The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff audiobook review – a fugitive’s fight for survival

At the commencement of The Vaster Wilds, we conscionable a servant girl, “bony and childish small”, connected the tally from a disease-ridden English colony successful Jamestown, Virginia. The crushed for her formation is not instantly disclosed, though her fingernails are tellingly bloody. Armed with a knife, a heavy cloak stolen from her mistress and leather boots taken from a dormant child, she heads retired into the wintertime wilderness. There, successful the look of crystal storms, perchance hostile Powhatan villages and a worker charged with task of capturing her “living oregon dead”, she indispensable beryllium fearless and resourceful to enactment alive.

Lauren Groff’s vivid and visceral communicative of endurance – deliberation Man vs Wild meets The Revenant – is acceptable successful the aboriginal 17th period erstwhile smallpox and starvation airs the top menace to life. Our protagonist, formerly the kid of a prostitute surviving successful a London poorhouse, was fixed the sanction Lamentation arsenic an babe but has spent astir of her beingness known arsenic “girl” – “Think not of it, girl,” she murmurs portion contemplating the bleakness of her situation. We travel her arsenic she builds fires, skins squirrels, forages for grubs and berries and sprints crossed frozen rivers, her plight acceptable against the deprivation and patriarchal unit of the alleged caller world.

Our narrator is seasoned dependable histrion January LaVoy, whose speechmaking is compelling and incantatory, drafting retired the acheronian lyricism of Groff’s writing. As the miss pushes connected done the acold and her ain carnal pain, she observes the shards of sunlight successful the frozen wood and is awed by the “perfect beauty” of her surroundings. And so, successful turn, are we.

Available via Penguin Audio, 7hr 5min

Further listening

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William Boyd, Penguin Audio, 9hr 42min
A question writer is accidentally drawn into the satellite of espionage successful the newest caller from the Any Human Heart author. Read by George Blagden.

Patriot
Alexei Navalny, Penguin Audio, 16hr 46min
Actor Matthew Goode narrates the posthumously published memoir-cum-prison diary from the fearless Russian absorption leader.