The Vaster Wilds is an adventure novel and I have always found adventure novels boring, until I encountered Hernan Diaz' In the Distance (where a man tries to survive alone in the American wilderness).

Unfortunately, this is not another In the Distance.

Too little happens and as a result I was bored rather than engrossed in what should have been a deeply sad and dramatic story of a girl lost in the empty 16th-century American forest. I ran into the same problems with this as I did with Matrix: it didn't hold my attention.

The writing is very good at a sentence level, but as a novel it didn't work for me. Maybe a short story would have been a better form.

At the end, we get some beautifully written messaging on environment and our disconnect from nature, which are all very true but which don't hit home when the reader is not invested in the story.

Thank you to #Netgalley and #RandomHouse publishing for granting me this arc of #TheVasterWilds in exchange for an honest review.

This is an extraordinary tale of endurance and survival in the American wilderness. A young servant girl flees her colonial settlement, pushing deeper into the wild to escape capture. Her resilience and fortitude shine throughout as she reflects on how she got to be here and what's next. The detailed, descriptive nature writing is very evocative and some of the most beautiful I've read in fiction. The wilderness is very much a character in the story too.

Matrix was one of my favourite reads of 2021, so I jumped on the occasion of having an early look at her new novel : The Vaster Wilds. (Thanks NetGalley!)

Set in early colonial America, a young servant girl decides to leave behind the settlement she is living in due to severe famine. That is when, thrown into wilderness, on her own, she embarks on an intense physical and spritual journey, discovering a whole new world.

The details in the descriptions of the sceneries and the emotional turmoil are extraordinary. It takes us on a deep sensory experience with the main character, making it a haunting reading experience.

Higly recommand !

I found this book a bit too introspective for me at the moment. It had beautiful writing and descriptions, just the wrong timing for me to really get immersed in it. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC.

Lauren Groff is a fabulous writer. The way she can evoke a place and time is pretty unrivalled in flawless, exquisite prose. Now the historical period is early colonial America at a time of fledgling settlements, brutal conflicts with the native people, disease and hunger. The young narrator has fled her besieged town where the population is slowly starving and dying of smallpox. Variously named Zed and Lamentations she becomes a nameless girl in a vast wilderness where she struggles against the elements, pitting her determination against the power of nature. As she tells of her present struggles and her past situation Groff contrasts the impersonal cruelty of the landscape against the pointed cruelty of a society based on the subjugation of the poor and ideologies justifying racism and dominion by the rich and strong. Groff emphasises the particular fears of women, the fear of men and men’s violence.

The power of the narrative isn’t just in the voice of our almost entirely solitary character but in the rhythm and flow of Groff’s prose which is elemental and incantatory becoming almost hypnotic over long stretches. It’s a wonderful reading experience, quite unlike anything I’ve experienced. More direct speech or interaction would have unseated this remarkable submergence of the reader in the words, setting and atmosphere but I still found that I missed the humour of Groff’s earlier works and though the girl has experienced some loves these are felt rather distantly. But, as I have also found with her earlier works, the Vaster Wilds has lingered in my mind and the more I’ve thought about it, the better it becomes. Make no mistake, this is an author at the very height of her powers.

On paper this doesn‘t sound like much - a young girl escapes a life of servitude and violence to live in the wild, and there really isn‘t much of a story arc, but it was oddly compelling and I couldn‘t put it down.

Be warned though, it‘s a very dark book, both in terms of the MC‘s past history and the current situation she finds herself in.

It won‘t make my faves of the year but still a fab read and if you liked Matrix you should like this too.

4.5* - A young woman flees from a settlement in the early days of colonized America after a horrific event. She has lived her life as a servant, which is told in vivid flashbacks as she journeys into the wilderness in search of safety and salvation. Along the way, the girl unlearns some cruel stories she's been told about herself & her people from the institutions around her and starts to build a new understanding of the world.

I'm sure there's already a lot being written thar dissects the religious and mythical symbols peppered throughout the book. For me, the reading experience is more about the feeling -- and the author creates a sense of a place & time with such effortlessness. You smell the earth. You feel the icy cold water. You ache with the girl's hunger. The journey is a grueling one but also a beautifully philosophical one. Peak Groff.

