The New Wilderness cover art

The New Wilderness

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The New Wilderness

By: Diane Cook
Narrated by: Stacey Glemboski
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £17.99

Buy Now for £17.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Shortlisted for 2020 Booker Prize

From an acclaimed Guardian First Book Award finalist comes a debut novel.

Bea's five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away. The smog and pollution of the overdeveloped, overpopulated metropolis they call home is ravaging her lungs. Bea knows she cannot stay in the City, but there is only one alternative: the Wilderness State. Mankind has never been allowed to venture into this vast expanse of untamed land. Until now.

Bea and Agnes join 18 other volunteers who agree to take part in a radical experiment. They must slowly learn how to live in the unpredictable, often dangerous Wilderness, leaving no trace on their surroundings in their quest to survive. But as Agnes embraces this new existence, Bea realises that saving her daughter's life might mean losing her in ways she hadn't foreseen.

At once a blazing lament of our contempt for nature and a deeply humane portrayal of motherhood, The New Wilderness is an extraordinary, urgent novel from a celebrated new literary voice.

©2020 Diane Cook (P)2020 W F Howes Dystopian Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction Wilderness

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Darkest Winter: An Ending World Novel cover art
Daughter of the Sun cover art
The Last Storm cover art
Citadel cover art
Tribe of Daughters cover art
Tree Singer cover art
A Snake Falls to Earth cover art
Lark Ascending cover art
How to Howl at the Moon cover art
The Emperor's Wolves cover art
The Shadow of What Was Lost cover art
Scythe cover art
Aurora's Angel cover art
Planet Zero cover art
The Trees cover art
Fledgling cover art

Critic reviews

“Cook's is a fresh and vivid voice; it's unsurprising the likes of Miranda July and Roxane Gay are fans.” (Observer)

“The New Wilderness is a virtuosic debut, brutal and beautiful in equal measure.” (Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel)
All stars
Most relevant  
I struggled to finish this book. The main child character is particularly disturbing in her lack of warmth and inability to reciprocate love, but the absence of bonding and mutual care is pervasive in the atmosphere of the book.

A cold book about cold people

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
and I enjoyed it until the end, which I think let it down. The research into writing this book is very good though. The narrator was good.

Good storyline...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Dystopia for grown ups, no cliches, no rugged ex army heroes who happen to have an off grid homestead with a lifetime supply of wood, fuel, solar energy, snow mobils , testosterone, chiselled chin and greying temples, no wispy blonde bombshell who despite having survived an EMP strike, a Zombie Apocalypse and a Solar Flare, still maintained her sharp cheekbones and flawless skin , no leg hair, no Body odour.

This book is scary as it is within the grasp of reality, and depicts the true need for human beings to be led by a leader despite sacrificing who they are, and what previous morals they held.

Stunning

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The ballad of Beatrice and Agnes is set in a mythic and dystopia future, which has certain contradictions, with much unexplained. The story of a girl growing to maturity wild and free, but under threat is well written and narrated. Estrangement from family and from nature are at the heart, and the killing of what we love.

Environmental dystopia

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Didn't wrap up like I felt it should, bit abrupt ending. Worth a listen though :)

Strong start

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found this a real adventure listen, reality though didn't dwell on the romantic notion of living in wilderness in the future. Great narration too.

Unique

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have to keep telling myself it’s ok and we aren’t here yet. eech, but we will be. a poignant personal story, and a truly foreboding portent.

<holds own hand in reassurance>

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found lots about this story to love. The descriptions of the settings, the post-apocalyptic feel, the way the group worked and grew and changed.

However the relationships between people and the massive gaps in the story I found very frustrating at times and the ending was disappointing to say the least.

I would read a story by this author again.

Interesting genre, frustrating story.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Hard to comprehend how this made the Booker Shortlist when Mantel's The Mirror and the Light didn't. Although why the person who spawned Jack Reacher should be one of the judges makes a mockery of what this literary prize is supposed to be.
Anyway - I digress. The New Wilderness is full of implausible characters, hazily sketched ideas, and even lazier plot holes. I can only assume it's made the list because of its timely subject. We don't learn why particular things do or don't happen. But not in a deliberate, skilful way - ie to fill us with unease and existential dread - just in a way that leaves us suspecting Cook either couldn't be bothered to explain them, or worse, didn't even realise she needed to.
For instance, without giving too much away one deeply irritating point is the fact the rangers keep popping up like Mr Ben at various points to rail at the group of people who have been allowed into the wilderness. They despise the group, but it doesn't appear that the rangers are protective of nature per se; just that they like to use nature as a metaphorical stick to beat these hapless people with. I gave up trying to fathom why when I gave up trying to care.
The narrator made it possible for me to stick with it till the end, but that's the best I can say for it. Far from the thought-provoking, intelligent read I was expecting, it left me with a horrible sense that this is a book JK Rowling would like to have written.

Unbelievably overrated

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Impossible to say why I liked the story without spoilers but the language was true, honest, cruel, kind and poetic. It didn't just show emotions, it moved me. I will read more of her work.

Brutal and tender.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews