false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175061607m/475582.jpg 475582 3 One of the many pleasures of Molly Gloss's extraordinary third novel is watching it repeatedly change shape and direction before your eyes--a feat all the more wonderful since the narrative consists almost entirely of the fictional diaries of one woman. Charlotte Bridger Drummond--an early-20th-century single mother who supports five young sons in the just-tamed wilderness fringe of western Oregon by writing pulp fiction--presents herself as a bluff, free-thinking feminist, the kind of woman who would tumble her youngest son off her lap and onto the floor for whining. When her housekeeper's frail young granddaughter disappears from a logging camp, Charlotte unhesitatingly sets out to join the inept search parties. So, within 90 pages, Molly Gloss (<I>The Dazzle of Day</I> and <I>The Jump-Off Creek</I>) whisks us from pitch-perfect historical fiction to unsentimental lament over the devastation of the "dark and supernatural woods" of the Pacific Northwest to a kind of wild and woolly mystery story.<p> All of this is immensely engaging, mostly because Charlotte herself is such excellent if occasionally astringent company. But the book really catches fire when Charlotte herself gets lost in the woods. The diary continues through the harrowing days of wet, cold, hunger, hope, despair, and then her fantastic rescue by a band of semihuman giants of the deep woods. Introducing the Sasquatch legend into an otherwise scrupulously realistic historical novel might seem like a risky narrative ploy, but Gloss brilliantly pulls it off. Indeed, so deft is her fusing of the fantastic and the actual that by the end, the narrative transmogrifies once more into a profound and troubling meditation on wildness, nature, and human nature. <p> <I>Wild Life</I> brings to mind the works of Jean M. Auel, Marilynne Robinson, Ken Kesey (that dank Oregon setting of <I>Sometimes a Great Notion</I>), and more distantly Willa Cather--but the breadth and daring of Gloss's imagination really puts it in a class of its own. In a sense, unifying all of the many strands of this fictional tour de force is a fiercely candid portrait of the artist, an artist who in Charlotte's words fears "coming face-to-face with my Self on the printed page--it would chill me through to the heart," but who does it anyway. <I>--David Laskin</I> 463824 book 2000 Wild Life total:151|5:34|4:46|3:51|2:15|1:5| 151 542 247 44 3 2 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 27 18:32:59 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 27 18:48:24 -0700 2007
This is not to say that things don't happen in the novel; the feisty yet pragmatic late-nin...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 23 21:20:27 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 23 21:44:37 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 1 false true Tue Jun 09 15:11:25 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 18 12:48:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Thu Sep 06 09:12:41 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 06 09:26:43 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jul 14 21:08:22 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 14 21:19:07 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Apr 02 15:35:21 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 02 15:36:42 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Sun Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jan 20 11:55:25 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 06 13:58:10 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false true Sat Jun 28 05:56:16 -0700 2008 Sat Jun 28 06:01:49 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 29 13:25:32 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 29 13:32:07 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Nov 09 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 09 21:11:13 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 09 21:21:16 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon May 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 28 12:33:53 -0700 2009 Thu May 28 08:00:25 -0700 2009
Logging plays a huge roll in this book, set in the Pacific NW (actually on and near the Columbia River, on the Washington side). Set in ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jan 24 23:05:05 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 24 23:13:04 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Tue Jul 21 10:02:58 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 21 10:04:40 -0700 2009 3 1 false false Thu Mar 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 11 13:11:53 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 19 12:39:47 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Jun 03 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 16 23:06:07 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 05 23:35:59 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Jan 28 21:29:08 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 28 21:30:47 -0800 2009 2 0 false false Tue Feb 10 07:44:13 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 10 07:44:25 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Thu Jul 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu May 21 15:29:30 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 02 15:41:30 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Apr 25 20:33:31 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 25 20:34:36 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2000 Sun Oct 28 05:44:41 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 28 05:47:15 -0700 2007 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=475582