The start tries to immerse us in a risky scenario with a stillbirth followed by a woman being swept away in a river - but then, job done, nothing happens to anyone else, until Glen trips over (or does he? dun dun dun!) at the end. Carl eats grubs, a newcomer turns up wearing 'a torn animal-print skirt and glittery sandals' with gold nail polish on her toes. It's like The Hunger Games without either the danger (people can leave The Wilderness anytime, 'When you know the time you want to go, we can call you a taxi,' says a Ranger helpfully), or the world-building and reminded me frequently of the pointless inanity of I'm a Celebrity. Honestly, where to start with this book which is utterly perplexing? And I mean that at the plot level (more of which later) and at the fact that it's on the 2020 Booker long-list. somehow)Ī cross between The Hunger Games and. Now the migrants must choose to stay and fight for their place in the wilderness, their home, or trust the Rangers and their promises of a better tomorrow elsewhere. Yet just as these modern nomads come to think of the Wilderness State as home, its future is threatened when the Government discovers a new use for the land. As she and Agnes grow further apart, the bonds between mother and daughter are tested in surprising and heartbreaking ways. Agnes is growing wilder and closer to the land, while Bea cannot shake her urban past.

To her dismay, Bea discovers that, in fleeing to the Wilderness State to save Agnes, she is losing her in a different way. The farther they roam, the closer they come to their animal soul. As the group slowly learns to live and survive on the unpredictable and often dangerous land, its members battle for power and control and betray and save each other. Can they be part of the wilderness and not destroy it? Living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, this new community wanders through the grand country, trying to adhere to the strict rules laid down by the Rangers, whose job it is to remind them they must Leave No Trace. Until now.īea, Agnes, and eighteen others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State as part of a study to see if humans can co-exist with nature. Here forests and desert plains are inhabited solely by wildlife. But across the country lies the Wilderness State, the last swath of open, protected land left.

But what can Bea do? No one leaves the City anymore, because there is nowhere else to go. The smog and pollution of the City-an over-populated, over-built metropolis where most of the population lives-is destroying her lungs. Nature.īea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away. A debut novel that explores a mother-daughter relationship in a world ravaged by climate change and overpopulation, a suspenseful second book from the author of the story collection, Man V.

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook