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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Frankly I have no idea how to rate this
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
“The Vaster Wilds” by Lauren Groff
A servant girl in the New World colonies runs away from the fort she has been forced to call home, away from her horrific master and the famine ravaging the fort. As she runs into the great unknown of the forests in midwinter, her only goal is to keep moving forward, as far away as she can from what she has known.
This novel feels simultaneously like an expected entry into the historical fiction genre, and also not quite like anything else I’ve ever read. As the girl continues to run from the fort, you expect there to be a clear moment of logical climax, a point at which the key plot conflict comes into view. But it never happens. There are so many different times when you think her story will take a turn, that she will find a new or home or that she will be captured by someone. And yet it never does. She just keeps moving forward, her thoughts shifting between her current striving for survival and the difficulties of the life she had led up to that point. In many ways, the plot of the novel challenges us to flip our expectation of the horrors of early settler-colonial life in the New World. This runaway demonstrates that sometimes, perhaps many times, the horrors are of what the European colonists call “civilization” and it is nature which offers grace and prosperity.
And I use the word “horrors” here deliberately. Lauren Groff has always struck me as an author willing to lightly touch into the darker side of human experience, but here it feels as if she has truly attempted to define this novel somewhere between historical fiction and horror. Her writing, always masterfully descriptive, pulls out lush and often gruesome or gross depictions of the girls escape and her life before. The famine element of the girl’s past does not shy away from monstrous realities of life in the colonies. Every encounter or recollection with someone from the supposedly civilized world shows how civilization has cast their character into darkness; it is the people of the land (Indigenous tribes) and the animals who are civilized. And this detail is what makes the novel interesting, for in many ways it is a reverse horror novel. The girls fortunes seem to get better and better while the details of her memory she reveals get worse and worse.
I cannot think of any way this novel could have been better. Historical works are not usually my go-to reads, but every so often a masterful entry into the genres catches my attention and blows me away. “The Vaster Wilds” is such a book and solidifies Lauren Groff as one of my must read authors.
A servant girl in the New World colonies runs away from the fort she has been forced to call home, away from her horrific master and the famine ravaging the fort. As she runs into the great unknown of the forests in midwinter, her only goal is to keep moving forward, as far away as she can from what she has known.
This novel feels simultaneously like an expected entry into the historical fiction genre, and also not quite like anything else I’ve ever read. As the girl continues to run from the fort, you expect there to be a clear moment of logical climax, a point at which the key plot conflict comes into view. But it never happens. There are so many different times when you think her story will take a turn, that she will find a new or home or that she will be captured by someone. And yet it never does. She just keeps moving forward, her thoughts shifting between her current striving for survival and the difficulties of the life she had led up to that point. In many ways, the plot of the novel challenges us to flip our expectation of the horrors of early settler-colonial life in the New World. This runaway demonstrates that sometimes, perhaps many times, the horrors are of what the European colonists call “civilization” and it is nature which offers grace and prosperity.
And I use the word “horrors” here deliberately. Lauren Groff has always struck me as an author willing to lightly touch into the darker side of human experience, but here it feels as if she has truly attempted to define this novel somewhere between historical fiction and horror. Her writing, always masterfully descriptive, pulls out lush and often gruesome or gross depictions of the girls escape and her life before. The famine element of the girl’s past does not shy away from monstrous realities of life in the colonies. Every encounter or recollection with someone from the supposedly civilized world shows how civilization has cast their character into darkness; it is the people of the land (Indigenous tribes) and the animals who are civilized. And this detail is what makes the novel interesting, for in many ways it is a reverse horror novel. The girls fortunes seem to get better and better while the details of her memory she reveals get worse and worse.
I cannot think of any way this novel could have been better. Historical works are not usually my go-to reads, but every so often a masterful entry into the genres catches my attention and blows me away. “The Vaster Wilds” is such a book and solidifies Lauren Groff as one of my must read authors.
adventurous
dark
reflective
slow-paced