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jan2bratt's review against another edition
4.0
What an unusual book, so many themes and yet Molly Gloss brings them all together in a delightful mostly cohesive fashion.
kateraed's review against another edition
4.0
There is so much truth here; it would be worth reading for the feminist stances on marriage and work alone, and the strong, embodied, snarky tone in which it's delivered just makes it more resonant. I liked the protagonist immediately. And, as the plot progresses, we are able to see that men have more complexity than she believes, and that women may be performing for her as much as she is for them. That is to say: we see that she's as bound by the patriarchal rules that she pushes against as any other person.
I very much valued the moments that the narrator reflects on the burdens of writing and motherhood combined. She names so many of my fears of becoming a mother.
I love how utopia is not at all how she imagined it. That her experience of living in the mundane naturalness of the giants' life together contradicts everything she had set forth, exposing and subverting her own capitalist and patriarchal expectations. "Perhaps they ... have grown beyond poor Homo sapiens and understand the world well enough that they have no need to construct a civilization upon it." (p 206)
I very much valued the moments that the narrator reflects on the burdens of writing and motherhood combined. She names so many of my fears of becoming a mother.
I love how utopia is not at all how she imagined it. That her experience of living in the mundane naturalness of the giants' life together contradicts everything she had set forth, exposing and subverting her own capitalist and patriarchal expectations. "Perhaps they ... have grown beyond poor Homo sapiens and understand the world well enough that they have no need to construct a civilization upon it." (p 206)
mrsthrift's review against another edition
2.0
I loved the idea of this book. It's the early 1900s along the barely-populated banks of the mighty Columbia. Charlotte is the single mother of five (!) boys (!). Astoria is the nearest town and a lot of the action takes place near Mt St Helens. I live in that area, and reading about the region before the loggers cut it was great. Charlotte is a free-thinking, independent and ornery woman. She defies social conventions, dresses in mens clothing, rides a bicycle and supports her family with her writing career. While I loved this historical feminist character, some of her conventions and beliefs seemed anachronistic.
In addition to all the feministy wild west content, there is a lot of Bigfoot lore, which I love. Pretty much everything about this book appealed to me (in theory). Unfortunately, the writing style didn't work for me. I enjoyed thinking about reading this book more than I actually enjoyed reading it.
In addition to all the feministy wild west content, there is a lot of Bigfoot lore, which I love. Pretty much everything about this book appealed to me (in theory). Unfortunately, the writing style didn't work for me. I enjoyed thinking about reading this book more than I actually enjoyed reading it.
toniapeckover's review against another edition
4.0
A novel told through diaries, snippets of fiction and first-hand accounts, all written in quiet, observational 19th-century-style prose. Perhaps the thing I like best about this exploration of a feminist woman's idealism forced to reckon with tragedy and wilderness/wildness is that it couldn't possibly have been written by a younger woman. Gloss' maturity and life experience lend a depth of wisdom and surrender to reality that I didn't know I was missing in other books. Charlotte's slow transformation to the wild life and then her painful return will stay with me for a long time.
andimstillreading's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
4.0
wordnerdy's review against another edition
4.0
https://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2022/04/2022-book-73.html
Sooooo this novel is about a woman living in the Pacific Northwest in 1905, a mother of five rowdy boys, who supports her family by writing adventure novels and stories, and when a little girl goes missing, she joins the hunt, only to get lost in the woods…and get adopted by a pack of sasquatches. Just getting that out there. I really liked this; it’s constructed as a diary with little excerpts of stories and newspaper articles and the like, as discovered years later by a granddaughter, who isn’t sure if it’s real or if it’s an abandoned novel. And I loved the first half, the struggle to balance writing and motherhood. It slows down a little once her wilderness exploits come into play, but it’s still very interesting, and I liked how things wrapped up (or at least thought they were fitting). A-.
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Trigger warning for mention of rape and some unwanted groping.
Sooooo this novel is about a woman living in the Pacific Northwest in 1905, a mother of five rowdy boys, who supports her family by writing adventure novels and stories, and when a little girl goes missing, she joins the hunt, only to get lost in the woods…and get adopted by a pack of sasquatches. Just getting that out there. I really liked this; it’s constructed as a diary with little excerpts of stories and newspaper articles and the like, as discovered years later by a granddaughter, who isn’t sure if it’s real or if it’s an abandoned novel. And I loved the first half, the struggle to balance writing and motherhood. It slows down a little once her wilderness exploits come into play, but it’s still very interesting, and I liked how things wrapped up (or at least thought they were fitting). A-.
