Review: THE VASTER WILDS

Title: The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

Book Beginnings quote: 

The moon hid itself behind the clouds. The wind spat an icy snow at angles. In the tall black wall of the palisade, through a slit too seeming thin for human passage, the girl climbed into the great and terrible wilderness.

Friday56 quote: 

The waves crashed and the wind screamed, and what noise there was outside was matched by the prayers and shouts within.

Summary: A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the middle of the night in the depth of winter. She is running from what is inside the settlement: famine, disease, and death. She is running toward something she hopes is better than where she was, but knows not where she is going or how far she needs to travel to get there. The Vaster Wilds is both an adventure story and a "penetrating fable about trying to find a way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism." It tells a story of America at the beginning of a hinge in history. Can the girl save herself? Is the life she is living worth saving?

Review: The Vaster Wilds was often mentioned as one of the best books of 2023 on end-of-the-year lists. That was enough of a temptation to make me want to read it but I really had no idea what it was about. Colonialism, imagined history, religion? I kept thinking Groff was writing about the lost colonial town of Jamestown, the first European settlement in America, though the James River was mentioned, the settlement remained unnamed in the telling.

Just imagine being forced, as a servant, to move to an unsettled land with your employer and then having to face all the unknowns ahead with little to guide you but your will to live, your imagination and ingenuity. Imagine also of doing this without the aid of the indigenous people of the land, who you fear more than is reasonable because of ignorance and supposed superiority.

I like the use of the word "fable" in the book's description, because the story does unfold like a fable, with a moral at its end. The girl, who has many names but it rarely called anything other than "she", survives for many weeks in the wilds, but to what ends? It is an adventure story but one that unfolds in a dreamlike sequence.

After finishing the book I immediately rated it with three stars, thinking it was too slow, plodding, dreamlike to be of any interest. I worried that our future book club discussion would be a flop with such a tale. But after sleeping on that rating for a night, and after returning to the book twice to reread the last few chapters several times, I am left with a strong impression this book will remain with me for a long, long time -- rattling around in my brain and making quite a bit of noise about its complex message about the horrors of colonialism and manifest destiny. It also brings up big questions about the role of religion and belief in God which I want to probe further. I've upgraded my rating to a 4.25. Who knows, by the end of the week, I may move it up to a five!

-Anne