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The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff audiobook review – a fugitive’s fight for survival
Actor January LaVoy narrates the visceral story of a girl on the run in a winter wilderness, in early 17th-century VirginiaAt the start of The Vaster Wilds, we meet a servant girl, “bony and childish small”, on the run from a disease-ridden English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. The reason for her flight is not immediately disclosed, though her fingernails are tellingly bloody. Armed with a knife, a thick cloak stolen from her mistress and leather boots taken from a dead child, she heads out into the winter wilderness. There, in the face of ice storms, potentially hostile Powhatan villages and a soldier charged with task of capturing her “living or dead”, she must be fearless and resourceful to stay alive.Lauren Groff’s vivid and visceral story of survival – think Man vs Wild meets The Revenant – is set in the early 17th century when smallpox and starvation pose the greatest threat to life. Our protagonist, formerly the child of a prostitute living in a London poorhouse, was given the name Lamentation as an infant but has spent most of her life known as “girl” – “Think not of it, girl,” she murmurs while contemplating the bleakness of her situation. We follow her as she builds fires, skins squirrels, forages for grubs and berries and sprints across frozen rivers, her plight set against the deprivation and patriarchal violence of the so-called new world. Continue reading...
Actor January LaVoy narrates the visceral story of a girl on the run in a winter wilderness, in early 17th-century Virginia
At the start of The Vaster Wilds, we meet a servant girl, “bony and childish small”, on the run from a disease-ridden English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. The reason for her flight is not immediately disclosed, though her fingernails are tellingly bloody. Armed with a knife, a thick cloak stolen from her mistress and leather boots taken from a dead child, she heads out into the winter wilderness. There, in the face of ice storms, potentially hostile Powhatan villages and a soldier charged with task of capturing her “living or dead”, she must be fearless and resourceful to stay alive.
Lauren Groff’s vivid and visceral story of survival – think Man vs Wild meets The Revenant – is set in the early 17th century when smallpox and starvation pose the greatest threat to life. Our protagonist, formerly the child of a prostitute living in a London poorhouse, was given the name Lamentation as an infant but has spent most of her life known as “girl” – “Think not of it, girl,” she murmurs while contemplating the bleakness of her situation. We follow her as she builds fires, skins squirrels, forages for grubs and berries and sprints across frozen rivers, her plight set against the deprivation and patriarchal violence of the so-called new world. Continue reading...
