Overlong, would have rated higher as a novella 3.5 riased to 4

This imaginative account of a servant girl who flees the starvation of Jamestown in the early 1600’s was certainly well written and very interesting, allowing the author to explore more of the regrettable legacy of colonialism. European exploration of territories far across the oceans led, as it did here, from initial peaceful trade with indigenous peoples, to rapacity, seizure and destruction of lands which had been peaceably co-existed on, by peoples respectful of their land. The English had settled Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, and were peaceably trading goods with the Powhatan. By 1609 it was evident that territory was being seized from the indigenous peoples, in favour of the growing tobacco economy.

Groff imagines a young serving woman, initially a nursemaid to the children of a wealthy family making the perilous journey to settle and further prosper in Virginia, making her escape from the colony. Her reasons become clearer as the story progresses, and she escapes and evades those who hunt her, whether men from the settlement itself, Powhatan braves now at war with the settlers, or the wild animals who might eat her.

The challenge with the day by day account is that once the resourceful girl has escaped one encounter of becoming lunch, or one potential sticky end from a human pursuer, repetition will only reduce tension. Likewise the resourceful finding, trying and gathering of berries, nuts, mushrooms, or small birds, animals or fish, to try and find a way to cook, or have to eat raw. Similarly, with the discovery of hiding places, the building of temporary possibilities for shelter, and coping with snow, ice, melting snow, mud, and the like

This just went on far too long, and to a large extent, the conclusion was going to be obvious from quite early on. This would have been wonderful at around half or less, of its length.

I read Fates and Furies when it was first published but haven't read Matrix and had a sense that Lauren Groff's style had changed a lot from her earlier work so I wasn't sure this novel was for me (particularly as the subject matter didn't especially grab me). I couldn't have been more wrong - this is a haunting and beautiful novel that I couldn't stop thinking about, and I haven't loved a lead character this much since Piranesi. Instantly absorbing, the setting is almost out of time despite being set in a very particular time and place and the story is both thought-provoking, world expanding and beautiful. Highly recommended and thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This book has one main character throughout and tells of the trials and tribulations that she goes through in order to survive. Fascinating story that you have to finish.

An intense and intimate story of a young servant girl trying to survive in the American wilderness. She flees the fort at Jamestown following an incident, carrying only the basics for survival, which she is driven to do through many trials as she makes her way north in search of other people where she might have a brighter life. The story is gripping and compelling and hard to put down once you are drawn into caring about the girl and what may happen to her. Stunning.

Amazing prose and a narrative that kept me reading all night. The story of Girl, escaping plague and death in early colonial America and her detailed survival in the wilderness, will stay with me for a long time.

A truly unique and powerful telling of the flight of one young girl, fleeing retribution for murder, perhaps justified, but fatal if she stays. Her story is a battle for survival, at too high a cost. Her young life, though short is not without pain of loss and hardship. She finds strength to confront all the dangers of being alone and vulnerable in the wild, in the knowledge that any confrontation with man or beast will be her end. There is such beauty in the telling, though she must kill to survive, her thoughts are full of the wonder of nature and man’s part in its destruction. She is fleeing not just the old life of torment and hardship, but the knowledge that she is small in the changes being brought about through man’s quest for domination in the new world.
The language is pure and visceral, sparse in its clarity and also a voice matched perfectly to the tale.

The Vaster Wilds is a marmite book. It's clear a lot of power and poetry has gone into the writing of it, and some readers will love it. Sadly it wasn't for me.

It's very much one of those novels that should have been a short story: the prose is thick and cloying, a kind of visceral purple prose. In a shorter piece I might have been impressed by the effect of it - and it is undoubtedly effective - but in a full-length novel it drags. I never fell into the rhythm of it and ultimately felt a little relieved when it was over.

