The New Wilderness by Diane Cook

 

From Goodreads

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. Nature.

Bea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away. The smog and pollution of the City—an over-populated, over-built metropolis where most of the population lives—is destroying her lungs. But what can Bea do? No one leaves the City anymore, because there is nowhere else to go. But across the country lies the Wilderness State, the last swath of open, protected land left. Here forests and desert plains are inhabited solely by wildlife. People are forbidden. Until now. 

Bea, 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. 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. 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. The farther they roam, the closer they come to their animal soul.

To her dismay, Bea discovers that, in fleeing to the Wilderness State to save Agnes, she is losing her in a different way. Agnes is growing wilder and closer to the land, while Bea cannot shake her urban past. As she and Agnes grow further apart, the bonds between mother and daughter are tested in surprising and heartbreaking ways.

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. 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.

My thoughts

I am not usually one for being at all swayed by books that have been nominated as potential award winners, last year 2020 was an unusual year in many ways and I made a note of the books that featured on the Booker Shortlist.  The New Wilderness by Diane Cook was one of the books that found it's way on to the shortlist and I decided to borrow it via BorrowBox as an ebook from my local Library.

Looking on Goodreads this has some very varied reviews of it.  I started reading it with an open mind though.  At times I found it a bit of a slog, I am not sure if this was necessarily down to the book itself or the frame of mind I found myself in towards the end of the year when I first started reading it.  I did find it easier reading larger chunks of it and I wouldn't recommend it as a story to dip in and out of only reading a handful of pages at a time.  I feel that it needs greater concentration and larger chunks help with that as you get a better feel of it that way.

I gave this a 3 stars or 6/10.

I really enjoy books with a dystopian theme.  This was a hard story to review really as there were bits of it that I enjoyed and then there where bits that I found lacking.  

Agnes and her daughter Bea, swap the life they know for one that is more at one with nature or so they think.  As they settle into life within the community that they join that live in the Wilderness, some things are changes for the better in many ways others are strange to say the least.

How can Bea and Agnes survive life in the wilderness and will they ever be happy there?  To find out this and other plot twists within this story, then you need to grab your own copy from somewhere to find out for yourself.