Lauren Groff’s latest novel, The Vaster Wilds, is an adventure/quest story that only Groff could write. The novel follows a young nameless girl, born in England and left at a poorhouse, who was brought on as a servant to a wealthy mistress in a great house. Our protagonist eventually embarks on the grueling journey to the Americas with her mistress, and a large group of colonial settlers. Groff’s narrative begins when the young girl escapes the unnamed settlement, after years of famine and violence in the colonies has made life unbearable.
The novel is a tale of survival and transcendence, set against the harsh landscape of 17th century America, a mostly undeveloped land home to brutal winters. The novel follows the young protagonist over the course of a couple weeks, as she flees the settlement and contends with the harsh winter. She travels on foot, with only a hatchet, some boots she has filched from a young man dead of smallpox, and a pewter cup. She finds shelter beneath boulders, in hollowed out trees, and sustains herself with berries, insects, or raw fish, while most often going days without food or water. Through Groff’s evocative prose, the reader gets a real sense of the physical sensations of hunger, fear, and exhaustion that beleaguer this young protagonist
Groff conjures the landscape with her trademark luminous prose: “The trees wore coats of ice so thick that they seemed glazed over with glass, and the stars shone so bright upon the world that the world shone back at the stars in stupid dazzlement.” While nature is violent and unforgiving, there’s a real thread of awe and wonderment at the uncomplicated beauty of the natural world. The unforgiving landscape is hideous to navigate, but always painted with an evocative grace. The novel weaves back and forth between the protagonist’s survival story and her recollections of the life she left behind, where she was surrounded by male violence and the pummeling dehumanization of servitude. As she grapples with the lonely world around her, Groff conjures the savage human violence of the settlers in stark contrast to the violence of the natural world.
Groff has always been preoccupied with spirituality and the natural world, and The Vaster Wilds novel is a truly profound meditation on the triad of the divine, man, and nature. While the novel certainly does not turn its cheek from violence or bodily suffering, the quiet moments of transcendence that arrive to the protagonist in the ugliest of circumstances, drive at the true project of this novel. While much of Groff’s work is densely populated and rich in humor, this pared back narrative of a young girl’s encounter with the divine in her quest to strike out on her own, proves Groff’s deft hand with the novel form. Groff manages to find true beauty in the simple pleasures of of the natural world, only if we are willing to look.