In a bitter winter, at the end of the first decade of the 1600s, a servant girl escapes through a gap in the wall of a Virginian fort. The young girl she cared for, Bess, has died; the family, along with the rest of the community, are in squalor and starving; and the male head of that family has lascivious eyes for her and the food she scrounges for. The servant girl heads north, towards Canada. She’s alone, in the wilds of a new world.

This girl is resourceful and resilient, foraging for plants and finding frozen fish in the ice of a river. She wears all her gowns – and Bess’s – for warmth and carries her necessary tools under her garments. She hurries through the woods, finding shelter from beasts where she can. As she sails a boat belonging to an ex-priest through melting ice, a mistake in the fog means she’s now headed more to the west. This is an ordeal, rather than a journey.

Time alone allows the girl to reminisce. Although she was called Zed – meaning last and of least worth – by the household’s mistress, she was christened Lamentations. The Biblical reference is paramount. The narrative is told in vernacular language, apart from word-perfect Biblical verses. The Book of Lamentations details the loss of Jerusalem and of God, and mirrors the fort’s decline and the girl’s ordeal. God will not act, and her prayers go unanswered. She contracts a fever, and the narrative then reads like a mix of memory, daydream and hallucination, with details of her life revealed.

Groff’s work has long been masterful, but it’s difficult to describe just how good this writing is.

Reviewed by Bob Moore

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida.

She has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in such publications as The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and been translated into 36 languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

Visit Lauren Groff’s website