Book Review: Wild by Amy Jeffs

This is going to be a pretty short review because I have never had a book leave as little of an impression on me as Wild by Amy Jeffs. You know how sometimes, like maybe when you’re learning way too much about fishing regulations, you find yourself thinking “wow, this is pretty boring?” I didn’t even have that level of thought with Wild. It was just like… head empty, no thoughts. The book felt like nothing as I was reading it, and I suspect two months from now, I’ll see the title on my reading log and have to struggle to remember what book it even was.

Some of this is probably a me problem. I’m exhausted. I’m stressed out at the state of the world. I’m overcompensating by juggling FIVE books at a time right now. Maybe if I wasn’t stretched so thin, I would have been able to engage with this book in a way that I could have gotten something out of it. But some of the blame does lie with the book, I think.

Wild is a collection of medieval stories about the wilderness. Sort of. It’s more of a collection of pastiches of stories. Jeffs combines stories, poems, art, and historical records that she feels have similar themes, to create new stories out of old. It’s a cool idea. But it completely failed to work for me. Part of it is that she chose to write each of the stories in first person, perhaps as a way to modernize them and thus connect with modern readers? But to me it felt like I was reading something written in a short story class, where my classmate has a good idea, but it’s just not there yet and maybe, after some critiques and re-writes, it will be something, but currently it’s a nothingburger.

Each story is accompanied by notes about Jeffs’ inspiration, the stories she read and the places she visited and the historic concepts she’s drawing on. It should be interesting but it all feels kind of surface level. The book is printed in a larger font, with wide spacing and big margins (maybe to allow for note-taking?), so that it feels almost like a children’s book, except that the content is mature, except that the content isn’t deep.

Ugh. I should have liked Wild. Instead, I’m disappointed that I spent money for this book, and that it gave me nothing.

CWs and TWs: Contains mentions of violence, murder, forced marriage, rape, and animal death.

Source and Format: I purchased a hardback copy at Brick & Mortar Books.

Reading Challenge Prompts

Brick & Mortar: Chose for Its Cover. To find a book for this prompt, I wandered around Brick & Mortar until I saw a book that had a really cool cover, which I wasn’t already familiar with, and which sounds like something I would like to read. And this cover is gorgeous. It has metallic copper accents that stand out really nicely against the black and white woodcut illustration.

World of Whimm: Chose for the Cover. See above about how pretty this cover is.

Reading Challenge Progress

Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 3 of 25, no bingos.

Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 6 of 25, no bingos.

Book Riot: 5 of 25.

Physical TBR: 1 of 12.

Brick & Mortar: 12 of 25, 0 bingos*.
*I’ve completed several of the non-reading prompts, hence the mismatch with the number of reviews!

World of Whimm: 5 of 24, no bingos.