesses a Dali esque surrealism. His landscape owes as much to Beckett as it does to Bradbury. There he is again. Yeah, Mr. Beckett. The world the liberated women walk through seems desolate, dotted from time to time with trees, rivers, and nightmare bunkers just like the one they have escaped from. There's no sense of who has confined them and for what reason, whether they're even wandering earth. The sparse clues muddy the water. Further unchanging seasons. A bus full of dead guards, captives in cages, a luxurious bunker underground. Nothing is explained, but nothing needs to be. The beauty and power of the novel is, in its ambiguities, in the hypotheticals, allowed to flourish and demonstrate what they need to demonstrate. It should be unremittingly bleak, for all the ingredients for bleakness are there. And yet there is a shining, searching humanity at its core that carries it through. That's interesting.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You don't have to agree with that take, but I think that is what the intent is.

[Craig]

It's nice to have someone there to go. This is what I think.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

A. A docent of sort of.

[Andrew]

I prefer an afterward. I prefer a short afterward like that to a preface a lot of the time, because I feel like a preface. A preface often is like, welcome back to this thing that you already. Yes. I'm gonna tell you why I like it.

[Craig]

The prefaces are hard when it is like, here's this. Especially when it's a work I've, like, not really encountered before. And it's somebody who's like, here's my beloved favorite thing.

[Andrew]

Yeah, here's my beloved favorite thing that you're about to read.

[Craig]

And then I need to, like, I feel bad because then I'm like, like, don't talk to me yet. Like, don't.

[Andrew]

I'll come back to you if I want to.

[Craig]

I will try to find time to come back for this, but I can't read it right now because you're going to spoil stuff because you love it so much. But. Yes. Well, I'm glad you dug it, Andrew. I'm glad you seem to like it.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it was interesting. It's like, I don't think it would have been a good spooktober fit, but there is a spookiness to it. I always. I always like in November, when we can like, cling to a little bit of a. Like an off ramp.

[Craig]

Yeah, you like A residual spooky.

[Andrew]

I like just linger. Lingering spookiness.

[Craig]

We didn't take our decorations down yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's still bats up here on the doors and the windows. Not too many though. We're not putting out.

[Andrew]

We just have. I think everything is down except for the window clings always sends us for every holiday.

[Craig]

That'll go for a while. Well, thanks for telling me about this book, Andrew.

[Andrew]

Of course.

[Craig]

That's our podcast and thanks everybody for listening. If you have any thoughts on what happened to the people in this book, you can send us an email overdupodmail.com we're not going to read them. It's not the point of the book. But thank you for emailing us. You can also find us on social media at Overdue Pod thanks to Nick Lauren just who composed our theme music. Andrew Folks want to know more about our podcast? Where do they go?

[Andrew]

They go to overdue podcast.com was their Internet website. Up there we have the books that we have read and the ones we are going to read for the month. Our December schedule is shaping up as we speak and we'll have more to say about that in a couple of weeks. But everybody just hold on to your butts. Yep. Also patreon.com overdue pod that's the way you can support the show directly financially, help pay for books and equipment and I guess I've never expensed guitar strings, but maybe I should start doing that.

[Craig]

Think about it. If one pops on air, you know, have to.

[Andrew]

In exchange for your generous support, of course. You get, you get access to our Discord community. You get access to our monthly newsletter, Dusty Bookshelves. You get access to our current, current Long Reads project months and months and months before anybody else gets to listen to it. Right now we are winding down Tolkien's the Silmarillion in a series we call the Silly Merillion. And also Special Collections. We recorded a 90 minute episode about despicable Me recently. We posted it last week and that's up in Special collections for all patrons now. And that is not a thing that I think we will. If we release it on the main feed, it will be like years from now.

[Craig]

Yep. That's just for the Patreon.

[Andrew]

You got to get it just for them.

[Craig]

It is a special collection.

[Andrew]

It's a special collection.

[Craig]

We don't trot those out of the archives for anybody.

[Andrew]

Patreon.com overdue pod yeah, you get, you have to come back to the secret room. You have to put on the, the gloves Yep.

[Craig]

You turn the lights down so your.

[Andrew]

Your hand oil doesn't get on the podcast and. And dissolve it close.

[Craig]

There's no windows here. We can't let the sun touch it.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It's a humidity controlled sort of situation.

[Craig]

Yeah. It's a podcast under glass. Next week, I will be reading An American Marriage, talking about this.

[Andrew]

You're talking about this American Life.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah. PO1 podcast Under Glass.

[Andrew]

All right. What are you.

[Craig]

What I am reading An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. I'm already a little ways into it. Seems pretty interesting marriage. Yeah, that's the vibe so far. That's the vibe of that book so far. So tune in, see if Andrew got it right.

[Andrew]

We'll see.

[Craig]

And then we'll. We'll head on into December.

[Andrew]

All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to our show. And until we talk to you next week, please try to be happy. That was a hit gum podcast.

[Lamorne Morris]

What's going on? It's Lamorne Morris and Hannah Simone, and we host the Mess Around a New Girl Rewatch podcast now on Headgum.

[Andrew]

Now here's the thing. Thing.

[Lamorne Morris]

Every single week, we chat about an episode of New Girl. And we really get into it. Like, we get up in there. We get up in there. You know, we reminisce about our times on set. We share behind the scenes tea. We react to rewatching episodes that we haven't seen in years. We talk about how Jake Johnson is dog.

[Andrew]

That's not true. We talk about so many memories we have of working with the biggest stars on the planet. I'm talking pretty Prince, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo.

[Lamorne Morris]

We're just two BFFs having a good old time.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Lamorne Morris]

Sometimes we even talk to other co stars like Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Damon Wayans Jr. And your dad, we talked to your dad on this show as well.

[Andrew]

Make sure you subscribe to the Mess around wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every single Tuesday.