There are a lot of book reviews out there saying that The Vaster Wilds is about a starving girl shitting in the woods.
Yes. Yes, it is. And it’s beautiful.
What’s The Vaster Wilds about?
I don’t think the book jacket description of The Vaster Wilds conveys an accurate idea of what this unique story is about. And, I can get why. If you looked at the back of the book and read “this story is about a girl dying of starvation and hypothermia in the woods,” you might be tempted to shove the book back on the shelf.
I know I would.
The Vaster Wilds is about “the girl” who’s run away from her colonial settlement because she’s done something very bad, and now she’s trying to survive in the harsh winter landscape as she flees toward Canada. Her own people will kill her if they find her — but that’s only if the animals in the woods, starvation, and/or hypothermia don’t kill her first.
Although she’s eventually called “Lamentation,” she’s mostly referred to as “the girl” throughout the novel. So, that’s how I’m going to refer to her in this book review.
What happens in The Vaster Wilds?
Not a lot happens in The Vaster Wilds. At least, not in terms of the action, which is very repetitive. The girl hunts and forages for food. The girl treks through snowy forests and over frozen rivers. She makes shelter and builds a fire. She goes to bed hungry. It’s an endless cycle of “cold, hungry, sleepy.”
Even though the narrative circles through the same events, I never once got tired of reading The Vaster Wilds. The girl kept going, and so did I. What fills in the gaps — the girl’s thoughts, her memories, her emotions as she hunts and forages, as she goes to bed hungry — that’s what drives this beautiful, raw, uncomfortable novel.
It helps that, after a little while, there are flashbacks to the girl’s life before she ran away from the colonial settlement. We see her life as a servant in London, and eventually her life as a servant in the newly founded America. As you watch her continuously fight for survival in the wilderness, you learn that no part of her life has ever been easy. If you’re like me, you start to wonder which is crueler: the “civilized society” she ran away from, or the hardships she encounters in the wild.
The writing style in The Vaster Wilds
Author Lauren Groff has a very unique style of writing. Some of the sentence structure feels a little stilted and formal, a little old-fashioned. Groff also makes a lot of stylistic choices in The Vaster Wilds that would make my English teachers weep in dismay.
There’s not a lot of punctuation. The sentences are longer than usual, but I wouldn’t call them rambling. One of the biggest issues I tripped over was that most proper nouns, like “god” and “pawnee” and “french,” aren’t capitalized.
When you first start reading, it’s a little difficult to wrap your head around this different literary style. But, once I fell into the unique rhythm of Groff’s writing, I found it quite lovely. The Vaster Wilds is beautiful and lyrical, yet stark. Groff paints striking images without flowery language. Instead, her carefully selected words evoke the brutal winter landscape the girl battles throughout her journey.
What I loved about The Vaster Wilds
Groff’s writing style is one of the things I ended up loving the most about The Vaster Wilds. Her stylistic choices are very deliberately and brilliantly done. The sentences’ unfamiliar cadence evokes the foreign atmosphere surrounding the girl as she moves through the novel, and it brings to life the alienation she feels as merely a child trying to stay alive in this strange and harsh environment.
I also loved that Groff doesn’t shy away from the base or the uncomfortable. When I said The Vaster Wilds is about a girl shitting in the woods, I wasn’t lying. There’s a lot of shitting, a lot of pissing, and a lot of vomiting. A lot of the human body rejecting food because it hasn’t had to digest it in so very long.
Which brings us to the hunger. The girl’s hunger almost becomes a character in the story; that’s how much its presence is felt in the novel. It keeps the girl company throughout her journey; it guides her and dictates her every move, every decision. The Vaster Wilds makes you grateful for every scrap of food that’s ever been handed to you. In terms of writing techniques, it’s showing at its finest.
Some (spoiler-free) content warnings about The Vaster Wilds
The Vaster Wilds about a young woman fighting for survival in the wilderness. Since she has to hunt for any food, a lot of the little creatures she encounters don’t fare well – it’s them, or her.
Groff approaches the killings from an empathetic viewpoint, though. You really feel the girl’s remorse each time she takes a life, and you feel her gratitude that her own life has been extended another day because of her actions.
Should you read The Vaster Wilds?
This book certainly isn’t going to be for everyone. You should read The Vaster Wilds is you enjoy naturalist stories, like Where the Crawdads Sing, or if you enjoy survivalist stories. Or, if you’re just looking for something really exploratory and different from what’s out there right now.
If you loved My Side of the Mountain or the first book in The Boxcar Children when you were a kid, you’ll probably love the girl’s adventures in Groff’s book. Keep in mind, though, that this book is definitely only for adults.
What’s the book-inspired recipe for The Vaster Wilds?
Stay tuned for the book-inspired recipe for this survivalist novel: Mixed Berry Spinach Salad with Blackberry Vinaigrette.
