Interesting premise and well-written dystopian novel but the story lacked focus and the characters were unconvincing.

The 2020 Booker longlist contains three books that I had already read before it was announced. It also contains two books that I had already decided I didn’t want to read. Of the remaining eight books, three were on my radar to read soon but five were completely new to me. I decided I would start my reading of the list by exploring some of the ones I had been unaware of. The New Wilderness is one of those five. It is also one of the relatively high number of debut novels on the list (and by one of the very high number of US-based authors). Although it is a debut novel, the author has previously written a collection of short stories which I have not read but which I picked up some information about during the course of reading this novel.

The Goodreads description of this book is very detailed. Rather too detailed, I think. It reads as though it is describing the set up for the book but it actually goes all the way through to the ending of the book. The book begins with a dramatic scene in which a woman, alone in the wilderness, gives birth to a stillborn child. She then returns to her family and the community of which she is part. What follows is the story of a group of people making long and seemingly pointless journeys to different parts of the wilderness. Unfortunately, for me, “long and pointless journeys” is a harsh but fairly accurate description of the plot. It felt to me as though the book was as unsure as its protagonists about where it was going and why for at least 200 pages, probably even more. And when it found itself again it seemed to rush towards its conclusion very quickly.

This is a dystopian novel in which an unexplained combination of climate change and pollution from over-population has led to a country where the population has almost completely migrated to The City leaving large areas uninhabited. The City is a harmful environment where many children struggle to stay healthy. Rumours abound of a place called the Private Lands where the wealthy live a life of luxury. Our protagonists are offered the chance of a fresh start by taking part in a study where humans are introduced to an area called The Wilderness, under strict rules. From the mention of pinyon trees, I sort of assumed the country is North America and The Wilderness is in the southwest of that country, but this is never specifically mentioned. It is a very strange set up that never quite made sense to me with its Leave No Trace policy and Rangers who drop in and out of the story policing the movements of the group.

It is also a novel that looks at mother-daughter relationships and I think I found this aspect more convincing than the dystopia.

Overall, I have to acknowledge that I might not have completed this book were it not for the fact that it is Booker long listed. And I also have to admit that, because it is Booker long listed, I am probably applying harsher criteria when reviewing and rating the book. The Booker tag raises expectations and I wasn’t sure about the book for too long. This is one of the things that often seems unfair when the Booker judges select debut novels: an author has their first book judged by people expecting to read the best English language books of the year. This is not a bad book, but it is not, for me, a great book.

This book was longlisted for the 2020 Man Booker prize – an intriguing longlist noticeable for featuring 9 US based authors, 9 female authors and 8 debutant novelists – with this book representing one of the 4 books at the intersection of that Venn diagram.

The author has previously published a collection of short stories: “Man V. Nature”.  In interviews about that collection said “that's how a lot of the stories in Man v. Nature came about …  Through thinking, reading, watching nature documentaries, or just observing the natural world. I'm mostly interested in how humans are still animalistic and whether we once had a wilder existence than we do now.” and also how she often went away to the woods to write where “I’d witness wild tragedies, too: predation, death, abandonment, grief. I became curious about how a person might react to the kind of hardships that exist in the wild. It became one of the preoccupations of the book. I wondered under what circumstances those more primal instincts might rear up again in us. How many of our basic behaviors are really just small or large efforts to survive.”

I believe that these ideas, in a far more detailed form than can be permitted in a short story, were much of the driving force behind this novel.

The Guardian (who shortlisted that collection for their 2015 First Book award) described it as featuring “high-concept dystopias that belong in the realm of SF or fairytale or parable … [which] amplify the emotional states and subconscious forces that drive everyday life, such as grief, shame, desire and need”.  

If I had to describe this novel (with a conscious nod to the above) I would say it is: 

A high-concept dystopia, which leads to a small group of individuals being made the subjects of a cross between a nature documentary and a survival reality-show, which amplifies alpha male-female rivalries and allows the exploration of mother-daughter relationships. 

(Note that the title story of “Man V Nature” has the stranded characters reframing their predicament as a reality TV pitch).

