Wild Life

This story is sheer joy on so many levels. The protagonist, Charlotte, is a 35 yr old educated and independent widow with 5 sons, living in the pioneer outbacks in the Washington/Oregon area 100 years ago. She's managed to support her family writing "minor" romantic novels. When her housekeeper's little grandaughter disappears while under the care of the father at work in a logging camp deep deep in the forests, she sets off to help find the child. The written language is glorious..I remember my great grandmother using some of the same phrases. Her descriptions of pioneer life, life in the logging camps, the forests, and her obvious love and respect for animals and the environment is nothing short of thrilling. Charlotte becomes separated from her group and lost in the forest, eventually following a family of wild animals in an effort to survive. Very exciting, earthy, sensual, basic..

This is one of the best books I've read in the past ten years. It has ruined me for reading anything else for weeks. I am, after reading the last page over a month ago, still incredibly moved by it and have gone back to read passages from it again and again. I have found myself reading aloud from it, pressing it on others, urging them to read it, even buying copies for them, and I sincerely hope you will be its next reader. Through some inspired alchemy, Molly Gloss has created an adventure story, a mystery, a quest, and an historical documentation of life in the Pacific Northwest 100 years ago that is believable down to its last detail. If it sounds like I'm gushing, well I am! Wild Life is an absolute miracle of story and beautiful language combined. I will never get over this book. Never.Charlotte is quite an engaging character. I found myself irritated with her pride at first, but she is so complex and talented and willful and interesting--very like a modern woman stuck in the past--that I couldn't resist following her story to see what was next. When a young child disappears into the depths of the great forest, Charlotte sets off to find her and, as she abandons family and her quiet and productive writing life to go on this quest, I found myself wholly on her side. What happens to Charlotte herself as she pursues her investigation, I won't reveal, but I will say that her encounter with the strangeness and beauty of life in the forest captured me so completely that I could not, for hours on end, allow anything from my real life to interfere with my reading. The world intruded at its own risk. I was so moved by the end of the book that I could not think or see anything else but this story, waking or sleeping. It is rare that a book can transport a reader so completely into its world, but Wild Life soon seals you into an envelope of reality you will not want to leave. I think its power lies in the fact that it touches something ancient in us, and is an unsentimental call to the purity of nature, our true nature, the nature of our past. It brings us directly into contact with wild life where we find ourselves waiting, where we meet our own "darkness" and take comfort there. It is an extraordinary accomplishment. Nothing like this book has ever been written before. I doubt there will ever be anything like it again. Sentence by sentence, a miracle. Beautiful, accurate, pleasing, informing, wise, funny, satisfying..oh, you know, I'm sure you get my point by now. Do buy it. It's fun and it's fascinating and it's brilliant. What a combination! Thank you, Molly Gloss.

This highly original and astonishing novel begins with two sisters communicating about a threadbare, almost illegible diary that belonged to their grandmother, wondering how much is real and how much out of grandmother's imagination as a writer. We are thrown back a hundred years to find out. What comes out is a clever admixture of the main narrative as well as essays and adventure stories that sometimes parallel the actual, all of it ostensibly Charlotte's diary. Although the main plot is not so believable, that is besides the point. Once that is understood, the reader gets eagerly caught up. The plot is really a backdrop or window dressing to the rest. A quick outline: Charlotte is an educated woman, age 35, and already a widow with five sons, living in a backwater in the State of Washington near the border with Oregon. She is a writer and a feisty feminist, highly stubborn and independent, who defies as much convention as she can get away, but her neighbors are used to that. When Charlotte gets word that her housekeeper's young granddaughter is missing in the vicinity of a remote mountainous logging camp, she sets out on a long journey to find her, although others have failed. What ends in a foregone tragic conclusion for the child almost ends in one for Charlotte as well, as she becomes hopelessly lost in the woods and becomes the companion of wild animals. This is the point where the story actually comes into its own. Charlotte must now not only draw on a philosophy of life, but confront something within herself that is at once exhilarating and frightening, and will forever change her. As we travel with Charlotte, scenes of the Northwest and the wild American frontier merge with Charlotte's reflections on spirituality, the struggle between preservation of natural resources and the encroachment of civilization, animal rights, modern inventions, independence for women, popular culture and art versus quality, as well as her adventure stories that sometimes strangely parallel her own life or at least her fantasy life. The well-documented and researched descriptions of early settlements of Washington and Oregon, and especially the evocative and haunting wilderness segments coupled with the voice of Charlotte, speak loudly to us across time. This is truly a one-of-a kind book that will pull you under its spell.

In Wild Life, Molly Gloss has combined interests from her previous fiction: western history, women's lives, and the fantastic. The result is a fascinating, beautifully written, thought-provoking meditation on wildness of all sorts. Gloss's main character is a turn-of-the-century writer of scientific romances; her life and her writing are transformed when she ventures away from her Columbia River home to look for a lost child in the forests of the Cascade Mountains. The book alters, too, from light-hearted satire to desperate adventure to re-entry into the human community. Gloss has much to say about the way people in the West come to terms with the natural environment and with their own darker impulses. A beautiful book.

You get a lot with this book: mystery, comedy, a clear picture of pioneer life at the mouth of the Columbia river at the start of the 20th century. I was completely engrossed; I lost sleep because of this book. Outstanding prose that in itself is a pleasure to read, but the tale is so well told you feel as if you're in it rather than reading. The journal style of the book works great, in my opinion. The first half or so of the book is gritty and realistic while towards the end the book takes on a more adventurous and fantastical air. That's a word of warning to approach the book knowing that the plot may take an eyebrow-raising turn or two. If you enjoy this book I urge you to get Diane Smith's Letters from Yellowstone. You would think these books are from the same author. Similar style, similar turn of the century wilderness setting, a focus on nature, and colorful characters featuring spitfire pioneer women. I'm off to the library for more Molly Gloss books.