I'm really torn on this one. On one hand, it's a very moving story about resilience and drive to be free, to make your own choices and have a free mind.

And while I liked the beginning journey, her noting the freedoms she suddenly had, and her push to survive. We see her try mushrooms and berries, testing to see if they will poison her. She seeks water, steals a boat, and barely avoids the few men she stumbles across.

However, somewhere in this adventure, I lost the pull. My attention started to wander as she wondered about ants and birds and noted tree growth and slept in rock tunnels. Her fever, almost a friend in the end, was ever present and seemed to scatter her thoughts. The end left me sad and feeling a bit let down. ( )

I think that anyone who liked [Matrix] would also like this. It's historical fiction, about a young woman from the Jamestown Colony; in 1609-10; during the "starving time" who leaves the colony and survives in the wild. Groff's narrative style feels a bit distant, (our main character isn't named for the first third) so it took me a while to get into the book. However, once I did get into the book, I found it enthralling, It's mostly a survival tale, with a dash of nature description and anti-colonial analysis. To be honest, I thought the political analysis was a bit over-done, and didn't seem likely given our heroine's background. But it was interesting to reflect on what the country was like those 400 years ago. ( )

A historical tale of a girl fleeing the starving Jamestown settlement, The Vaster Wilds seamlessly combines the visceral experience of surviving alone in the wild with the haunted inner life of the girl recalling her journey to that point. For the first half, I was heavily invested but the end veered into a dreamlike, spiritual place that left me less than satisfied. ( )

Groff is good at writing sentences. In isolation, they are enjoyable to read. But this book could have been much shorter. And even at it's existing length, not enough happens. The story is somewhat flat. ( )

Not sure what to think about this one. It is primarily a story of survival, full of just in the nick of time escapes, miraculous discoveries of food and water sources, unlikely ecounters with animals, and lots of dirt, mud, snow, rain, and hail. The girl who escapes the famine-stricken colonial settlement on the James River (sometime in the 1600's) is a servant fleeing grief and horror, with a vague plan to head north to Canadian French lands. A really good setup, that in the end left me puzzled and dissatisfied. We are in the girl's head as she grapples with her religious indoctrination pitted against her memories of those with power over her and how they exerted that power, and her single act of rebellion. Missing was any real engagement with other characters. The writing is superb and the depictions of the virgin American landscape very compelling. Many hints at the desctructive forces coming in the future. All in all, a bit of a miss for me. ( )

Wow, just going to write down some of my gut reactions to The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. I think I would have rated this a 3-star, but bumped it up to 4-star because I listened to the audiobook edition narrated by one of my favs, January LaVoy.

Ethereal, historical fiction tangentially about the Jamestown settlement.
But really, this is a survival tale about a teenaged girl, not just in the wilds of early colonial America, but from the lot in life into which she was born. This was recommended to me, but I wasn't prepared for what I would classify the horrors, sorrows and mishaps which she experiences and relates in flashbacks. They said that former President Obama had it on his 2023 favs list. I've got a bone to pick with the recommender! :-)

I found it a bit hard to believe of the survival skills this teenager had, especially since she came from living in a city in England. But I guess she was a servant and always scrappy, so maybe her intelligence was her boon.

The metaphysical ending confused me a bit: I THINK the present time story really only takes place in the span of less than a year, but I'm not 100% sure.

But the written words, especially the descriptions of nature, are beautiful... still nightmarish, but beautiful. ( )

3.99? I hesitate to give it a 4, but it got close…

This was reminiscent of The Bear for me…for all intents and purposes, it is partially the story of a girl alone in the world, how she survives, what thoughts go through a human’s mind when they are completely alone, how she moves through the situation in the wild.

The rest of the story is a dark story of the life she lived NOT alone, the sadness, the few good moments, the horrors of sickness and man’s evil, and her feeling alone…a nobody, a nothing.

