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Ron Charles's Reviews > The Vaster Wilds
The Vaster Wilds
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Start on Page 37.
At that point in Lauren Groff’s “The Vaster Wilds,” something surprising and creepy finally takes place: A soldier hunting for a runaway servant finds a crevice in the woods where she spent the night. “He dipped his head to the space that had held her body,” Groff writes, “and licked the warm stone.”
Alas, that frisson of horror is short-lived. No sooner do we meet this psychotic killer than he gets struck down by Powhatan Indians. One is almost sorry to see him go.
But the servant girl keeps running.
And running.
And running.
“I want to live, the girl said. If I stop I will die.”
And yet, I thought, if you don’t, I will.
The itinerant story is a challenge of pacing, literally and literarily. From Homer’s “The Odyssey” to Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” such tales have always been a matter of one damn thing after another. And novels like “The Outlander,” by Gil Adamson, and “Once Upon a River,” by Bonnie Jo Campbell, demonstrate how gripping the plight of an imperiled young woman setting off alone through nature can be.
This is, of course, not Groff’s first errand into the wilderness. Her previous novel, an unlikely bestseller called “Matrix,” sprang from medieval history: the founding of a nunnery in 12th-century England. Groff imagined the poet Marie de France as a teenager forced to venture into the dark woods to serve as the abbess.
With her new novel, Groff has made that trek more challenging for author and reader.
“The Vaster Wilds” draws us back to the doomed Jamestown, Va., settlement at the start of the 17th century. Our heroine, a young servant girl, has. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
At that point in Lauren Groff’s “The Vaster Wilds,” something surprising and creepy finally takes place: A soldier hunting for a runaway servant finds a crevice in the woods where she spent the night. “He dipped his head to the space that had held her body,” Groff writes, “and licked the warm stone.”
Alas, that frisson of horror is short-lived. No sooner do we meet this psychotic killer than he gets struck down by Powhatan Indians. One is almost sorry to see him go.
But the servant girl keeps running.
And running.
And running.
“I want to live, the girl said. If I stop I will die.”
And yet, I thought, if you don’t, I will.
The itinerant story is a challenge of pacing, literally and literarily. From Homer’s “The Odyssey” to Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” such tales have always been a matter of one damn thing after another. And novels like “The Outlander,” by Gil Adamson, and “Once Upon a River,” by Bonnie Jo Campbell, demonstrate how gripping the plight of an imperiled young woman setting off alone through nature can be.
This is, of course, not Groff’s first errand into the wilderness. Her previous novel, an unlikely bestseller called “Matrix,” sprang from medieval history: the founding of a nunnery in 12th-century England. Groff imagined the poet Marie de France as a teenager forced to venture into the dark woods to serve as the abbess.
With her new novel, Groff has made that trek more challenging for author and reader.
“The Vaster Wilds” draws us back to the doomed Jamestown, Va., settlement at the start of the 17th century. Our heroine, a young servant girl, has. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
May 24, 2023
– Shelved as:
to-read
May 24, 2023
– Shelved
August 22, 2023
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Started Reading
September 8, 2023
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Finished Reading
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Sara Leigh
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Sep 10, 2023 06:12AM
How about I don't start at all.
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"Yes, 9-1-1? I'd like to report a murder. It was Ron Charles, in the Washington Post. He burned Reed College to a crisp. It was devastating."
"'I want to live, the girl said. If I stop I will die.'And yet, I thought, if you don’t, I will."
I laughed all the way through your WaPo review, delighted but disappointed, as I was looking forward to reading The Vaster Wilds.
I'll still give it a try, but I fear the slough will rough, cough cough.
I laughed at this review too but I loved it.
So, while reading this beautiful novel, an allegory for the experience of women in modern society, and the heartbreak at losing the potential for building a different society in which women are equal partners in creation with men, the only moment that held your attention was when the protagonist faced potential sexual violence from a man?Interesting.
agree with Walter and would like to add that there are other things happening in novels than plot, let’s see? syntax? language? the body? your own reaction? socioeconomic context? the complete twisting of America’s promise of ever possible accumulation and the manifest destiny? lots of things happen in this novel, too, before page 36 so please don’t listen to this review.
Thank you for validating my experience with this book.
You saved me from a poor decision ✌🏼
How does one up vote Walter’s comment a thousand or so times?
This was a DNF for me. I couldn’t finish it. I don’t get the hype at all. And people we upset it wasn’t nominated. Uh. Fates was her only good one, imo. I’ll try her again when she’s done writing medieval.
Don’t forget her “Arcadia,” an absolutely beautiful novel.
Also agree with Walter!
Why a WAPO reviewer would paste his narrow, reductive piece here is beyond me. Perhaps this particular protagonist might sound more like an eco-feminist from Reed College than whatever 19th century male authorial voice rattles around in Mr Charles’ head.
