The Vaster Wilds

A stunningly beautiful fable-esque story in the style of Maggie O'Farrell.

A young servant girl runs in the middle of the night from a starving, disease ridden English colony on the James River in 1600s Virginia. She's running from her mistress, but also from the darkness in her past, and hopefully, towards the safety of French Canada.

Along the way she deals with starvation, injury, disease, animals, other humans, her failing believe in god and the memories of the past.

The girl (named Lamentations, but she admits herself she does not fit this name) is a resourceful and clever and endearing character, and her development, alone as she is in the story and in the wilds is artfully done.

Groff is a true master of the word.

Gobbled it up. Thriller meets historical fiction meets gothic colonial escape meets Cheryl Strayed's Wild meets Mary Oliver??? idk. 4 stars.

An enjoyable - but for me, fatally flawed - novel.

I had an affection for the main character, she of multiple names: Lamentations, Wench, Zed, and others. I appreciated the premise and the start-in-the-middle structure was well executed and mostly maintained tension throughout. The writing itself, while once or twice slightly overreaching, was often poetic and quite beautiful.

My issue with The Vaster Wilds, and I fully realize this may be a highly individual complaint, is that I was absolutely confounded by the way Groff wrote about wild places, geography and topography. My life has been one largely spent outside, and I found myself constantly disoriented by her descriptions. I was unable to suspend my disbelief in places where the events are simply not physically possible, like maintaining a fire inside a hollowed out tree that is also providing total shelter from torrential rain, somehow allowing enough oxygen for the fire the burn and having an exhaust for smoke to escape, yet remaining water tight and also managing not to catch the tree in fire from the inside out.

It bums me out to feel like I'm being pedantic, but so many passages just left me pulling out my hair. For me, Groff needed a great deal more personal experience alone in wild places in order to make this the gr at book it could have been.

One of the most beautiful, poignant novels I have ever read. This one will stick with me for a long, long time. I’m so grateful for book clubs/buddy reads because they expose me to the magic of something I never would have had on my radar otherwise. This will be another library loan that I need to hunt down and own. Wonderful message of what it means to truly know and embrace your place in nature. It’s impacted me greatly and I want everyone to read it.

This story has many beautiful passages and pontifications on life and, overall, I found it to be a highly charged ball of energy that was hard to put down. I could imagine the writing style might be too intensely descriptive for some. Not for me, though, as there was expediency to go with it. Lauren has nailed some of the great truths of life through the 'girl' without appearing heavy handed or retro-fitting today's values to yesterday's world. It is loosely based on the Jamestown colony in Virginia 1609-1611 which is a sad tale that ended badly. If you haven't read it and feel unsure, do yourself a favour and give it a go because it may just be one of the best books you'll ever read.

Very repetitive. The last 10% of the book was the best part.

Beautifully written, but fairly repetitive and not much happens

This is a hard one. One one hand, it's beautifully written. On the other hand, I had trouble engaging with the story, and found myself skimming portions. I also had some issues with the ending – it didn't seem consistent with her not letting anything stop her to reach her destination that began the story.

I read b/c this book is on multiple Best of 2023 lists and I can see why it's been honored in this way. A poetic story of survival with some beautiful passages about the wonder of the natural world. Thoughtful subtext of colonization and the blindness to the glory of nature the settlers brought to America. The commentary on how much beauty is missed was particularly resonant for me. And I take to heart the final lines: “The wind passed, even as it is passing now, over all the people who find themselves so dulled by the concerns of their own bodies and?? their own hungers that they cannot stop for a moment to feel it's goodness as it brushes against them. And feel it now, so soft, so eternal, this wind against your good and living skin.”??

A girl escapes oppression and sickness to flee into a wilderness of extreme weather, near starvation and humanly and beastly adversaries. Through sheer force of will she battles on against all odds, carving herself a slice of life that's pure survival. It's beautifully written, a highly visceral experience of the harshness of early settler North America, but ultimately I missed something that would elevate it. On the women-alone-against-nature shelf, yet shelved behind: [b:The Wall 586852 The Wall Marlen Haushofer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435260852l/586852.SY75.jpg 573687] and [b:I Who Have Never Known Men 11996 I Who Have Never Known Men Jacqueline Harpman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636235968l/11996.SY75.jpg 14356].

Thanks to the publisher and Libro.fm for the alc!

This is a difficult book to “like”, but I don't regret reading it. It's very quietly intense, occasionally horrifying, and often beautiful. Stunning narration by January LaVoy, obviously.