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The Wildlands A Novel Abby Geni Books

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The Wildlands A Novel Abby Geni Books

This is beautifully written, but the content is unrelentingly grim.
I had to put it down, take a time out to check all my makeup to see if it is tested on animals. Alas, one of my favorite brands (L'Oreal) still is. Out it goes and I have begun the expensive process of replacing it with cruelty free. The unfortunate fact is that the brands with a heart tend to cost more.
Back to Abby Geni. She is the kind of writer who makes every noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and yes, every preposition and conjunction count and every writer either jealous or inspired or both.


Tags : Amazon.com: The Wildlands: A Novel (9781619022348): Abby Geni: Books,Abby Geni,The Wildlands: A Novel,Counterpoint,1619022346,Animals,Bombings,Brothers and sisters,Domestic fiction,Domestic fiction.,Domestic relations;Fiction.,Oklahoma,Orphans,Small cities - Oklahoma,Suspense fiction.,Thrillers (Fiction),Tornadoes,Violence,FICTION Action & Adventure,FICTION Family Life,FICTION Family Life General,FICTION Literary,FICTION Thrillers General,FICTION Thrillers Suspense,Fiction,Fiction-Literary,FictionAction & Adventure,FictionFamily Life - General,FictionThrillers - Suspense,GENERAL,General Adult,United States,B&N Discover Great New Writers Award; Abbi; Geny; Jenny; Abbie; The Last Animal; The Lightkeepers; Indies Introduce; literary thriller; environmentalism; animal rights; rural drama; Far From the Tree; Robin Benway; The Heart; Maylis de Kerangal; Edgar and Lucy; Victor Lodato; Ill Will Dan Chaon; Beautiful Animals; Lawrence Osborne; Fierce Kingdom; Gin Phillips; psychological thriller; award-winning novel; Center for Fiction First Novel Prize; We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves; Karen Joy Fowler; Flight Behavior; Barbara Kingsolver; Ape House; Sara Gruen; human interaction with animals; domesticity; wildness,B&N Discover Great New Writers Award;Abbi;Geny;Jenny;Abbie;The Last Animal;The Lightkeepers;Indies Introduce;literary thriller;environmentalism;animal rights;rural drama;Far From the Tree;Robin Benway;The Heart;Maylis de Kerangal;Edgar and Lucy;Victor Lodato;Ill Will Dan Chaon;Beautiful Animals;Lawrence Osborne;Fierce Kingdom;Gin Phillips;psychological thriller;award-winning novel;Center for Fiction First Novel Prize;We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves;Karen Joy Fowler;Flight Behavior;Barbara Kingsolver;Ape House;Sara Gruen;human interaction with animals;domesticity;wildness;

The Wildlands A Novel Abby Geni Books Reviews

This novel focuses more on the effects of trauma on people--both individuals and a community--than on the treatment of animals. From the plot description, I was expecting a more nuanced presentation of humans' disregard of animals, and I still wonder whether this was a point the author wanted to make. I found it difficult to empathize with the traumatized young man in this book, though I wanted to, and I think the author could have portrayed him more sympathetically to better effect. A deeper and more ambivalent portrayal of the conditions of trauma--for people as well as animals--would have brought these two themes together better.
Some of the best contemporary books in literature teach us how to be human. But what does “being human” mean? Are we elevated from the rest of the animal species by our conscience and our ability to feel compassion? Or are we the most selfish and dangerous predators that ever lived, destined to eventually become extinct?

This intelligently-written, page-turning novel provides no easy answers but it does provide much food for thought. Four siblings—Darlene, Tucker, Jane and little Cora become orphans at the start of the book, when a Category 5 tornado wipes out everything they have, turning them into the Saddest Family in Mercy, Oklahoma. Only Tucker believes that the tornado has provided him with the gift of insight. We quickly learn that Tucker becomes an extreme animal activist, liberating animals from deplorable conditions and becoming their avenger. On the lam, he convinces his nine-year-old sister Cora—who has missed him desperately— to join him in his quixotic quest. And here is where the plot truly takes hold.

