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A review by punchofwishes
Wild Life by Molly Gloss
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.