Reviews with content warning for Child death - The New Wilderness

This is a speculative fiction novel (could also be shelved as dystopian/sci-fi) that follows mother-daughter duo Bea and Agnes. This is set in a future/alternate(?) world where everyone lives in The City and there is only one Wilderness area left. Because of the over-population and over-pollution many children are dying in The City – Agnes is one of these children. Bea, Agnes, and her husband Glen in an attempt to save Agnes, they sign up for a research experiment in The Wilderness State to see if humans can co-exist with nature as nomads as they did once-upon-a-time. This book tells the story of their time in The Wilderness State. This book explores wildness, motherhood and daughterhood, group dynamics, and what people are willing to do to survive.

I found this book captivating and utterly compelling, and yet I struggle to explain what I liked so much about it. The writing was stellar, but I definitely did not 'get' everything, there definitely were some deeper metaphors and symbolism that went right over my head. This book deeply explores a mother-daughter relationship pushed to its limits when they have to rely so much more on survival instincts versus the norms/constraints of typical 'civilized human society'. Both Bea and Agnes are fascinating characters to follow around, neither extremely likeable but their very different motivations are complex, well-developed, and just so interesting. The book was thought-provoking in how the story unfolded (not by spelling things out for you to think about) which I appreciated. This book made me really ponder human nature and motherhood.

I feel like this book has some similar vibes to The Hunger Games (just the first book) in terms of surviving the outdoors/wilderness and still having an outside force guiding the experience. I also haven't read Lord of the Flies in a long time (and remember distinctly hating it when I read it in high school because everyone was so awful), but this seems in the same vein of exploring human nature and group dynamics – although this book is more closely investigating motherhood/the relationship between child and parent.

In conclusion, I loved this book. I feel similar about this as I did about The Dutch House, I loved it but don't feel like I can adequately explain why. A couple warnings/caveats though: 1. this book doesn't really have a clear, satisfying ending - it's a pretty ambiguous, kind-of chaotic ending. 2. The book opens with a couple of death scenes (including a still-born baby), while these scenes aren't graphic or gratuitous in my opinion, the topic/details are not danced around. Overall, definitely recommend if you those caveats don't deter you.

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katjoyphil's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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booknerdnative's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The New Wilderness shocked me in a deep way. It was far more introspective and reflective than I anticipated going into it. I never expected an adult Dystopian novel to be as hard hitting and inward looking. I think that this would be a fantastic book club pick, as it offers so many questions about the land, our government, and how people survive as communities. What does it mean to be a leader? Is it possible to survive without government, and how do we manage to make our own self governing rules? What are ethics, and what is right and wrong? How do our decisions for a group affect us as individuals, and how do they affect the land around us? How do our decisions for ourselves affect the group, and the land around us?

It's hard to write a review for this one without demonstrating the kinds of questions that this book asks, because I feel that it was entirely the point of the novel. I think that this book has a lot to offer for a lot of different readers. There is a clear plot and narrative direction. There is a wide cast of characters with sweeping story arcs. It's adventurous and challenging, but also emotional and contemplative. The narrative has a clean enough ending, with still many questions to be answered and ideas to reflect upon.

I loved this one for the same reasons I loved Station Eleven - for the questions it asked and the for the way it made me look at the world through a clearer lens.

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megelissag's review against another edition

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what a chore of a novel

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danidamico's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Bueno, es complicado: objetivamente, no sé si The New Wilderness sea un libro malo, tal vez no, pero la realidad es que tuve que esforzarme para terminarlo y no lo disfruté tanto como había imaginado.

