I really wanted to like this.

The New Wilderness is an attempt at a dark dystopia where there is the overpopulated, polluted City and the last of the wilderness called The Wilderness State. The story is centred around a mother and her daughter who volunteer to go to The Wilderness as a part of the study looking for answers on whether people and nature can coexist. The daughter is sick because of the pollution in the City and the Wilderness may help her get better.

Let me just start with the fact that I gave this novel a chance even though there are huge gaps in the entire setup. This City and The Wilderness really don't make much sense. The world-building is lacking at best.

Once you accept that, it is logical to assume that the value of this Booker 2020 Shortlisted book is going to come from a solid plot and complex characters and relationships.

Sigh.

I kept reading thinking I was missing out on something. Obviously, the characters undergo a transformation by changing their way of life. But it is all somewhat - superficial? Without solid worldbuilding, it is difficult to buy into the workings of the society and the political moves of the characters throughout the story.
There were a few moments of mother-daughter tension when I thought the magic was finally going to start happening. It never did.

The writing is good, but not great. The best were the descriptions of nature and the gripping prologue.

However, without a decent plot and with mediocre characters this book felt hollow. One of the biggest disappointments of 2020. How this ended up on the Booker shortlist is beyond me. ( )

Very good. A never quite explained future place where people are sequestered to a dirty, deathly city, but a group of twenty get to live, like nomads, in a last remaining wilderness (maybe? The rest of the worlds is hidden to us). A young girl grows up in this wilderness trying to understand her mother whose motherly protectiveness obscures her from her daughter. It’s very well told, the constant movement of the troop, the mystery of what is happening and why. In the end, we, the plebs, can’t see what is going on, we are just penned in trying to find a bit of serenity, I guess…

This dystopian novel is set in The Wilderness State, apparently the only wilderness left in the near future. It is not clear what is meant by wilderness or where this is but it is mountainous with streams and animals and has snow in winter and is warm in summer. There are parts of the novel that feel like a survival manual as the reader is told how the community, the group of 20 who are allowed into the Wilderness State, hunt, catch food, build a smoker, prepare skins and make clothes. But this seems to be primarily a novel about relationships. Bea and her young daughter Agnes and Bea's partner Glen join 17 others and the tensions between community members, between them and the rangers and particularly the mother-daughter relationship between Bea and Agnes are what run through the novel. While Agnes grows up in the Wilderness State and can't remember much about city life, Bea retains a longing for her creature comforts. The community insist on consensus for decision making but Carl is keen to be the leader and has his followers. The seasons pass over many years but time is fluid in the Wilderness State but occasionally the community visit Post where the rangers are. Here they take part in monitoring and receive mail. There are rules in the Wilderness State and the rangers enforce these and appear to be all seeing, without being seen much beyond Post. The community is required to keep on the move and leave no trace but sometimes enjoy staying somewhere comfortable with plenty of food. The landscape is vast and varied, they walk through sage bushes, dark woodland and over craggy mountains. They find shallow lakes and rushing rivers. Although this is billed as an environmental novel, it is really a novel about humans. ( )

I'm so confused as to why this is a nominee for the sci-fi Goodreads Award (as this is not what I'd class as sci-fi). I'm glad it is though, because I highly doubt I'd have read this otherwise.

This is a book I went into with very little expectation, which is probably why I liked it so much. The writing is very well done, and the nature setting was so nice.

The story takes place in a world where not much of nature remains, so a selected few have been sent to the last remaining wilderness to see if it's possible for people to co-exist with nature without ruining it.

Above all else though, this is a book about mothers and daughters and how we tend to appreciate the choices of our mothers only in hindsight. It was also done in a way that didn't feel exaggerated or explained to death. ( )

DNF @ 45%. I can't do any more of this. Characters are flat, boring, and overall unlikable. Story is full of inconsistencies and plot holes. Too many better books to read ( )