Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 272 pages
Audiobook Length: 7 hours and 5 minutes
First Published: 2023
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Rachael’s Review
In a besieged and starving colonial settlement, a girl flees the fort after the death of her young charge. With hardly anything in her bag, she tries to survive in the vast wilderness. Using her wits, she journeys into the unknown while reexamining her own beliefs about nature, the natives, and God’s plan.
To be frank, The Vaster Wilds is a plotless story about a girl slowly dying in the wilderness. Full of descriptions of nature, the tale mostly focuses on the unnamed narrator’s cogitations on the nature of religion and appreciation for the wild, with some flashbacks to the history of violence she’s witnessed sprinkled in. For such a short book, it was surprisingly hard to get through, plodding along in a fashion that some think is beautiful, but I find deathly boring.
Publisher’s Description
A taut and electrifying novel from celebrated bestselling author Lauren Groff, about one spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.
Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. 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.
About Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff is an author whose works include Fates and Furies, Florida, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds. Visit the author’s website →
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