Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The New Wilderness

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook

20 reviews

orireading's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional reflective sad 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

5.0

So deeply beautiful. Only wish I could read it again for the first time.

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merle_bookdragon's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.25

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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kieranyes's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.0

The New Wilderness is brimming with interesting ideas and has a unique voice, but its persistent bleakness, clunky dialogue and ambiguity clouded my enjoyment. Basically The Walking Dead, but more bureacracy and without any of the zombies or action.

The good is that the world building is really intriguing and original. Set in a mid-future scenario where pollution makes city air fatal, a small community attempt to survive in a state otherwise set aside for strictly managed nature conservation. This state is off limits; no people are generally allowed there and even microplastics and human bodies have to be retrieved or Rangers issue massive fines, kind of like an authoritarian Yellowstone. A small community is permitted to live there as part of a trial into populating the wilderness. Even the most rebellious characters appear to recognise their personal impact on the wilderness while they are there as important. This speculative future where conservation is a powerful bureacracy in an apparently futile attempt to offset environmental degradation was really interesting, but to be honest the ambiguous style doesn't really colour this in. We mostly pick up on this through the characters arguing about the rules of the study and references to how things have become less available. Characters never seriously discuss systemic drivers of why or how the world is, and don't seem to care about these even when their children become too sick or even die from air pollution.

The central tension is between a mother and her daughter, and an additional one between an academic and a thug. Ideas of returning to nature and reorganising society in hardship are pretty clear, through a complicated and at times strained mother-daughter bond. However, we don't really know what anyone looks like; for a book inspired by indigenous culture its pretty colourblind, I think in an attempt at universality. In the same way, all characters have the same or very similar kind of clunky and simple speech. This is why it reminded me of the Walking Dead, a show not known for poignant dialogue.

Its also just really bleak. I'm all down for a depressing read but this was kind of relentless.

It opens with a miscarriage. The daughter beats her own mother and never sees her again. In the end, it is implied the world's last wilderness is destroyed (the broader implications of this are not discussed).

The Road and The Overstory were also bleak and explored similar themes, but managed to include moments of respite that this lacked.

Stacey Glemboski's audiobook narration was excellent.

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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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sm_moon's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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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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akhgrubbs's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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

Content Warnings

just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

3.0

Here we are. A couple months later, a little behind schedule of my goal of finishing before the shortlist was announced, but nevertheless better late than never: my final Aspen Words 2021 longlist read/review! I won't lie, this is the longlist book I was least interested in reading, so I saved it for last. I almost decided not to read it at all, since I already knew it wasn't a finalist. BUT I am glad I decided to go for it because, even though I was right (I know myself) and I wasn't totally into it, I feel very accomplished at having gotten through the full 15 books on the longlist. Go me!

The New Wilderness is a speculative/post-apocalyptic story (which was definitely a theme of this year's longlist, with A Children's Bible and Leave the World Behind both on the list as well) about a group of people who abandon everything they know in "the City" to start a new life as, essentially, hunter-gatherer nomads in a closely guarded and regulated Wilderness State (from what the reader can tell, the only "natural" area left in the known world). Part of this group of twenty are Bea and Agnes. Bea's husband, Glen, is a university researcher who was interested in joining the expedition for scientific purposes, and is able to get approval for Bea and their daughter, Agnes, to join in order to save Agnes' life (she is quite sick and the only possible treatment/cure is "different air" - an impossibility within the city). As they adjust to this new life and, as Agnes becomes ever healthier and ever more in communion with nature and moves into a sort of leadership role in the group as she gets older, their relationships with each other change and (of course) tensions arise - both within the family unit, within the larger Community, and between the Community and the world outside the Wilderness.

I have to start this review with the caveat that I was iffy on this book before I even started. I have learned over the years that I am not so much into nature-writing, and that seemed to be a primary feature of this particular novel. Interestingly though, upon first starting it, I actually found it compulsively readable. The first 100 or so pages passed in what felt like the blink of an eye. The rest of the 300 pages though...those became more of a slog for me, and I must admit I did some skimming. I can't say for sure what happened, but perhaps it was just that the novelty of starting a new book wore off and I found myself in the midst of the exact kind of nature-writing that is just not for me. Plus, while the inter-character dynamics started off interesting, as we learned about the way the Community worked, etc. it got to a point where their minute disagreements and indecision, which I respect were all very important to them in the moment and in the lifestyle, just didn't matter to me very much. Even the addition, partway through, of "Newcomers" didn't really mix things up quite enough for me. I honestly felt like, other than the main couple characters, anyone else kind of just blended together in a background were too unintelligible from each other for me to care about the individual little issues. There were also some larger structural items that felt off to me. I never got a feel for the wider world (outside the Wilderness), which could have been purposeful and could have been because the majority of the story was from Agnes' POV and she wasn't there at an old enough age to remember much of it, but I felt sort of stranded/distanced. Again, that could have been purposeful because it was how the Community felt, but they still must have had memories of the City and their pasts there. Plus, it made it hard to understand the motivations and action of the Rangers, without any other context (and thus, made it hard to "get" why the Community followed their rules to stringently). Relatedly, the passing of time was difficult to follow. Again, maybe purposeful, to put us in the Community's shoes, but it felt to me more like I was alienated from the world of the novel, rather than able to empathize with the characters. And really, the entire last section/ending left me feeling totally unsure of anything within the world the novel presented. Like, what happened to the characters and the idea/goals of the Community and in the wider world and (one more time) perhaps our view is limited to what Agnes' would have been, but like, it just didn't work for me.

