Reviews with content warning for Violence - The New Wilderness

Hm, so I am still not entirely sure what I thought of this book. I chose this book as part of my master thesis corpus and the premise sounded really interesting. I still think that the concept of the book is a good basis to explore family relationships under specific circumstances, I just think parts of the book were simply not my style.

The book is divided into 7 parts and it started out really well until around parts 5 and 6 where it took a bit of a downward spiral. I do not want to spoiler too much but I think was mostly bothered me that nothing was explained, not even at the very end. There is no explanation as to what the state of the world is to make living in it so horrible except for "there is a lot of smog" but that's nothing new. Additionally, between time jumps, especially one character changes their personality quite a bit, which could have been explained. Without any explanation, I started to instantly dislike them and kept wondering what the hell had happened at this time. I understand that keeping readers in the dark is a common tactic but without any resolve, in the end, it is simply unsatisfying. For example, as a second book for my MA, I read The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He. In this book, I was also very confused for a long time because a lot of information is withheld from the reader for a long time. But in the end, you still receive an explanation, which might not make you like the story or the characters more but at least you learn about a motive. That was really missing in The New Wilderness.

Also, this is really just personal preference but

all that very vigorous and animalistic fucking around the campfire really did nothing for this story. It just made me skip over those parts and grow more annoyed with all the characters for some reason. Oh well.

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maddiebusick's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

Really interesting and compelling concept. It lagged a bit at times but I guess that reflects the way these characters were living. I enjoyed the fact that this was an environmental warning of a novel without being set in space.

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ruthie_'s review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.5

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peachani's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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thechiaraface's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark medium-paced

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

4.75

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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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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