This wild, unorthodox, and surprisingly redemptive novel begins with a young girl on the run. About 16 to 17 years old, this servant girl has escaped an encampment riddled with famine and disease, desperately fleeing an unnamed, unspecified enemy preferring to chance her luck with the wild untamed world on the outside rather than face the penalty within the walls…

As the pages turn, we come to realise that we are in 17th century America. Queen Elizabeth is on the throne in England but this young servant girl is in what will become America. She is – or was – part of an early settlement who arrived on these far shores to establish empire and “civilization”. Only something has gone terribly wrong – the community is dying out from famine and fever and the girl, who it seems has committed a terrible crime, has fled.

What Lauren is bringing to us is a rewriting of the taking of America by European settlers. This is a book, though set in the past, that pulls apart notions of empire, white supremacy, patriarchal violence and even God to reveal a world where nature can only be in balance through our humility of knowledge of our dependence on the land, sea and sky.

Lauren is too skilled to bring us an obvious story – this novel does not pan out as you might expect and it is a bold statement to give us 250+ pages of one young girl’s seemingly endless battle to forage and survive in an alien landscape. Lauren does not soften the pages with chance meetings with Native Americans or other settlers; rather, the drive comes through the flashbacks as much as the push on through the wild as we slowly come to understand what the young girl was fleeing and why.

Remarkable.

I devoured this book, loved Lamentations (Zed) as a character; she is strong and determined to survive, despite the many difficulties and cruelties she endures. Escaping servitude, she sets out on a desperate journey with no destination or plan in mind, only survival. Beset by bears, a vulture and a wolf as a well as human hunters, she lives off the land using her meagre set of tools and her wits, fending off illness and injuries. Rather than being consumed by the difficulties she faces, she becomes entranced by the beauty of nature and the landscapes around her. Brilliant.

Didn't expect anything less from the great Lauren Groff. Excellent as always! Plot, storylines, the writing are so skilled when it comes to Groff I don't expect anything else. Such a skilled writer!

Sadly I couldn't get past the first chapter. It was clunky and I couldn't get into the flow. Ill try again when it's on audio book

Having heard a lot about Matrix which I have never yet read, I jumped at the chance to read this ARC. I found this a bleak read, there was very little joy within it as we follow 'the girl' and we see flashbacks into a life that has at times be hard and brutal. Through the eyes of 'the girl' we follow her as she escapes into the wilderness, only slowly realising that the fort she has escaped from is the colony set up by those who have sailed to the New World to spread Christianity. In the colony there is famine and disease, but our protagonist believes she is safer in the wild. What follows is a novel of survival - and some flashbacks which flesh out her young life - as and is, I suppose, repetitive. She walks, she finds food, she builds shelters, she walks, she finds food, she builds shelters, but that is the point, isn't it? To survive you have to have faith that you will survive, that you have the strength to carry on doing the things that will ensure your survival - walking, finding food, sheltering. What we come to realise through her flashbacks is that all she has ever done is survive. As well as her story, we see her, through her internal monologues of nature, love, death and God, trying to make sense of the world, trying to decide who to trust - those she has run from or the indigenous people she is afraid of. This is also an examination of solitude, being alone when humans can't survive when alone. She takes us on her journey as her body and her emotions are tested. A bleak and at times brutal read but the descriptions of nature are just stunning in places.

This book puts into context the typical life of the ordinary citizen of latter-day Britain and subsequently America.
Being brought up an orphan, the protagonist, effectively being made into a slave, life doesn't get much better, and she only enjoy snippets of her life.
A story brilliantly told by Lauren Goff, who doesn't pull any punches. Not exactly a pleasant read, but one that should be made compulsory reading in English speaking schools.
Interesting characters, good storyline, good pace and a good setting with descriptions to broaden the reader's horizons.
My thanks to the publisher for an advanced reader's copy for honest review.

The Vaster Wilds follows a young girl, having escaped from her society, as she traverses the woods alone in seek of refuge and a new life, and in constant fear of being followed, found, and killed.

The majority of the novel follows our protagonist in survival mode, as she braves the wilderness and the elements, becoming increasingly hungry, dehydrated, and bruised. These scenes are interspersed with flashbacks to her previous colony, in which we learn more about why it is that she had to flee.