After spending months reading a lot of nature nonfiction this was the perfect book to take me back into imaginary worlds. I loved the nature and survival aspects but felt that there was something missing. The style and lack of detail in the backstory made me feel disconnected from the narrative. Also I would have loved the protagonist to have been named throughout.

Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

The book describes vast, unending wilderness that is rich with possibilities and also has dangers lurking behind the beauty of nature. In the middle of this is a young innocent girl running away to survive. She is running away from the starvation of her colony to anywhere she can survive. She doesn't understand the distance or time taken to travel to a safe place as per her imagination, all she wants to go somewhere and live!

She suffers the cruel wilderness, has to make a place for her to rest, protect her feet from blisters, survive fevers from injuries in her journey and stay alive. She was not given education or even a name being a servant, but the girl is a fighter. She is able to survive the vast unknown by herself. She is confident in her journey that she doesn't care what the few natives she meets think of her. She is ignorant of many things but is determined!

The brutality could put off readers if it was written by anyone else I think. This author manages to create moments of beauty and attachment with the girl that we won't put down the book.

Immersive, bleak and beautiful!

The Vaster Wilds is a rich imagining of colonial America, full of wilderness and potential savagery. Into this expanse we follow the journey of a nameless servant girl who is escaping the harsh realities of the new frontier.

Forced to emigrate to America with her employees, the girl comes face to face with the perils of the unknown, diseases that kill, the pressure on society to adapt and the exposure of human mental fragility.

Groff continues to impress with her ability to conjure up a sense of place, as the girl overcomes the grandeur of nature, fellow wanderers and her own grief.

I fell in love with Lauren Groff’s writing when I read The Matrix in 2021, so I’ve really been looking forward to this book. It’s as cleverly written as her earlier novel, and, as before, Groff perfectly captures a sense of time and place. Reading this book, you can feel the cold, the wet, and the hunger of the young girl struggling to stay alive in a bleak landscape. The daily effort of surviving is told in great detail, it’s a stunning and brutal depiction of determination, desperation, and the will to live. But, there’s just not much else other than day after day of trying to stay alive, and for me, the lack of a plot, or interaction with other people, made this a slow read. Other than in the flashbacks – which I liked – there are no other characters in the book. So in summary, it’s beautifully written, but if you like a plot, this book may not be for you. With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an ARC.

Considering that this book is about one girl escaping danger and then her survival in the wilds, it is surprisingly entertaining. The description of her skills in survival were fascinating.

Lauren Groff has an amazing imagination and is a great writer. She’s written an entire book about a seventeenth century girl who escapes Jamestown, Virginia into the wilderness. The novel covers multiple flashbacks to explain why the girl fled and depicts her journey and the food she eats in tremendous detail. I’ve given this four stars because I prefer books with more plot and characters!

It takes real skill to write nearly 300 pages - not quite - on one character alone in the wild... in the 1600s in America, having escaped a settlement where everyone died of the plague or famine. The main character, Lamentations, renamed Zed by her mistress (after the pet monkey who died) escapes after an incident only revealed towards the end of the novel, and survives alone in the wild. The novel documents her survival, hunting for small animals, trying to fish; endless cold nights, small fires, and all of her physical ailments - an upset stomach after eating raw fish and fruit, swollen feet, an itchy scalp. Lauren Groff uses the character's memories to insert a few other characters - the child she was looking after when working for the mistress, Bess; the mistress and her two husbands, a man she met while crossing from England to America. Other than that she is alone and scared, trying not to die, cold and hungry in the wild.

I really loved this novel, I loved the themes of survival and despair and faith and loss, and I loved the atmosphere, and I was amazed to find it so entertaining and fascinating with basically one character.

Lauren Groff is fast becoming one of my favourite writers, those whose work I am almost guaranteed to love. Her last novel Matrix had a head start in my affections being set in a convent in the Middle Ages; how would The Vaster Wilds compete against that? By the time I started reading I had forgotten the blurb so I went in almost blind. I think that’s a good thing to do sometimes – it’s nice to pay attention to what’s written rather than have any preconceived ideas about what might be on the way.
I like the lack of an establishing shot – we’re straight into following an unnamed girl who is on the run in the depths of winter. We’re drip-fed information about her past life and the events that have led her here. That life before explains her skillset. She’s full of common sense and practical knowledge, reminding me of Ruth from Leah Angstman’s Out Front the Following Sea. As I’ve come to expect from Lauren Groff, the writing is gorgeous. And then in a moment it ends, the wind blows over the pines and the mountains the wilderness persist.

