The Vaster Wilds
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3.9 • 8 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
'Exhilarating' GUARDIAN
'Her writing has a timeless quality' THE TIMES
'[Has] a visionary quality' OBSERVER
A profound and explosive novel about a spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive
A servant girl escapes from a settlement. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief of everything that her own civilization has taught her.
The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how -and if - we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.
Customer Reviews
Prose poetry
3.5 stars
The author is a multi-award winning American fiction writer and favourite of the critics. Her last novel ‘Matrix’ (2021) was about an illegitimate teenage girl in the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine (a big name in 12th century Europe), who is dispatched to set up a nunnery in England. It was excellent, and not just because of Ms Groff’s skills as a writer.
This time at bat, the setting is the Jamestown, Virginia in the early 1600s. The embattled British colonial outpost is on its last legs due to starvation, disease, and attack by Native Americans. A teenage servant girl takes off into the titular wilds to escape the horror, the full details of which we don’t learn till the end. She is pursued for a while by a soldier from the colony, dodges the Indians, and exhibits survival skills worthy of Bear Grylls.
The descriptions are richly detailed, the metaphors both plentiful and inventive, which is handy because there’s not much in the way of plot apart from flashbacks to the protagonist’s previous life, and the relentless battle to stay alive.
Ms Groff is a writer worth reading for her prose. If you’ve not read anything by her before, I suggest you start with ‘Fate and Furies’ (2015). Despite the overtones on Greek tragedy implied by the title, it is set in the late 20th century.