Review by Booklist Review
In her gripping and provoking debut novel, Cook extends the shrewd and implacable dramatization of our catastrophic assault on the biosphere that she so boldly launched in her short story collection, Man v. Nature (2014). Interior designer Bea, ferociously pragmatic, is determined to save her ailing young daughter, Agnes, from the City's toxic smog, so her professor husband signs them up for an experiment involving people living in the Wilderness State as nomadic hunters and gatherers. As they endure deprivation and terror, recreate this ancient way of life, and experience moments of transcendence in nature's glory, Rangers police them from trucks and helicopters, making them feel like lab rats. As fiercely precise and intimate as Cook's physical descriptions are, the novel's edgy bewitchment is generated by her characters' elaborately elucidated psychological struggles. Bea is admirable and monstrous. Agnes grows strong, emotionally perceptive, and precocious in the ways of the wild. Alternating as narrators, they illuminate the primal complexities of the mother-daughter bond as well as the battles for dominance within the group. Violence, death, tribalism, lust, love, betrayals, wonder, genius, and courage--all are enacted in this stunningly incisive and complexly suspenseful tale akin to dystopian novels by Margaret Atwood and Claire Vaye Watkins. When Cook finally widens the lens on her characters' increasingly desperate predicament, the exposure of malignant greed, deceit, and injustice resonates with devastating impact.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this wry, speculative debut novel (after the collection Man v. Nature), Cook envisions a crowded and polluted near future in which only one natural area remains, the Wilderness State. Twenty people volunteer for a government experiment in how humans fare in the wilderness--it's been so long since anyone tried that no one remembers. Among the volunteers are Glen, "an important person" at a university; his wife, Bea; and Bea's daughter, Agnes, and they, along with the others, collectively called "The Community," learn to eke out a precarious existence hunting with bows and arrows, tanning animal hides, and negotiating dangerous terrain. As the years pass unmarked other than with Bea noticing a fourth annual appearance of violet blossoms, the volunteers gradually abandon their commitments to the study, though they remain expected to obey rules enforced by Rangers--never stay in one place longer than seven days, never leave a trace--as members die off. More waitlisted refugees, called Newcomers, arrive from the city, and Bea perseveres, driven by hope for Agnes's future. Cook powerfully describes the Community members' transformation from city folk to primal beings, as they become fierce, cunning, and relentless in their struggle for survival and freedom, such as when Bea faces off with a mother coyote. Cook's unsettling, darkly humorous tale explores maternal love and man's disdain for nature with impressive results. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In a dystopian future, a woman and her daughter leave behind the increasingly unlivable conditions of the all-consuming City, where most of the population is trapped, to join a survival study in the Wilderness State. As part of the study, Bea and Agnes have been members of the Community since it began when Agnes was a "frail, failing little girl." The Community, originally 20 adults and children before various births and deaths, travels the wild as a ragtag pack, rife with typical internal politics. Members carry their few possessions on their backs and eat what they can forage and kill by hand or bow, leaving no human traces in their wake. They live according to the Manual, watched over from afar by the Rangers who make sure everyone follows the Manual's rules. Bea misses aspects of her urban life, however difficult it was, but her powers of psychological observation make her "good at this survival thing." Agnes, whose "health cratered" from breathing City air--the reason Bea joined the study--is now vitally healthy, with a natural instinct for primitive skills. As she tells the grown-ups, "follow the animals." The viewpoint shifts over time from prickly, tormented Bea, whose romantic loyalties are unclear but whose motherly protectiveness is fiercely all-consuming, to Agnes, who grows up in a world where natural order trumps human-made rules. The push-pull of ambivalent but powerful love between mother and daughter centers the novel. Cook writes about desperate people in a world of ever shrinking livable space and increasingly questionable resources like air and water but also about the resilience of children who adapt, even enjoying circumstances that overwhelm the adults around them. Cook also raises uncomfortable questions: How far will a person go to survive, and what sacrifices will she or won't she make for those she loves? This ecological horror story (particularly horrifying now) explores painful regions of the human heart. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