This review is way off base, and I feel sorry for those who avoid the book because of it. At its heart this is not an adventure story. It's an homage to the transcendent power of nature, both the natural world and human nature, as experienced by one woman. This review doesn't even touch on what made the book speak to me.
This review utterly misses the elements of the divine which animate the story. I devoured it and determined to reread it immediately to fully inhabit this landscape again and make deeper discoveries along with the tenacious young woman who guides the reader toward divine grace.
Oh, dear, Ron! You missed the point entirely. I hope the women in your life read this book and then knock you upside the head with it. I'll still keep reading your newsletter in spite of your dreadful reading of this one.
Christie wrote: "Oh, dear, Ron! You missed the point entirely. I hope the women in your life read this book and then knock you upside the head with it. I'll still keep reading your newsletter in spite of your dread..."I'm glad you liked it, Christie. (But I'm not so sure gender is the critical determinant that some of these commenters assume.) One "woman in my life" -- my editor -- read this book and agrees with my take entirely. And the Guardian's pan was written by a woman. Tying a critical response to the reviewer's gender may be convenient, but it feels hopelessly reductive.
Mr. Charles may be well intentioned, if a little overeager for attention and self-promotion (his glib, campy video reviews, oy), but Beejay Silcox’s Guardian review was in fact a rave. Stephanie Merritt is the Observer’s reviewer (included with the online Guardian feed, which may have confused Mr. Charles), and while her brief review was indeed mixed to negative, her points are intelligent and nuanced. No doubt she has a better editor than Mr. Charles.
It’s wonderful to see how passionate readers feel about novels they love.
I am a woman and I absolutely hated it. Glad to see I wasn't the only one who felt this way.
It’s a true piece of art. The repetition and the ubiquitous fear and pain are metaphors for life. Tons of people don’t want to read books like this and that is fine. But for those of us who do, it was incandescent and edifying in only the way stunning prose backed up with philosophy and grit can be.
People are losing it about this review, but I think it’s fair and true to my reading experience. I’m 25% through and I may DNF it.
Ron Charles gave a highly positive review to the worst book I read this year. I am very suspicious of all his reviews now. The Vaster Wilds was very good.
Well said. I very much appreciate your review, and your further defense of it. I also find it eye-rollingly hilarious that the vast majority of the outrageously outraged commenters who are attacking you here are doing so based on the assumed "sexism" of a male reviewer having the patriarchal gall to bestow a poor review upon a novel dealing with the plight of a woman, written by a female author. (How dare you review something through your lens of sexist reductivism, Ron!?!? ) And yet they don't see the rather obvious, mildly poetic humour in the fact that THEIR holy indignation for YOUR review is solely based on... your gender. It's rather absurdly delicious, non?
As a side note- LG’s “Florida” was one of my top 3 favourite reads last year. I was thrilled to have a new author to adore, with several books already under her belt to dive into. I made the mistake of reading “Matrix” next, which shocked me by being the definitive worst book of the year. Just awful. I was hoping “The Vaster Wilds” would be a heralded “return to form”, but your review has saved me the apparent grueling slog through this one. Thank you kindly!
I think you’ve read this book too literally. It’s obvious that it’s meant to be a parable of one’s inner spiritual journey and how that journey necessarily hinges on a pivot point or points in one’s life, or of our current society’s moral and spiritual journey at this pivot point that our own culture and nation finds itself in. When you read it that way, as it obviously was meant to be read, it is a masterpiece of literature. And while my take may have nothing to do with my gender, I do think it’s easier for women to see what the author is trying to do here. Because the author is female and because the protagonist is female. But to me all this review reveals how deeply the reviewer is dug into his masculine view of the world. It has nothing to do with the actual work being reviewed.
As a woman (and simply as a person) I thought your review was absolutely spot on. Its pacing rendered it tedious beyond measure. Its prose regarding the beautiful and grim nature around this sick, fleeing girl were incredible but they, with those rarest moments of philosophical treasure or literary thrill, did not a story make. Good on you for maintaining such kindness with those who disagree with you and disparage you when your review is your opinion and we are all entitled to those. No one can tell anyone you’ve read a book “too literally” or too this is that. One simply reads and has their own private experience which none can invalidate. I too am glad others loved it so well and gleaned something from it. Yet even with my “feminine mind” and awareness that it was indeed meant to be a parable of one’s spiritual journey, I did not feel it was a masterpiece but an onerous attempt at one that plays on the fact people might argue over how well they “got it”. I understand what the author meant to do, but I enjoyed very little of it. Do we read to punish ourselves? I don’t require hand holding and cushy endings but in either case I should certainly hope not.
