The Vaster Wilds – Lauren Groff

I have one word to describe this book.

Visceral.

The Vaster Wilds takes place in colonial America. During a time when disease ran rampant, starvation was imminent, and conflict with neighboring Native American tribes was commonplace, a servant girl, who only ever refers to herself as girl, flees the cruelty and famine of Jamestown in favor for the wilds. Here, her survival skills are put to the test as Groff expertly weaves physical conflict with spiritual conflict. Throughout the girl’s time in the wilds, we learn more and more about the traumas she endured and why she left the home in the first place.

The book starts in a winter forest. The girl has fled. She has men hunting her, wolves nipping at her heels, and it seems as though starvation is only a few days away. From here, we follow her journey over the next year through this dense and unforgiving forest.

Her journey through this forest is described with unrelenting detail. Anything you can think of was on full-display. From the killing and eating of a fish, to the diarrhea that followed, and the vulgarity of man, Groff did not hold back.

“Before she allowed herself to sleep, she pissed, and it hurt so much and the urine was so brown that she knew she must find water.”

The Vaster Wilds, pg. 105

It was somber and chilling. It boiled everything down to the bare necessities of survival. It forced the reader to examine the role of God in a world so cruel.

For example, there was scene where the girl slept in the woods on a rock. A man who had been hunting her came behind her, after she left, and then licked the stone she slept on.

Doesn’t that make your spine twist in revulsion?

This book does not have a significant amount of plot in it. In fact, most of this story is about the girl and her character development as it comments on the unforgiving nature of Earth, the dominating will of men, and the harsh reality of womanhood.

Through the lens of the girls past, we learn about the things that were commonplace in the New World. The mistress of the family she serves warns the girl against her own sons, who were in town visiting from university. When it goes poorly, the mistress simply tells the girl that it will pass and that she has simply suffered the “daily lot of women.” Sex was something that was taken from women. It was rare for it to be consensual and pleasurable.

Famine and illness plague the colonies, driving family against family, person against person. It makes you wonder what a person would do when they were truly starving. How much crueler can people get? How much do power and position corrupt?

Throughout the entire book, there was religious commentary. What will God forgive? How far does His forgiveness extend? Will He forgive the greed, rape, and violence of men? How much of the girl’s own sins are forgivable?

The writing style took me a couple of chapters to get used to. I was expecting something more modern, but the book reads like a classic. A lot of the sentences were long with few commas to add mental space, but the flow was brilliant. The prose was wonderful. A large portion of the book felt like a long poem with the way the syllables ebbed and flowed across the page. The poetic prose enhanced the commentary the book was making on gender dynamics, religion, and forgiveness.

However, the book was slow-paced. The scenes in the wilds grew repetitive over time. While the events transpiring differed slightly each time, the internal struggle the girl was having was the same. In-depth interactions with other characters, such as the neighboring Powhatan tribes, could have broken the monotony of these scenes. Although, it would have been challenging to do without compromising the haunting and lonely nature of the girl.

The Vaster Wilds offers a unique insight into the darker soul of America and what the New World truly cost. In a time when men were focused on dominating, what place did a woman have?

This book will haunt me. It was expansive and beautiful, dark and illuminating at once.

4/5.

“And Eden would overtake the world and the mistake of man would be forgot.”

Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds