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moonlitemuseum's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Several things came to mind when I was reading this book, each alone and then occurring simultaneously:
The dismal disquiet of the school setting in Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. The loamy prose in Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach series, an attempt to block out something encroaching that may very well be, is, already inside you. The character "Vriska Serket" from online web behemoth "Homestuck". The mechanic in the visual novel "We Know The Devil" where two friends pair up and leave the third flagging sadly behind. The promotional image often used for "Girls' Last Tour", which I have yet to read, but which haunts me with how lonely and determined it's protagonists look -- all suited up in hardy jackets and thick boots against a cruel and endless post-apocalyptic background.
2020 was a hard year to read Wilder Girls in, but maybe that's why I stuck fast to it like a lichen on a rock. In a time of ever-worsening climate change and chaos around an illness, fiction helped mask it enough that I could swallow it, and the mask Wilder Girls wears is very thin. Practically translucent. It's about a disease that's pervasive, infectious and unavoidable, and it's also about how badly everyone fucks up the response to that disease even with plenty of advance warning. It's about friendship, sort of, but it's also about how little you can really know anyone. It's about crabs. It's about a landscape that's beautiful and awful, compelling and repellent. It's about body horror. It's about kissing your most difficult friend . It's about the innate horror of something moving behind what you can see. It's about...
Wilder Girls isn't a book I would recommend someone to read if they like tidy endings or even compassionate ones with lots of optimism. It has a dour, difficult ending. You don't learn all the answers. All three of the main characters are in dire and possibly inescapable circumstances. I liked the ending very much.
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves difficult fictional girls of all pedigrees, with a strong caveat for the medical, physiological and parasitic horror contained within it. It was a difficult and upsetting book to read for 2020, but that may be why it was a great book to close out the year with. I can't wait to read more like it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Gore, Self harm, Suicide, Violence, Medical content, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Chronic illness, Cursing, Drug use, Gun violence, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Terminal illness, Torture, Forced institutionalization, and Grief
Minor: Body shaming, Bullying, and Homophobia
kreads's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I wanted to like this book so bad. After seeing people say it was a sapphic feminist horror, I was a hundred percent certain I would love it but regrettable, I did not :(
Wilder Girls is a story about the girls of the Raxter School of Girls. Eighteen months have passed since a deadly disease called the Tox hit the island where the school is situated. With the Tox making the woods outside even more dangerous and the risk of contagion (to whom, however, is unclear throughout the book) the girls have been quarantined in their school, while the government tells them they are developing a cure. The disease brings bizarre changes to their bodies until they become weaker and finally die or adapt to live with it. Hetty, along with her best friends Byatt and Reese and the other girls at Raxter is struggling in this strange and terrifying life.
The book begins 18 months after the Tox outbreak, by this time, the girls are more or less, familiar to their life in quarantine. They wake up, on days they receive a shipment of food, they fight for the best of it and the days they don't they make do with whatever scarce supplies they have, and then just hang out and go back to sleep? I guess? Since nothing about their lives is really elaborated on, unless they are in one of the two important jobs on the island, Gun Shift and Boat Shift, one of which, luckily, is what our main character is. Gun Shift girls are the ones who keep watch on the fence surrounding the school in order to make sure no danger lurking outside it can make it in or attack the Boat Shift girls, who venture outside to get the shipment of food, clothes and some other essential supplies which is dropped onto the dock by the Navy. The only adults remaining are the Headmistress and Ms. Welch, a teacher, the rest have died of the Tox, at this point. Things start going downhill when Hetty's best friend, Byatt experiences a flare-up and is taken away to the infirmary, where only the sickest girls are taken. Hetty, scared of losing her best friend, is determined to find out what is happening to Byatt and when she doesn't find Byatt in the infirmary, she ventures out of the fence, breaking the rules of quarantine and discovers there is an even more horrifying truth to their situation than she could've guessed.
The body horror is done very skillfully. Every girl is left with incredibly varied transformations, some outward and grotesque(Byatt's second spine, Mona's gills, Reese's silver scaly hand) and some inward (Sarah's second heartbeat) . There is a major emphasis on how the girls and even the two adults left are pretty ruthless and are only looking out for themselves, as a result of living in this enforced quarantine with limited supplies. Something I really enjoyed was the f/f romance and how queer characters just existed in the story.
The setting, a school on an island away from the mainland, surrounded by eerie woods on three sides and the uncertain sea on one side and their secrets was one of the few things I liked about this book. It captured the mood of the story very well and provided it with the exact spooky atmosphere it needed.
The writing style I did enjoy in some places, like the way Byatt's narrative is written fit really well with her emotions and thoughts perfectly, described as a storm. However, it does fall short in places, it gets confusing and the scenes become a bit unclear. I did really like her descriptions for the most part.
The plot is incredibly underwhelming, we never really find out satisfactory or even any answers to the whys and hows and whats. What caused the Tox? Why did it affect the girls differently than the others (Ms. Welch, Headmistress, Reese's father and Ted) ? Was there any particular reason for the flare-ups or were they just random? What were the reasons and the goals of all the experiments that the government was carrying out? I wouldn't really have cared about the weak plot if the characters were developed, but unfortunately for me, I found them underdeveloped and was unable to connect to them in any way.
Hetty, the main character, is full of potential, which, sadly isn't explored as much as it could've been. The life on the island and the Tox have made her tough and capable of making the hard choices , she is only looking out for herself...and her best friend Byatt and their friend Reese, whom she likes but has been repressing it because she thinks Reese is too cold and would not let anyone close to her. The Tox has left her blind in one eye but she is a very good shot, despite it.