Dark and slow and well written, but didn’t match my mood of incoming summer weather. ( )

2.75

The writing is lovely but the book is truly bleak and depressing.
I’ve loved books about survival and loneliness (I who have never known men or the road) - but this was repetitive and didn’t possess the emotional depth or attachment to character that I need to appreciate the desolation and brutality of just surviving. ( )

Recommended to me by Barack Obama. Sipped this one slowly. ( )

I loved some of Groff's other novels but this one didn't float my boat. This is the story of a young girl who runs away from her life as a servant at a Colonial American settlement. So, basically the book chronicles her .quest to survive as she travels into the unknown. But that is about it. She is seemingly goalless and her adventures and memories really don't have much content. So, though the novel is well written I was not drawn into the story. ( )

I gave up after reading over 60% of the book on kindle. I am SO disappointed as Lauren Groff is one of my favorite writers, and I was really looking forward to this her latest novel. Unfortunately, it was a painful, tedious read. The main character is a girl, formerly servant to a wealthy family in colonial settlement, who is on the run after apparently murdering one (or more) of her masters. As far as I got, nothing is clear except that she is running, running, running and trying to survive in the snowy wilderness. There are way too many minute details about her packing and unpacking and repacking her sack, trying to find water, tending to her sore feet, looking for a cave or crevice to sleep in, skewering a nestful of baby squirrels and roasting them (their bones taste like butter), stealing a duck's eggs and then breaking her neck, gathering mushrooms that make her vomit, eating a cupful of grubs, pissing and shitting in the woods--well, you get the idea. I guess I was supposed to be impressed by her perseverance in the face of this ordeal, but honestly, it was just too much until it got boring, and I just couldn't take any more. ( )

“In the tall black wall of the palisade, through a slit too seeming thin for human passage, the girl climbed into the great and terrible wilderness” (1).

This somewhat-shorter novel reads somewhat like a longer epic poem: the narrator, an on-the-run servant in her teens, with great courage and swiftness, flees from famine and servitude at a colonial fort to find freedom, to save her life. On this journey (that feels more like Odysseus’ decade of water-weary travel than her weeks-long sojourn) where she’s running for her life into the northern wild, she seems to experience death and resurrection many times over.

From the vastness of the sea to the vastness of the wilds, there’s so much struggle and mourning and darkness. This heavy lit fiction reads like a mix of Piranesi (she’s alone throughout these trials and tests) and Lord of the Flies (she reminisces on actions darker than kids killing kids in isolation) and Mexican Gothic (her fevered hallucinations make those from MG seem tame) alongside some heavy commentary on colonialism. And while there’s much about monsters and men, religion and nature, the thing that sticks with me the most is this needful, yearning you experience alongside her as she runs farther into the wilderness. You desperately want her to be rescued—or even caught—you just want her to be with others, to escape the terrible loneliness, to be seen by another instead of floating by on the watery perimeter like an apparition who, at the end, accepts that “she [is] still a stranger” and “had imposed herself upon this place” and the simple “acceptance of … her was a gift of grace enough” (240). ( )

“In the tall black wall of the palisade, through a slit too seeming thin for human passage, the girl climbed into the great and terrible wilderness” (1).

This somewhat-shorter novel reads somewhat like a longer epic poem: the narrator, an on-the-run servant in her teens, with great courage and swiftness, flees from famine and servitude at a colonial fort to find freedom, to save her life. On this journey (that feels more like Odysseus’ decade of water-weary travel than her weeks-long sojourn) where she’s running for her life into the northern wild, she seems to experience death and resurrection many times over.

From the vastness of the sea to the vastness of the wilds, there’s so much struggle and mourning and darkness. This heavy lit fiction reads like a mix of Piranesi (she’s alone throughout these trials and tests) and Lord of the Flies (she reminisces on actions darker than kids killing kids in isolation) and Mexican Gothic (her fevered hallucinations make those from MG seem tame) alongside some heavy commentary on colonialism. And while there’s much about monsters and men, religion and nature, the thing that sticks with me the most is this needful, yearning you experience alongside her as she runs farther into the wilderness. You desperately want her to be rescued—or even caught—you just want her to be with others, to escape the terrible loneliness, to be seen by another instead of floating by on the watery perimeter like an apparition who, at the end, accepts that “she [is] still a stranger” and “had imposed herself upon this place” and the simple “acceptance of … her was a gift of grace enough” (240). ( )

"She flew as fast as she could over the mud thinly frozen again in the chill night, into the wild dark woods, because what was behind her was far more deadly than whatever could lie ahead."