The dystopian set up features more as an important backdrop to the novel and like many dystopias is an extrapolation of current trends (at least pre-COVID trends).  Implicitly a combination of climate change, over-population and capitalistic consumption have led to a USA (albeit the country is never stated) where many regions (The Heat Belt, the Fallow Lands, the New Coast) have been long since abandoned and the majority of the population live in the City, an overcrowded and increasingly violent urban landscape where pollution levels make childhood ill-health endemic and where over-population means life is cheap.  The elite are rumoured to have fled to the fabled Private Lands.  The City is supported by a group of productive areas – the Manufacturing Zone, the Mines, the Refineries “The cities of greenhouses, the rolling landfills, the sea of windmills, the Woodlots, the Server Farms”.    

One state has effectively been re-wilded as a refuge for wildlife: “The Wilderness State”.  In a controlled experiment (whose purpose is not entirely clear) a group of twenty skilled volunteers (ideally “with knowledge of flora and fauna and biology and meteorology”) is picked to enter the state, subject to a series of rules (no domestication, no settlement, strict picking up of even micro-trash, restoration of the area after they leave) written down in the Manual and more or less vigorously policed by the Rangers, whose function seems to evolve over time alongside their uniforms, reflecting the differing aims of The Administration.

The two main third party point of view characters are Agnes and her daughter Bea – Agnes’s husband (not Bea’s father) Glen  was a University researcher in The City and when Bea’s health deteriorated rapidly, he pressed the Wilderness project and the three of them as founder participants.  Something which, when Bea went through with it, lead to a breech with her own mother.

The book starts some three years later, the twenty depleted by accident and ill-health, and with an impactful scene as Bea self-delivers her second daughter who is still born, before rejoining the group with little comment (note that the loss of a daughter and the ability of a mother to move on from it seems to me to fit the “Somebody’s Baby” story from ““Man V. Nature” – the baby in that story also a Beatrice).  

Thereafter the dynamics both in the nuclear family and in the remaining group change and tensions emerge.

When Bea impulsively flees to the City for a period (after the death of her mother) Agnes’s already burgeoning independence grows even stronger – and her sense that she is at home in the Wilderness whereas Bea is still a visitor. And as Glen’s health fails, his influence and support of a consensus making approach to decision making fades and another male – Carl (originally Glen’s research student but unlike Glen who adapts practically to the hunting/nomadic lifestyle) – takes more of a leadership position, the dynamics developing further as Bea returns and as their group is re-expanded both by the Newcomers (who join The Originalists) before then encountering the Mavericks and the Trespassers.

The group dynamics reminded me very much of reading the book “Dynasties” – which accompanied the recent BBC wildlife series of the same name.

After the impactful opening scene, the book seems to drift, really for 200 or so pages.  I do not want literary novels to adopt Dan Brown style cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter, but I did feel that this book took things a little too far to the opposite extreme: if it were not for my desire to read the full Booker longlist I feel I easily could have abandoned this novel at various points.

One thing that is clear from the book (and confirmed in the acknowledgments) is that the author has heavily researched nomadic lifestyles and set alongside vivid descriptions of flora, fauna, landscape, I felt that the details of the group’s travels were very convincing – particularly when we enter into Agnes’s point of view and see through her how she uses her observations of animal behaviour and landscape to lead the group’s progress.  
 
Some of the surrounding details I found inconsistent (for example quite a bit is made of how over time the community develops a hardened attitude to death due to all the death they see around them, but we are also told that in the City, due to overpopulation, emergencies are not treated by doctors as they are seen as fate).

But perhaps the real strength of the book lies less in its dystopian considerations and more in its examination of mother-daughter relationships and how these evolve as each generation takes its turn on the other side of the dynamic (both influenced by and finally appreciating the behaviour of their own mothers).

Overall I found this an interesting read but one that was too slowly paced and also one where I was not sure for much of the book where it was really trying to go, an impression which I did not entirely lose when I finished it.

Really well written book about a terrifying dystopian future! I thought this was a great read and would definitely recommend. The relationships between the characters were so interesting - especially the troubled mother/daughter relationship that runs through the whole book. Unlike anything I've ever read before - brilliant.