The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff
This book was really different. It took me completely by surprise: what I thought was going to be a straightforward historical adventure story turned out to be unlike anything I'd read before. It was poetic, prophetic, sharply political, strange and beautiful and oddly stirring. It's about a very small girl in a very big world, and although it's set centuries ago during the foundation of America, its themes resonate profoundly with the experience of womanhood today. It was really good.
It's the 1600s, in an America that has just been discovered by the English. A girl decides to escape the colonisers' settlement where she's been living. She has seen monstrous things - we don't yet know what - so she takes off into the night, into the vast wilds. She takes little with her, only a few stolen possessions, her sharp mind, and the flame of God in her soul. She is small, but she has chosen this path, and that in itself lends her power.
'The Vaster Wilds' is like a literary pilgrimage. It takes us on the journey with the girl as she ventures out into the wilderness, and lets us feel, through her, everything she encounters, wonders and remembers as she runs. As a concept for a novel, it's startlingly stripped back. The only action is the trekking of the girl through the wilderness. There are no spoken interactions, no changes of scene; the story's momentum is generated by the passing of days, the subtle shifts in surroundings, and the girl's thoughts. Groff has taken us right back to the primal basics - and it allows her to reach for big themes.
As the girl navigates the wilds, she recalls and relives the time leading up to her escape. Sometimes, she experiences spiritual visions, both terrifying and awe-inspiring. She also ponders her existence, questions her beliefs, and tries to make sense of the world. Just like on a real pilgrimage, one human walking alone with their thoughts begins to search their soul - and Groff invites us to do the same. Through the mind of this one small girl who is so insignificant in the world that she doesn't even have a name, we are brought under the divine spell of the wilds and invited to think deeply about humanity.
The prose carries a lot of weight in this novel. Groff cannot rely on dialogue or action to keep her story moving; it has to be the language that fuels it. Fortunately, her craft is exquisite. Her descriptions of the landscape shimmer; they are vivid and sensory and arrestingly direct. The pinprick pulsing of the stars, the slippery fingers of the mist, the crisp silver of the iced-up meadow grass: we feel everything. I admired the way Groff never shied away from the harsh and grotesque, either; the girl's journey is tough on her body, and Groff makes her prose brutal as well as beautiful. In all the wonder and all the pain, Groff writes with the same characterful poetic syntax. We can hear the girl's voice - and all the voices in her head - speaking through Groff's pen.
So what does the girl muse about? One thing I loved was her sense of awe. She feels dwarfed by the vastness of the world around her, but this feeling isn't always accompanied by fear. There are some gorgeous moments of wonder, such as when she watches the tenderness of a huge mother bear with her cubs, or when she lets the force of the river tug her onwards in her makeshift boat, giving herself up to the power of nature. When you're immersed in the wild world for so long, you begin to become part of it, and I really liked the universal connectedness that Groff highlights through the girl's journey. The natural world is a harsh enemy at times, but it also helps the girl on her way, cushions her, holds her, guides her.
But the girl also has some more sobering realisations. She thinks deeply about domination, in all the guises in which she has met it. The domination of women is a theme throughout: this girl - along with many others in the camp - has been physically abused and raped by men. When she escapes, she is choosing the unpredictable dangers of the merciless climate and the wild beasts over the targeted brutality of men, and she thinks on this explicitly. She would rather encounter a bear in the forest than a man - a dilemma for women that persists even in 2026. The question of man or bear has literally gone viral within the last two years.
She also thinks about the domination of the indigenous people by the English colonisers. She is troubled by the power of words to name and therefore to conquer. She considers the sovereignty of Adam as he gives name to every other living thing, and despairs at the same power being wielded by the Christian Englishmen who impose their language, their culture, their religion on the native tribes. She sickens at the thought that their tyrannical stamping-out of the natives leads to their capital, and even spiritual, gain. Her musings are a song for the oppressed - for women, for peoples, for lands conquered. Groff holds up the girl's simple, natural, interconnected existence in the wilds against the profit-driven, power-hungry, patriarchal structures of colonial 'civilisation'. 'The Vaster Wilds' asks us which world we would rather live in.
What makes this book so powerful is its resonance. It follows one girl across a span of mere weeks, several hundred years ago, and yet it confronts issues that continue to face humans every day. Violence against women, the subjugation of peoples by invaders, persecution in the name of religion. By Groff's account, the thirst to conquer is the root of our darkest evils, and it's through this subversive tale of a small girl running into the wild that she poses an alternative.
Overall, 'The Vaster Wilds' intrigued me, gripped me and stirred me. It was fierce, raw, beautiful, mesmerising, and so unlike everything I've read recently. I rate it highly.
You can buy 'The Vaster Wilds' from Waterstones by following this link (I'll receive a small commission if you do):
The Vaster Wilds, Lauren Groff - Waterstones