The plot twists of this novel are organic and heartbreaking and I do not wish to spoil them for other readers. I will, instead, concentrate on the themes, which elevate this novel to one of my top books of the year. Abby Geni performs the amazing feat of having us sympathize with Tucker’s goals—to treat other animal species with respect and dignity—while cringing from his methods and his lack of understanding that animals must be true to their own nature. Trapped between the human and the animal world, Tucker does not truly understand either, and puts both worlds at risk.

What are the Wildlands? Tucker describes it this way “The old ecosystem was gone. Humans had destroyed it. The Wildlands were something new. ‘Unfit for cultivation.’ That means no people, no civilization. Wild and Tame and Domesticated and Feral—any living thing without a place on the food chain—all the outliers found their way there. All the lost and lonely animals went to the Wildlands.”

What does it mean to be “a creature out of place and out of sync?” How does any outlier—human or animal—adapt to life with all its uncertainties and all its marvels? The last paragraph of this mesmerizing book brought tears to my eyes. Abby Geni keeps getting better and better.
“The Wildlands. Uncultivated land. Cultivation—that’s what humans do.”

Geni’s latest and exciting literary thriller once again examines the liminal space between humans and wildlife, while depicting how compassion can mutate to corruption and danger. In this novel, Geni’s characters are not research biologists and strangers to each other, like in THE LIGHTKEEPERS. In THE WILDLANDS, her characters are four Oklahoma siblings orphaned by a Category 5 tornado, which destroyed their house, massacred their beloved horses and cows, and slayed their father. The trauma to the children have both shared and clashing impacts on their grasp of the future. The slaughter of life—both human and animal--has compromised their trust in benevolence, stripping them of faith in ordinary safety.

The oldest, nineteen-year-old Darlene, a realist, wants to keep the youngest three together with her, and gives up college plans in order to put food on the table. Tucker, the only brother and second oldest, is more of the dreamer, and finds solace in the wild lands beyond their new and shabby trailer home. The youngest, Cora, age six, worships Tucker, who pays close attention to her and includes her in his forays to the fields and wildlife beyond. When he leaves the family and disappears after an angry dispute with Darlene, Cora is stricken. As in THE LIGHTKEEPERS, we begin to comprehend that our true self is often mirrored or altered by the behavior of the humans and animals that we love, protect, confine, exploit, or liberate.

Three years later, Tucker returns with a vengeance and vocation against the injustices to animals by the public. He is on a quest to save the animal kingdom, who he believes are casualties of the human war against them. The bonds of family are tested to terrifying depths, while the pace-perfect, page-turning narrative, in Cora’s now mature voice, also explores the thin but overlapping border between man and beast.

“This is the story of the summer I disappeared,” begins Cora, the first line after the prologue. And, as the pages turn, it becomes apparent that her disappearance is both physical and psychological, under a Svengali-esque influence, as her psyche is subsumed by events that tear the family apart and completely turn her identity inside out. I am hesitant to say more, since I don’t want to ruin even the small discoveries meant for the reader’s eyes.

Part eco-thriller, part suspense thriller, and part domestic thriller, THE WILDLANDS cuts across genres and keeps you emotionally riveted to the characters and plot. The prose is lyrical and poetic, compelling me to re-read passages and paragraphs just for their force and hypnotic beauty. The description of the tornado alone is harrowing and filled with magnificent terror. There’s no filler in the gust of this novel, not one dull page.
I really enjoyed this book. It went off in a direction I didn’t expect but was very interesting and held my attention.
I could hardly put it down. I read it straight through in two days. For feral humans and the wild at heart.
I couldn’t put this book down! It’s truly a literary thriller—a book that will appeal to those who crave a page-turning plot and those who live for carefully-crafted prose. And those who love both, of course! I also particularly loved Geni’s use of setting; whether it was the barren highways of Texas or small-town Oklahoma, she captured each landscape with poise and familiarity.
This is beautifully written, but the content is unrelentingly grim.
I had to put it down, take a time out to check all my makeup to see if it is tested on animals. Alas, one of my favorite brands (L'Oreal) still is. Out it goes and I have begun the expensive process of replacing it with cruelty free. The unfortunate fact is that the brands with a heart tend to cost more.
Back to Abby Geni. She is the kind of writer who makes every noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and yes, every preposition and conjunction count and every writer either jealous or inspired or both.