Diane Cook - The New Wilderness
This was on the 2021 Booker shortlist, so I was immediately wary of potential for something a little too ‘literary’ for me! Can be a bit hit and miss with the Booker lists for my taste and patience. Also depends what frame of mind i’m in. This one also had quite polarised reviews on Amazon - people seemed to love or hate it. Thankfully I came down on the side of the former, especially as I’d just discarded another Booker listed novel that I couldn’t finish (no names….well actually, yes, it was “such a fun age” by Kiley Reid which just seemed to run out of steam at about a third of the way through and I couldn’t finish it). So, the new wilderness…a future world where the environment has deteriorated and the cities have become somewhere you wouldn’t want to live, for all the smog and pollution, there’s a group, a select few, who have been afforded the opportunity to leave the cities behind and venture into and live off a land protected from development (the Wilderness State). There are rules - a big rulebook in fact - and they essentially have to ensure zero impact. They have to keep moving, not spend too long in any one place so as to minimise impacts, live off the land, manage their waste, etc. The ‘experiment’ is to see if people can exist in the wilderness without destroying it.
The heart of the novel though is the relationships between the main characters as they carry this theme of climate crisis through the story. Our key protagonists are Bea, her partner, Glen who volunteered for this Wilderness State experiment for the benefit of the health of their daughter, Agnes, who had suffered badly from the City pollution. A Community that starts out with certain values and objectives inevitably deteriorates as survival becomes their overriding priority. Mistakes and challenges become defining moments as they lose members, grow and learn, becoming more selfish perhaps? Difficult to imagine how you might react and behave when faced with the challenges of finding your own food every day, sleeping without home comforts… It’s not a picture of harmonious integration and working together for the greater good. It becomes a community divided, of self-serving individuals.
I really enjoyed this book. The prose is smooth and readable, whilst the subjects are challenging and provocative. I’ll read this again one day - feels like there’s another layer for me to enjoy.