Preferring to take her chances with the dangers of the wasteland beyond, the girl escapes the Jamestown Colony and goes into the wilderness. Whatever perils are out there is preferable to what she’s leaving behind.
This is the story of how the girl survives those wastelands.
Full of in-depth descriptions of the landscape and the conditions that the girl has to endure, this book is quite graphic in places. These are not unnecessary, just a reflection of the what she has to go through.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review and, being honest; I found this book a bit of a challenge. It wasn’t so much the plot, but the way it was written that caused me a problem. I found the long pieces of descriptive prose, unbroken by dialogue, hard to stay engaged with.
Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book is about a girl, fleeing something terrible in colonial Jamestown and making her own way into the wilds, with only her wits, an axe and a few other items. There’s no dialogue, and the story is almost unremitting in its violence and bleakness, but the writing is astonishing, and you can feel the girl’s physical challenges as she strives to battle her way through a harsh, cold and unforgiving landscape. You can also feel her emotions, as she struggles to consider the bible teachings she has learnt, and to reconcile these with the reality of colonialism and what is being done in the name of civilisation. I found myself willing her on, incapable of believing how strong and determined she was to survive in the face of all the challenges - these include bears, bees and a man who also lived outside of the newly forming society.
At first I found this hard going. It’s quite unlike anything else I’ve read this year. But it’s stayed with me for days after I’ve finished reading it, and it’s on my mind, which is the mark of a really great book.
Thanks to Net Galley for an advance copy.

🌿 'The Vaster Wilds' follows the story of a young woman who has fled from an English settlement after doing something terrible, and is now travelling across America, trying to find another settlement which will welcome her. We follow her as she learns to survive alone in the wilderness, battling winter weather, wild animals, and her own hunger.

✍️ The writing in this is EXQUISITE. Every sentence reads like poetry. Groff describes the young woman's story so vividly that I felt like I was on the journey with her! If you're not used to reading literary fiction, it might come across as quite intense at times.

🌊 I thought this was an inspiring story, even though it was rather grim at times. The main character goes through so much, and still desperately wants to survive. She's so resourceful and strong in the face of overwhelming odds.

🐺 My favourite thing about this book was how detailed the descriptions of the natural world were. The changes in the seasons were described so beautifully, and I felt like I learned a lot about plants & wildlife while I was reading it.

🗨️ There's almost no dialogue in the entire novel because the protagonist spends so much time alone, which was quite strange at first, but ends up drawing you in to what it's like to spend months and months in solitude.

📖 Overall, I'd really recommend this book if you're after something which is completely immersive and beautifully written. A remarkable story of survival, suffering, and strength.

🎁 Thank you to @netgalley for this advance reader copy.

🗓️ 'The Vaster Wilds' is out on 12th Sep 2023

- Katie

(Review posted to Instagram on @katiespencebooks, review will be posted to Twitter on @katiespencey on Friday)

Although I'm a great fan of Groff's work, and enjoy this period of history, this didn't feel like the best of her work. I rooted for the heroine, but the book was too much of a slog with little sense of a forward narrative - the most interesting parts tended to be the flashbacks.

A young servant girl is on the run form the settlement where she lives, escaping famine and disease and unnamed enemies. She is all alone in the wilds, literally running for her life and from those she imagines are pursuing her. Eventually we find out that it is the early 1600's and something has gone seriously amiss in Virginia. The book only has this one character and the narrative gets bogged down in the trials and tribulations of her daily life searching for berries, water, mushrooms, trying to catch small animals and then deciding whether to eat them raw or find a way to cook them, where to find shelter each night -the absolute minutiae is described in great detail. I grew really tired of this and felt that had the book been reduced to a novella it would have worked better but all the tension for me, was reduced by the description of the ongoing. relentless struggle to survive.