I found this novel to be filled with beautiful prose, but ultimately too repetitive. It’s the nature of a wilderness-survival story that the protagonist deals with the same problems repeatedly, as she runs out of food and must hunt for more, or runs into an adversary she must hide from in some way. The novel is not lacking tension, but I felt it could have been equally effective as a shorter novella.

Overall, a worthwhile read, and there’s a lot to enjoy - but I wasn’t blown away.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK for the e-ARC!

I really wanted to love this one! The premise sounded interesting, but I found the writing style to bore quickly. It was hard to keep up with and it felt a little pretentious in certain parts, but the plot was still interesting, and I was interested in the main character and how her story would play out, just wish I enjoyed the writing more.

If you are looking for a book with a plot, please steer clear of this one.

We find the protagonist alone in the wilderness, doing her best to survive. A huge part of the novel is the description of the girl running, hiding, fighting against cold and hunger – all of this felt repetitive and just dull. I can see readers enjoying the writing style but I just felt there wasn’t much else to enjoy here. We learn the backstory through flashbacks which happen from time to time. The thing I did enjoy most was when she was arguing with herself or the ‘voices’ she heard in her head, discussing religion, but those were rare moments. I also found the ending quite unsatisfying, so overall not a novel I would recommend unless you really are in love with the author’s way of writing.


Thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for the e-arc.

A strange, strange tale so full of hardship but also balanced by moments of real beauty. There is starvation, disease, punishing cold, desolation, violence and sublime but unforgiving terraines, but also startling moments of clarity, of profound realisation, and deep connection with the natural world. The story opens with our protagonist, known for most of the book simply as ‘the girl’, fleeing a fort out into a desolate and cold night, where threat (real or imagined) lurks in every corner, but this is still infinitely better than what she is leaving behind. As she ventures forth into the landscape, resourceful beyond measure, her story is slowly revealed. We are several centuries back, our girl having come over from England to the New World accompanying those who sought a better life - but what meets them is not better, and she is eventually left with no choice but to flee, bringing us on this brutal and revelatory journey with her.

A uniquely crafted meditation on the resilience of the human spirit, on what we are capable of under duress and when some innate force, a belief that we are moving towards something, is driving us; on the chance element contained within any journey; reflections on love, loss, loneliness, and the human need for connection and companionship; questions of faith, and when faith is questioned; of our impact on, and true place in, the natural world. The writing is visceral to an extreme, with no holding back particularly on the physical hardships endured. This is an absolute gut-punch of a novel in the best possible way. It makes for difficult, even devastating, reading at times but it’s been awhile since I read a story that had such an impact on me, and that stayed with me for so long after. Groff is an absolute craftswoman with her words, a master of language and storytelling that lends her writing an almost fable-like quality, while still being very much of this world. I loved this, and cannot wait to hear the conversations unfolding around this book

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my eARC.

The writing is stunning and the rawness of nature and survival comes over without a doubt. But I found it went on too long and I began not to believe that the girl would have been so resourceful and I don't think she'd have been able to what she did when physically suffering so much. Much preferred Matrix.

Unfortunately a DNF. I couldn’t gel with the writing style at all, and felt thoroughly disconnected from the main character.

2.5. Groff has written her new novel about survival. The blurb suggests this is part of a trilogy about the end of empire. The protagonist here is a girl who has escaped her mistress and now must survive in the wilderness. There are a few flashbacks to her time with the mistress and looking after said woman's child, but most of the novel is dedicated to running through forests, sucking the insides out of eggs, eating worms, hiding in caves, dodging wolves and bears and generally just moving place to place. I've never read Groff before; I found her readable, but I needed more from this, I think. I'm a big fan of 'plotless' novels. My professor used to say there's no such thing as plotless, as long as a character wants something. That's enough. I guess the girl wants to survive, but I wasn't invested in this want. It seemed too simple. If you like the idea of a girl surviving in the vaster wilds of the world, hunting, hiding, sneaking, then pick this up in September. I wonder what established fans of Groff will think. Other ARC reviews look promising. Thanks to Random House for sending me this advance copy for review.