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Trigger warning for mention of rape and some unwanted groping.
punchofwishes's review against another edition
2.0
Actual rating 2.5 stars
I feel really conflicted about this book. Charlotte is a single mother of five boys living in the Western Frontier at the start of the 20th century. When the granddaughter of her housekeeper goes missing in the woods, Charlotte joins the effort to search for her. She ends up getting lost herself and finding a family of Sasquatch with whom she stays until eventually discovered by people and rejoining society. A lot of stuff happens in this book and it is rather uncouth in its depictions of life. While the way civilisation functioned in the frontier was really interesting and I usually enjoy people surviving in the wilderness as a trope, this book was really hard to read at times, both structurally and content wise. Structurally I found this to be often disjointed and the flow abruptly changing course just as it had started going a certain way. The frequent quotes and pov changes were a little odd at times as well. But most egregiously is the pacing. It takes Charlotte until about page 180 to get lost in the woods, leaving a scarce 100 or so pages until she is rescued. There is quite a bit of deliberation on what it meant to be a woman, an independent woman in particular, which while interesting is rather slow in pace. To have a book that boasts itself as a tale of wilderness and beasts and human versus nature, I found that to be a strange choice. On top of that there are a lot of graphic subjects that may be triggering to some readers such as sexual assault and suicide. Additionally I can’t remember the last time as many animal gentials were described in any book. There was a lot of interesting stuff in this novel, but overall this was more a struggle than a joy to read.
I feel really conflicted about this book. Charlotte is a single mother of five boys living in the Western Frontier at the start of the 20th century. When the granddaughter of her housekeeper goes missing in the woods, Charlotte joins the effort to search for her. She ends up getting lost herself and finding a family of Sasquatch with whom she stays until eventually discovered by people and rejoining society. A lot of stuff happens in this book and it is rather uncouth in its depictions of life. While the way civilisation functioned in the frontier was really interesting and I usually enjoy people surviving in the wilderness as a trope, this book was really hard to read at times, both structurally and content wise. Structurally I found this to be often disjointed and the flow abruptly changing course just as it had started going a certain way. The frequent quotes and pov changes were a little odd at times as well. But most egregiously is the pacing. It takes Charlotte until about page 180 to get lost in the woods, leaving a scarce 100 or so pages until she is rescued. There is quite a bit of deliberation on what it meant to be a woman, an independent woman in particular, which while interesting is rather slow in pace. To have a book that boasts itself as a tale of wilderness and beasts and human versus nature, I found that to be a strange choice. On top of that there are a lot of graphic subjects that may be triggering to some readers such as sexual assault and suicide. Additionally I can’t remember the last time as many animal gentials were described in any book. There was a lot of interesting stuff in this novel, but overall this was more a struggle than a joy to read.
karabc19's review against another edition
5.0
In her novel Wild Life, Molly Gloss manages to combine great storytelling with a strong message about wildlife conservation. Using the frame tale device, diary entries, character sketches, and short story excerpts, Gloss experiments with narrative form to present us with the formidable feminist and adventure authoress Charlotte Bridger Drummond, who, while in search of her housekeeper’s granddaughter Harriet in the Washington wilderness, becomes part of a Sasquatch family, truly living the wild life. The frame tale warns us that this could be made up, the early drafting of a novel, but Gloss prefers that to be ambiguous. And, ultimately, for her story, it does not matter if it is true or not. What matters is the suggestion that “we human beings seem no longer fitted for life in the wilderness—have been weakened by centuries of civilized life—but there may yet be something inherent in our natures, some potentiality which wants only the right circumstances to return us to the raw edge of Wilderness” (206). Gloss shows her Romantic colors throughout the novel: her Emersonian glorification of the wild, native man; her Thoreauvian appreciation of nature and lamentation of its loss in the name of human progress; and even the occasional Hawthorne-esque nod to the mysteries of humanity and the “unthinkable voids and immense wildernesses in the human heart” (241). Written in 1999, and set at the turn of the twentieth century, the novel argues that humanity is defined by conquering the wilderness; in fact, something of our humanity is lost with the loss of the wilderness.