One major aspect that I never felt sure of was whether this was "just" a speculative fiction story OR if it was supposed to be a parable about the way bureaucracy/capitalism/colonialism pushed out Indigenous peoples and trashed their lands and cultures and lives and scattered their family. I want it to be the latter, because then there is at least a larger message and goal behind the writing, and not just a loose tale of an unclear post-apocalyptic world. But, if that is indeed the case, there were definitely still major marks that were missed, as the only recognition of the Native Peoples who first lived on the lands referenced throughout the novel (and the many clear appropriations of their lifestyles and survival knowledge) was a "Land Acknowledgement" at the end. And that's necessary and important. But also, Glen (and Carl, actually), major characters, were scholars who studied these civilizations/lifestyles (which was at least part of why they wanted to be part of the group in the first place), so there were built in characters who could have given acknowledgement and recognition throughout the novel, easily and smoothly, and that never happened. That was frustrating.

I do want to say, however, that there were some better parts of this novel. First, if you ARE into nature-writing, I think that aspect is well done and pervasive, so you'll like that. Also, the complexities of mother-daughter relationships were a highlight for me. It was very interesting to see the sacrifices Bea made for Agnes (sacrifices her own mother wasn't always on board with) and then how she reacted when those sacrifices were a success (if you will) and Agnes didn't need her in the same way anymore. It was a very unique way to exemplify that kind of pride and happiness alongside a feeling of, almost loss/lack of direction, and how that is handled. Then, the way that Agnes interpreted Bea's (perfectly imperfect) reaction to the loss of her own mother, as well as the way their interactions changed after that (Agnes' independence and, for lack of a better term, surrogate/temporary motherly connections) was fascinating and layered. There was a lot going on there and the author did a great job showing how it's all so complex and nuanced and there may never be clear or easy explanations for the way people behave or react or treat each other, even (and especially) within close relationships like that of a mother and daughter. And I liked what the author tried to do at the end, giving Agnes' a motherly sort of role (symbolizing, I suppose, how we all start to understand people better/more when we step into their shoes), but it didn't land quite as fully as I would have liked.

Well...there you have it. Likely my least favorite from the longlist, which proves either that I know myself, as a reader, pretty well by now OR that I'm close-minded and this was a self-fulfilling prophecy situation. That being said, it's truly unfair for me to either recommend this novel (or not) with any kind of objectivity. So, I'm giving it a neutral 3-stars and calling it a day. On to the next.

“And she loved Agnes fiercely, though motherhood felt like a heavy coat she was compelled to put on each day no matter the weather.”

“Officially, these twenty were in the Wilderness State as part of an experiment to see how people interacted with nature, because, with all land now being used for resources – oil, gas, minerals, water, wood, food – or storage – trash, servers, toxic waste – such interactions had become lost to history. But most of the twenty didn’t know much about science, and many of them didn’t even care about nature. These twenty had the same reasons people always had for turning their backs on everything they’d known and venturing to an unfamiliar place. They went to the Wilderness State because there was not other place they could go.”

“…people who enforce rules don’t have to follow them.”

“Wasn’t that part of the point? To kill off their sense of home? To have them feel at home anywhere? Or nowhere? Were they the same thing?”

“She did not want her mother’s aggressive overtures of love. […] She hated her mother’s fierce love. Because fierce love never lasted. Fierce love now meant that later, there would be no love, or at least that’s what it would feel like. Agnes wanted a mild mother, one who seemed to love her exactly the same every day.”

“She hated how easy it was for her to love her mother. She would always love her mother. Even when her mother didn’t deserve it. It filled her with shame, and with yearning too.”

“But I’ve learned. I know better. It’s not safe to make yourself known in a place you’re not supposed to be. We must always hide.”

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coraline_wilde's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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