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megdom 's review for:
The Vaster Wilds
by Lauren Groff
Wow, the writing. Part way in I asked myself, Am I reading a entire book about one girl alone fleeing in the wilds? Will she join up with anyone else? It turns out, yes to the first, no to the second, and it was gripping and beautiful. The pacing, while keeping it interesting, does justice to her slow and arduous journey. She is resourceful in sheltering, finding food, avoiding many dangers. She dreams throughout, of what she has lost, and in the end, of what could have been, had she survived to live out her years in the wilds (doing so alone she thinks would not truly be living). Her big thoughts--about god, evil, her astonishment and empathy for creatures she encounters, the significance of naming what she sees, the audacity to think she has nearly crossed the continent--add up to a brilliant fable for America in miniature.
An early passage after a storm crossing the Atlantic: "Even now in the knit and purl of mist that made the girl shudder, even as the ground seemed to be breathing as though she were a flea and it was the breast of a giant, even within the scope of all she had lost, which was nearly everything, the thought of a voyage out to the new world suffused her with awful sorrow."
An early passage after a storm crossing the Atlantic: "Even now in the knit and purl of mist that made the girl shudder, even as the ground seemed to be breathing as though she were a flea and it was the breast of a giant, even within the scope of all she had lost, which was nearly everything, the thought of a voyage out to the new world suffused her with awful sorrow."