读过 The Vaster Wilds 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
Surprisingly, the first book I read in Canada is literally about a girl fleeing to Canada. The girl doesn't have a name; it's just ‘the girl', practically meaning it can be any other girl in the world, who's trying to escape from injustice, oppression, childhood trauma, and awful political/economical/environmental situation overall.
When empathetic readers witness her surviving the austere reality in the wilderness meanwhile falling into swirls of memories and illusions, they inevitably feel the push and the pull to an excruciating extent, thanks to Groff's vivid depictions. I for one felt really hungry at 3pm when I saw the paragraph describing one of her visions that includes a mouth-watering feast, even I had a big lunch that day.
As a non-religious person, I was still quite moved by the spiritual elements in this book. It seems to me that the girl's journey could be considerated as a transition from catholism to pantheism? (but again I know very little about religions.)
Anyways, the whole journey echos well with the ending, which is admittedly heavy-hearted but never bleak: true, there is no saviour coming for the girl, but it's fine; cuz she has fought with every last strength to live, just like any other ephemeral creatures that the nature has once sustained. As the last sentense goes, 'feel it now, so soft, so eternal, this wind against your good and living skin', if you want to stay focus on the present, on your own existence, then this book is the choice.