Jessica Woodbury's Reviews > The Vaster Wilds

3.5 stars. For a while I wasn't sure I would finish this book. For a long while. I am not much of a historical fiction reader, I am not a fan of survival stories, and once I realized that this is simply the story of a girl who is very alone in the wilderness and that there will be no easy resolutions I struggled to continue. But I did continue. And I am actually glad I did, Groff is taking us somewhere. It is, weirdly, somehow anti-colonialist (which probably isn't a surprise) and a climate novel (much more of one).

I am not sure it will work for other people the way it worked for me but the thing is that after the last few years I have a pretty bleak view of humanity and so does this book, most of the time. To me it felt validating, to others it might feel offputting. It might be one of the first novels where I saw the overwhelmingness of suffering in the world attempted to be reckoned with on the page, and in such a small story. It's strangely effective.

That said, while I loved where she got to, I would have been much happier with this in novella or even short story form. I found the ending very affecting but much of what came before ran together.