Reese would definitely be one of my favourite character in this book if she was developed a bit more. She has a very guarded, stoic personality, a consequence of all the loss she has experienced. However, she cares deeply about people but is just scared to show it, her love for her father is heartwarming. The Tox has left her with a silver scaled hand, which has really affected her shooting abilities, it also took her father from her . I really wish we had spent more time seeing how she was dealing with these tragic and strange changes, but if there is anything the book is lacking it is time.Reese has always wanted to become Boat Shift, so she could go looking out for her father, who left after he contracted the disease as it was the safest choice. So when Hetty is chosen for it instead of her, she isn't very happy and things come to blows, later they sort out their differences.
Now, this brings us to Byatt, Hetty's best friend, who without a doubt was my favourite character in this book and I am so very sad that we do not get to see more of her. For me, Power made a much more lasting impact with the chapters written in Byatt's broken, messy narrative than most of the book and I would have definitely loved to read more of it. Byatt is a very interesting, morally ambiguous character, who is unapologetic about it, which is what I love the most about her. There are no justifications for most of the things she does and in such a fashion a justification is never provided.
The ending sighhhh is just frustrating and disappointing. Usually, I am a sucker for open, ambiguous endings but it just leaves so many questions left unanswered that it doesn't work out, at all. There are more and more questions introduced until the end while no answers are presented to any questions, old or new, making it very unsatisfying.
I really do believe both, the plot and the characters had a lot of potential, which could've been explored maybe if the book was a part of a series or even had more pages. This book has a very strong premise and by the time it ends, it leaves you wanting for more, only for you to find out there is no more. If you enjoyed the movie Annihilation, you will surely like this book. Sadly it just wasn't for me.
Wilder Girls is a story about the girls of the Raxter School of Girls. Eighteen months have passed since a deadly disease called the Tox hit the island where the school is situated. With the Tox making the woods outside even more dangerous and the risk of contagion (to whom, however, is unclear throughout the book) the girls have been quarantined in their school, while the government tells them they are developing a cure. The disease brings bizarre changes to their bodies until they become weaker and finally die or adapt to live with it. Hetty, along with her best friends Byatt and Reese and the other girls at Raxter is struggling in this strange and terrifying life.
The book begins 18 months after the Tox outbreak, by this time, the girls are more or less, familiar to their life in quarantine. They wake up, on days they receive a shipment of food, they fight for the best of it and the days they don't they make do with whatever scarce supplies they have, and then just hang out and go back to sleep? I guess? Since nothing about their lives is really elaborated on, unless they are in one of the two important jobs on the island, Gun Shift and Boat Shift, one of which, luckily, is what our main character is. Gun Shift girls are the ones who keep watch on the fence surrounding the school in order to make sure no danger lurking outside it can make it in or attack the Boat Shift girls, who venture outside to get the shipment of food, clothes and some other essential supplies which is dropped onto the dock by the Navy. The only adults remaining are the Headmistress and Ms. Welch, a teacher, the rest have died of the Tox, at this point. Things start going downhill when Hetty's best friend, Byatt experiences a flare-up and is taken away to the infirmary, where only the sickest girls are taken. Hetty, scared of losing her best friend, is determined to find out what is happening to Byatt and when she doesn't find Byatt in the infirmary, she ventures out of the fence, breaking the rules of quarantine and discovers there is an even more horrifying truth to their situation than she could've guessed.
The body horror is done very skillfully. Every girl is left with incredibly varied transformations, some outward and grotesque
The setting, a school on an island away from the mainland, surrounded by eerie woods on three sides and the uncertain sea on one side and their secrets was one of the few things I liked about this book. It captured the mood of the story very well and provided it with the exact spooky atmosphere it needed.
The writing style I did enjoy in some places, like the way Byatt's narrative is written fit really well with her emotions and thoughts perfectly, described as a storm. However, it does fall short in places, it gets confusing and the scenes become a bit unclear. I did really like her descriptions for the most part.
The plot is incredibly underwhelming, we never really find out satisfactory or even any answers to the whys and hows and whats. What caused the Tox? Why did it affect the girls differently than the others
Hetty, the main character, is full of potential, which, sadly isn't explored as much as it could've been. The life on the island and the Tox have made her tough and capable of making the hard choices , she is only looking out for herself...and her best friend Byatt and their friend Reese, whom she likes but has been repressing it because she thinks Reese is too cold and would not let anyone close to her. The Tox has left her blind in one eye but she is a very good shot, despite it.
Reese would definitely be one of my favourite character in this book if she was developed a bit more. She has a very guarded, stoic personality, a consequence of all the loss she has experienced. However, she cares deeply about people but is just scared to show it, her love for her father is heartwarming. The Tox has left her with a silver scaled hand, which has really affected her shooting abilities,
Now, this brings us to Byatt, Hetty's best friend, who without a doubt was my favourite character in this book and I am so very sad that we do not get to see more of her. For me, Power made a much more lasting impact with the chapters written in Byatt's broken, messy narrative than most of the book and I would have definitely loved to read more of it. Byatt is a very interesting, morally ambiguous character, who is unapologetic about it, which is what I love the most about her. There are no justifications for most of the things she does and in such a fashion a justification is never provided.
The ending sighhhh is just frustrating and disappointing. Usually, I am a sucker for open, ambiguous endings but it just leaves so many questions left unanswered that it doesn't work out, at all. There are more and more questions introduced until the end while no answers are presented to any questions, old or new, making it very unsatisfying.
I really do believe both, the plot and the characters had a lot of potential, which could've been explored maybe if the book was a part of a series or even had more pages. This book has a very strong premise and by the time it ends, it leaves you wanting for more, only for you to find out there is no more. If you enjoyed the movie Annihilation, you will surely like this book. Sadly it just wasn't for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Eating disorder, Gore, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicide, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, and Medical trauma