A servant girl flees a Jamestown settlement, in colonial America. The wilderness offers even more challenges, as she struggles to survive on her own. I am fan of Groff and I really liked the first half of this adventure story but it began to wear thin, in the second half. It may work better for others. ( )

I listened to the audiobook version.

This novel follows a teenage girl as she escapes the Jamestown famine into the wilderness. There are frequent flashbacks to her life there as well as in England. As she travels and survives a multitude of challenges her devout Puritan faith evolves into something more inspired by the nature. There is not a riveting plot but the imagery and nature writing is beautiful. There is no romanticism though and the horrors of suffering and daily life in survival mode are told very explicitly and uncut. I enjoyed the book but I don’t think it’s for everyone. ( )

This is the story of a young woman, a foundling, who has no real name but sometimes is called Zed, or names even less complementary, by the people she finds herself working for, essentially as a slave in Jamestown Colony. The colony is starving and we gradually learn the reasons she has to escape into the wild countryside to save herself.

We learn about Zed's difficulties and successes in traveling alone, her determination, and even more about the changes she goes through in understanding her place in the world. Some details were hard for me to understand, just where she was, how she made her camps on the way, found food and slept in the wilderness. But, the details were to show how dangerous and precarious her situation was, both in society and in the wild.

Groff uses a narrator who knows what Zed is thinking and feeling, knows her past history, and tells us also a bit more about what a few of the other characters are doing. This helps us understand what is really happening, and some of the horrible history of early English colonization in North America. The story only gives a few clues as to how it will end. It ends in an unexpected but satisfying way.

Vast Wilds was a slow read for me, because each word, each phrase tells so much, and because I want to savor each part for its language and its meanings. It has a depth not found in many much longer novels. At the end of the book, I spent considerable time rereading many parts of this story. ( )

Compelling, intense, the language! A beautiful book. ( )

It doesn't take long for the forward motion of this book to make it compelling. Similar in its Elizabethan (word peppered) style, it's girl/woman intimacy, and in its intensity, to Hannah Kent's [b:Burial Rites|17333319|Burial Rites|Hannah Kent|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1384207446l/17333319._SY75_.jpg|21943144].

Then this phantom self blew through her and then frose out of her and dispersed into the mist that swallowed her on the cold ground, and she was left alone on the wobbling earth again. p.62.

I loved the abstracted sense of moving through landscapes almost becoming an end in itself.

Even when she halts, the forward movement continues as if the journey is one of life itself - which it is.

I'll need to spend time digesting the way the end came after an acceleration in pace...

Lauren Groff is a virtuosic talent. I'm looking forward to more. So I've opened up [b:Matrix|57185348|Matrix|Lauren Groff|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1617287438l/57185348._SY75_.jpg|87447766]... ( )

A young girl runs from her mistress and master in colonial America, after witnessing a horrific act. The household is starving and the girl is hungry and in despair. She leaves behind all she knows, carrying only a few essentials. She braves the wilderness, escaping a soldier tracking her, and the beasts of the forest. She eats berries, grubs, mushrooms, squirrels, and fish. She becomes resourceful in building fire and shelter.
While exhausted, her mind stirs up memories of the ocean voyage to the new world, a glassblower she met, a child she helped to raise. Her mind becomes muddled by fever and hunger. She contemplates god and what her religion means in the colonial world. ( )

Lauren Groff has written a book that is set during the time of the Jamestown colony in 1609.Her previous book(Matrix) dealt with 12th century France so she has now down 2 historical novels which is a shift from her previous work. Her prose is excellent and she is brilliant at painting a picture with words. This story seems simple. In the winter of 1609 a 16 year old girl escapes the Jamestown colony where there is terrible starvation and disease. She goes in the wilderness with a few tools(Hatchett, knife) and some other things. The book deals with her connection to the wilderness as she survives with her ingenuity. Groff's description of the land and the hardships the girl faces are hard to read and she really makes you feel the hardship. We are in the girl's head as she has no real human contact but we do get her history and begin to understand her motivation to leave the colony. This is a short book(252) and with the constant struggle the reader can begin to get worn down by the bleakness she faces. Groff touches on many issues and gave me a real feel for how difficult life was for the early colonial settlers. This book may not be for everyone but I thought it was a worthwhile read about a young girl who was just one of the millions that pass through life without acknowledgment but still have a story to tell. ( )

I can’t think of any other book like this. It was dark and strange and didn’t have much of a plot to speak of but I was immersed in the world the author created. Really captivating. ( )

If you love language and history, if you enjoy learning about remarkable women, the power of the powerless, and the pull of gravity, mortality and spirituality, then I highly recommend these spare but worthy books — The Vaster Wilds and Matrix — by Lauren Groff, whom I count among our greatest living authors.

