Set in the 1600s, beginning with a voyage across the Atlantic, this is Lauren Groff’s inventive novel The Vaster Wilds
FROM THE THREE-TIME NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FATES AND FURIES AND MATRIX
Part of a loose trilogy based on the end of empire, The Vaster Wilds is the story of a young girl who is servant to a minister and his young mistress, and in charge of their young daughter Bess. On an epic voyage across the Atlantic, ship-wrecked, far from home and fighting for survival, the protagonist of Lauren Groff’s extraordinary new novel must endure but also find meaning in the journey.
PRAISE FOR MATRIX-
‘Lush, gripping and ferocious’ MADELINE MILLER
‘An audacious piece of storytelling, full of passion, wisdom and magic’ SARAH WATERS
‘A gorgeous, sensual, addictive read’ SARA COLLINS
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Imprint: Hutchinson Heinemann
Publication date: 21/09/2023
The Vaster Wilds
by Lauren Groff
Review by Alex A
This story was utterly captivating! I was steadily drawn into the Girl’s story of human grit and survival, set in the unforgiving yet glorious American wilderness.
The Vaster Wilds is a taut, precisely-crafted allegory, following a young girl’s flight into the early colonial American wilds. The backstory of the protagonist’s life is gradually revealed, as we hurtle through a landscape peppered with threats. As her journey progresses, she slowly understands her place in a greater and more intricate tapestry of life. The visceral descriptions of her suffering through starvation, injury and illness are bleak but riveting. The reader keenly feels these hardships and the relief of every hard-won bite of life-sustaining food.
Questioning the limits of human adaptation, this book examines our own culpability in the face of systemic oppression, and probes the struggle to turn away from established structures and create a new way of being in the world.
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