Gloss also ties in this message with feminism, for it is the woman warrior whose humanity is redeemed by her journey into the wild. Using the framework of second-wave feminism, Gloss has Charlotte constantly proving herself, proving that she can do anything that a man can do. Men are unjustly violent: Harriet’s father is responsible for her murder as well as for sexually forcing himself on his wife; one of the young Sasquatch is shot and killed by a miner; and Charlotte is groped by a logger. In contrast, Charlotte, a widowed single mother of five boys, bonds with the Sasquatch family via the mother, suggesting that women’s maternal, caring, and empathetic natures will save nature. In a story of how “this country was tamed and hedged about, emptied of the last of its mysteries, and the connection between ourselves and the wild world irrevocably broken” (245), Gloss hints that feminism and women will redeem humanity and save the earth. I should clarify that I don’t think Gloss means to suggest that it will be through traditional feminine qualities (she presents cogent critiques of marriage as a barrier to women’s self-actualization, a popular feminist argument of the time period). Although the human and Sasquatch females bond as mothers, it is their “wildness” that is their greatest quality. Charlotte learns to feel and hear in the wild what she never had before; she develops a special affinity with nature and the creatures of it; she becomes a part of it.
One last piece of Gloss’s romanticism is her conviction that by losing the American wilderness, we will lose one of our greatest sources for storytelling and metaphor. “The Wild Man of the Woods strikes [Melba, Harriet’s grandmother] as altogether too near to the real, and consequently dreadful. It is a discredited feeling in civilized nations, but I believe we are all still afraid of the dark, and here in this land of dark forests the very air is imbued with such stories; indeed, the loggers had the tales first from the Indians. The realness of them is another matter. As the woods are daylighted, and wilderness gives way to modern advances in education and technology, I expect to see the end of the Wild Man, exactly as faeries and gnomes disappeared with the encroaching of the cities in Europe” (31). Without the mystery and depths of the forest, we lose the Wild Man, both figuratively and literally.
Gloss also ties in this message with feminism, for it is the woman warrior whose humanity is redeemed by her journey into the wild. Using the framework of second-wave feminism, Gloss has Charlotte constantly proving herself, proving that she can do anything that a man can do. Men are unjustly violent: Harriet’s father is responsible for her murder as well as for sexually forcing himself on his wife; one of the young Sasquatch is shot and killed by a miner; and Charlotte is groped by a logger. In contrast, Charlotte, a widowed single mother of five boys, bonds with the Sasquatch family via the mother, suggesting that women’s maternal, caring, and empathetic natures will save nature. In a story of how “this country was tamed and hedged about, emptied of the last of its mysteries, and the connection between ourselves and the wild world irrevocably broken” (245), Gloss hints that feminism and women will redeem humanity and save the earth. I should clarify that I don’t think Gloss means to suggest that it will be through traditional feminine qualities (she presents cogent critiques of marriage as a barrier to women’s self-actualization, a popular feminist argument of the time period). Although the human and Sasquatch females bond as mothers, it is their “wildness” that is their greatest quality. Charlotte learns to feel and hear in the wild what she never had before; she develops a special affinity with nature and the creatures of it; she becomes a part of it.
One last piece of Gloss’s romanticism is her conviction that by losing the American wilderness, we will lose one of our greatest sources for storytelling and metaphor. “The Wild Man of the Woods strikes [Melba, Harriet’s grandmother] as altogether too near to the real, and consequently dreadful. It is a discredited feeling in civilized nations, but I believe we are all still afraid of the dark, and here in this land of dark forests the very air is imbued with such stories; indeed, the loggers had the tales first from the Indians. The realness of them is another matter. As the woods are daylighted, and wilderness gives way to modern advances in education and technology, I expect to see the end of the Wild Man, exactly as faeries and gnomes disappeared with the encroaching of the cities in Europe” (31). Without the mystery and depths of the forest, we lose the Wild Man, both figuratively and literally.
pixelpigeon's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
A lovely piece of magical realism featuring a strong and complex female protagonist. Several unexpected twists. Lovely prose.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault and Child death