Her most recent book, the Vaster Wilds, follows the story of a teen girl brought as a servant to the Jamestown Colony at its bleakest moment, “The Starving Time.” After her charge dies, and with starvation and small pox closing in, she escapes into the wilds of 17th Century North America. The story is part Odyssey, part Robinson Crusoe with a dash of Call of the Wild thrown in. Groff’s descriptions of pre-colonized America are gorgeous. And we come to understand just who the heroine (who refers to herself simply as “girl”) is, what has shaped her, and where she hopes to go in her one precious (if fleeting) life. Her near-encounters with the original people of the land (Powhatan), with a former Spanish priest turned murderous hermit, her brushes with mountain lions, bears, and smaller specimens of the animal kingdom stay with the reader. Her hard and heartbreaking saga has staying power. I will not forget.

Likewise, Groff’s earlier book, Matrix, still resonates, though I read it many months ago now. The story of an almost unknown figure in history — Marie of France, this short book has language so beautiful and nuanced that I found myself constantly having to look up Groff’s dazzling word choices and historical references (even the use of the word “Matrix,” which is synonymous with womb, in this instance). This is the story of a strong and smart woman who strategically built power to turn the English convent she was forced to live in after being expelled from France from a place of starvation and ignorance to one of the wealthiest church holdings in England. As prioress, she kept misogynistic priests from plundering her convent while elevating and liberating her sisters and nurturing the people of her community. Groff’s imagination and luminous writing worked some literary magic here. I will likely check out some of her earlier work, as her talent is not something I want to miss. ( )

"This historical fever dream of a novel follows the flight of a servant girl through the Colonial American wilderness..." (Kirkus). The girl - dubbed Lamentations - was taken from a poorhouse orphanage at age four and folded into her mistress's household; she became companion to the mistress's baby daughter, Bess, and accompanied them and the lady's second husband, a minister, to the new world (no one asked her if she wanted to go). She endured a miserable crossing, and now famine inside a fort - which, after Bess's death, she escapes, and flees into the wilderness with a hatchet, knife, cup, and blankets. She is desperate, scrappy, and afraid - but ultimately, the most dangerous enemy is neither man nor nature but disease (smallpox).

At first I thought she would find a settlement - colonial or native - but, fearing both, she remains alone as winter turns to spring. A fascinating historical wilderness tale (I hesitate to call it a survival story).

See also: Kate Atkinson (Life After Life, A God in Ruins)

Quotes

...she did not know how to think first of herself. (22)

Perhaps the eternal chain of being was not a chain at all but a ring, one life not ending where the other begins but all souls overlapping. (34)

But of course men, particularly the godly ones, have little common sense. (72)

Slowly the vigilance in her seeped out. Sleep seeped in. (78)

...the new variety of pain something like relief. (158)

Naming, she understood, made things more visible. (164)

It is a moral failure to miss the profound beauty of the world, said the voice in her mind. (215)

Her madness had passed through her and left a kernel of herself behind. (239)

...she felt a grief and an anger at herself for her fear of others that outweighed her fear of the wilds. (242)

To be alone and surviving is not the same as being alive, she understood. (246) ( )

This story of a young woman's attempt to survive in the wilderness in 17th century Virginia would have made a better short story, or perhaps, a novella. In spite of her lyrical writing, Groff's story just goes on and on, descriptive text and events unbroken by dialogue, one terrible moment after another. I almost stopped reading, but then decided to skim and find out whether there was a reason to continue. And there was, sort of. No spoilers here. Not a book I would recommend reading over Christmas vacation, as I did. ( )