Two stars. It was okay.The beginning, I really didn't like. I didn't like it because, for me, it was rather boring. The main character felt attenuated and unconscious. The controlling/strict father offered no pattern or rhythm, and the text felt like it was largely made up as it went along, drifting from here to there. The characters were unimpacted by the events they caused and suffered, as if everyone was either stoned or on lithium.A missed opportunity, I think, and the dialogue sounded quite weird, too:"I met a boy who things you're a Bigfoot," I say, and for a moment I think he's actually listening and might say something. "Does that make you happy?" I say. "You know, just because you're so dirty doesn't mean anything. My name is Caroline, in case you forgot it."Strange, strange, car-crashy kind of stuff.On the bright side, things pick up about 30% of the way through. A little plotting happens for a while until around 45% when the story becomes disorganised again and the main character's limitations (really, the limitations of the author in imagining her) become frustrating. At 66% for half a page there's evidence of characterful activity, but then it's back to the dragging, dragging pace. Much as I don't wish to, by the 76% mark I find myself reading the dialogue in a kind of clipped 1940s newsreel fashion--it's brief, but so strained and stilted:-"We really owe you," Father says. "It was so late last night. We were in quite a predicament.""Are there any outlets here?" Father says, "or just all the wires? I don't imagine you have a way to heat up water?""No," she says."Did you tap into the transformer out on the pole yourselves," he says, "or did someone else string that wire? Ingenious." Who would speak like that, outside of a comic strip?Things happen, and the story rolls or is dragged toward its end. Overall: it was okay. It was okay because there was some nice writing in it, but it dragged unnecessarily and the characters are realised only in a narrow and atrophied span. The novel is based partially on a true story of a man living with his daughter in Forest Park in urban Portland, Oregon. I avoided reading it for a long time. I'm giving it 4 stars, but I might have to come back and give it a fifth. When this book first came out, my husband was working at Circle Creek stables on the Oregon coast because the manager, who was a friend, had fallen from the hayloft and needed help. He went as a favor for several months. A man and his daughter were sleeping in the back barn during part of that time. I am a school teacher and I see many children whose parents do not value their child's education, parents who drag their children out of town on a whim and then back sometimes just as abruptly. Thirteen year old Caroline begins her story during her fourth year sleeping in the wild woods on a huge city park and continues in eight parts. She reads and studies the “homework” her father assigns and carries her only friend, a plastic model horse Roger, with her everywhere. The narrator’s voice and observations are chilling and beautiful and sad. I’d say it is not as beautiful as Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping—from 1980 and told from the POV of young Ruthie—though covering similar ground. I didn’t think I would like the novel for these reasons and because the story is too close and I expected to find flaws that I did not, in the end, find. And it has many moments of grace, moments of grave beauty.Still, I think it’s fair to say this is a wonderful novel. Wonderful is a rare thing, especially for me to say. This book left me with much to think about, almost as many questions as answers about Caroline and what it might mean to raise a child properly.
What do You think about Meine Wildnis (2011)?
Remarkable story. Infused with the Northwest. Makes you think about childhood and freedoms once had.
—Haylin
This is one of those books you can't put down because the narrative is so compelling.
—Nicole19991
I really like the enigma at the end of the book.
—kal9