LO QUE NO ME GUSTÓ:

A partir de cierto punto me empezó a resultar denso y repetitivo, como que le falta una dirección concreta. Me parece que determinados conflictos que crea la autora no terminan siendo necesarios para el desarrollo de la historia. Da demasiadas vueltas, ojalá hubiera sido más concisa.
Los capítulos me resultaron demasiado largos. Con una división en una mayor cantidad de capítulos breves la novela hubiera tenido un ritmo más ágil con un mejor manejo de la tensión.
Mostrar, no contar. En muchas ocasiones, la autora cuenta situaciones en lugar de mostrarlas en acción. Por ejemplo, pocas veces vemos los peligros de la naturaleza mientras están ocurriendo, sino que la narradora simplemente nos informa que tal personaje murió de tal manera y otro de tal otra. Eso hace que el lector no llegue a sentir el peligro y la adrenalina, lo cual se vuelve un poco aburrido.
Falta de profundidad. Algunos de los personajes se sienten un poco unidimensionales y estereotipados, como si su creación hubiera quedado a mitad de camino. También hay algunos personajes que, en mi opinión, sobran y no suman nada a la historia. Hubiera sido interesante una mayor exploración sobre los rangers y el destino final del Wilderness State.

LO QUE SÍ ME GUSTÓ:

La trama fue lo que me atrajo al libro, es una idea bastante original, que resulta relevante en estos tiempos de cambio climático y de crisis vinculadas a nuestros modos de vida, de producción y de consumo. La idea es buena, tal vez no tanto su desarrollo.
La escena que abre la novela me pareció espectacular, fuerte y atrapante. Es un comienzo perfecto. Hubiera sido genial que Diane Cook lograra mantener la misma intensidad de ese momento a lo largo de toda la historia.
Un aspecto que me pareció muy interesante fue la especie de "desmitificación" de la maternidad que construye la autora a través de la figura de Bea y la relación con su hija Agnes, mostrando que la madre perfecta no existe y que el "instinto materno" no siempre es algo que se encuentra presente. Me gustó esa complejidad.
La presencia de la naturaleza y de los animales. En esta época de Covid y confinamiento, sentí placer al poder leer sobre paisajes tan hermosos y extremos como estos, llenos de vida y de muerte.

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deedireads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

The New Wilderness is an immersive, quietly excellent book about survival, motherhood, growing up, and the beauty of the world around us. I really liked it.

For you if: You are looking for literary dystopia.

FULL REVIEW:

The New Wilderness is shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, and after reading it, it’s clear why. This book is dark, compelling, immersive, and just plain expertly crafted. I don’t think it will be for everyone — it’s not very fast paced — but if you often enjoy the kind of books nominated for the Booker, I think you’ll like this one too.

“The Administration” is trying to discern if humans can live in nature again without harming it. A group of people agree to take part in the study and pack up and leave The City, where all people now live amid pollution and overpopulation. The main characters are Bea and Agnes, mother and daughter. The city was making Agnes sick, so leaving for the last wilderness is her Bea’s only hope of saving her. We get this in flashbacks, though — the novel starts several years after they’ve already been there and learned to survive.

This book’s excellence is quiet, but firm. It’s just plain good writing. It’s so clear that Cook is an expert at the craft, knows exactly what she is doing when she puts pen to paper. One thing I was particularly impressed with was how she manipulates time and space, speeding up so a whole year passes and then slowling down to a single night; zooming in to Agnes’s heart and zooming out so the group itself becomes a distinct character. In certain passages, it almost feels like you could be flying above them, a hawk or eagle, watching them traverse and struggle. Immersive and captivating, if you let yourself get swept away.

The book starts from Bea’s third-person narration, but eventually switches to Agnes, who is by then a preteen and, eventually, a teenager — we follow these characters for a very long stretch of time. That means we really get to know both of them, which is how Diane Cook brings out a fierce examination of both motherhood and daughterhood, about how mothers and daughters yearn to be both part of and apart from one another, how they can hurt one another so deeply and yet love one another despite it all.

Also, the opening scene of this novel is excellent: raw, devastating, the perfect set-up for the beauty and brutality of the world these characters live in. And then the second section, which is short, just plain sings. It could have stood alone. It could have been a prologue, or an opening chapter. But by placing it second, Cook creates a shape and pattern for the narration that hooks you and promises so much more.

There’s so much to learn about writing from this book. And about humanity, and relationships, and what we will do to survive and save the ones we love.

TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Stillborn birth, miscarriages; Parental abandonment; Animal death (hunting/surviving)

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