Diane Cook is the author of the novel, THE NEW WILDERNESS, which was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection, MAN V. NATURE, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, The Pen/Hemingway Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Harper's, Tin House, Granta, and other publications, and her stories have been included in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is a former producer for the radio program This American Life, and was the recipient of a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, daughter and son.
"Could this be the great climate change novel of our time? Buzz is
building fast for the epic debut novel of Diane Cook." --
Entertainment Weekly"The emotional core of the story is the
relationship between Bea and Agnes, whose perspectives drive the
narrative. It's a damning piece of horror cli-fi, but it's also a
gripping and profound examination of love and sacrifice." --
Buzzfeed"Cook writes about desperate people in a world of ever
shrinking livable space and increasingly questionable resources
like air and water but also about the resilience of children who
adapt, even enjoying circumstances that overwhelm the adults around
them. Cook also raises uncomfortable questions: How far will a
person go to survive, and what sacrifices will she or won't she
make for those she loves? This ecological horror story
(particularly horrifying now) explores painful regions of the human
heart." -- Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)"A wry, speculative debut
novel. . .Cook's unsettling, darkly humorous tale explores maternal
love and man's disdain for nature with impressive results." --
Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)"Violence, death, tribalism,
lust, love, betrayals, wonder, genius, and courage--all are enacted
in this stunningly incisive and complexly suspenseful tale akin to
dystopian novels by Margaret Atwood and Claire Vaye Watkins. When
Cook finally widens the lens on her characters' increasingly
desperate predicament, the exposure of malignant greed, deceit, and
injustice resonates with devastating impact." -- Donna Seaman,
Booklist (Starred Review)"More than timely, the novel feels
timeless, solid, like a forgotten classic recently resurfaced--a
brutal, beguiling fairy tale about humanity. But at its core, The
New Wilderness is really about motherhood, and about the world we
make (or unmake) for our children." -- Washington Post"A dazzling
debut...Cook takes command of a fast-paced, thrilling story to ask
stomach-turning questions in a moment when it would benefit every
soul to have their stomach turned by the prospect of the future she
envisions. I, for one, was grateful for the journey."
-- Téa Obreht, The Guardian"Humanity returns to nature in Diane
Cook's timely ecological tale. . . . A gripping adventure that
denies its readers easy answers, The New Wilderness is an important
debut, and an illuminating read in these times, when the stakes of
humans' relationship with nature have never felt higher." -- USA
Weekend"5 of 5 stars. Gripping, fierce, terrifying examination of
what people are capable of when they want to survive in both the
best and worst ways. Loved this." -- Roxane Gay via Twitter"The New
Wilderness is a virtuosic debut, brutal and beautiful in equal
measure." -- Emily St. John Mandel, New York Times bestselling
author of STATION ELEVEN and THE GLASS HOTEL"Cook's writing is both
a melodic ode to nature and a devastating eulogy to what has been
lost...This is a gorgeous tale of motherhood and the will to
live...Diane Cook builds a place so rich it feels like home, even
as it frightens in its ferocity." -- Shelf Awareness"The novel
tackles the deepest of human emotions--as well as big ideas about
the planet--in satisfying ways. Also, it's a page-turner!" --
LitHub"A wonderfully imagined ... tense future-shock novel." --
2020 Booker Prize Judges"An imaginative, dystopian look at what our
world could become...I was gripped by how vivid the story was, how
expertly Diane Cook got into the dynamics of a group of strangers
surviving in the wild, and their relationship with those in power."
-- Hey Alma--Favorite Books for Summer"THE NEW WILDERNESS left me
as stunned as a deer in headlights. Gut-wrenching and
heart-wrecking, this is a book that demands to be read, and
urgently. With beauty and compassion, Diane Cook writes about the
precariousness of life on this planet, about the things that make
us human -- foremost the love between mothers and daughters, at
once complex and elemental. Cook observes humanity as a zoologist
might -- seeing us exactly as the strange animals we really are."
-- Rachel Khong, author of GOODBYE, VITAMIN"Diane Cook upends old
tropes of autonomy, survival, and civilization to reveal startling
new life teeming beneath, giving a glimpse into the ways the world
we think we know could come unstuck and come to life in the care of
the women and girls of the future. This is not just a thrilling,
curious, vibrant book--but an essential one, a compass to guide us
into the future." -- Alexandra Kleeman, author of YOU TOO CAN HAVE
A BODY LIKE MINE"The New Wilderness strips us of our veneer of
civilisation and exposes us for what we are: driven to survive,
capable of shocking cruelty and profound, fierce love. This story
of what a mother does to save her daughter is unflinching,
horrifying, forgiving, deeply moving, and filled with truth that
stayed with this mother long after the final page." -- Helen
Sedgwick, author of The Comet Seekers and When the Dead Come
Calling"An absolutely riveting and propulsive novel. Terrifying,
and as real as can be. Epic in scale and story; granular and
recognisable in people and place. The New Wilderness is surely an
instant classic in our stories of survival, sovereignty and
adaptation. Cook's writing is so sure-footed, prescient and
trustworthy, it's all the reader can do to follow her. For fans of
Ling Ma's Severance and Hernan Diaz's In the Distance, and many,
many readers in between." -- Caoilinn Hughes (Orchid & the Wasp/The
Wild Laughter) "As her characters navigate a changing terrain and
their own emotional landscapes, Cook incorporates the whole of
human experience. The New Wilderness examines our relationships to
place and to others as the Community considers its right to be on
the land and whether others have any business sharing the space."
--BookPage -- BookPageUSA Today--5 Books Not to Miss: "The buzz: "A
gripping adventure that denies its readers easy answers, 'The New
Wilderness' is an important debut," says a (out of four) review for
USA TODAY." -- USA Today (four stars)"The book manages to have a
driving plot at the same time that it supports big themes, like the
best speculative fiction can do. And now it's on the longlist for
the Booker Prize. The New Wilderness deserves its place there." --
Amazon.com"A soulful, urgent debut...The push-pull ambivalence of
Bea and Agnes's bond forms its beating heart...What lingers, beyond
the awesome power of Bea and Agnes as heroines, is pure wonderment
at all in this world of ours that is not human." -- The
Guardian"Cook captures not only the push-pull intimacy particular
to a mother and child, but the way all relationships come with
conflict and contradictions. Whatever the future holds, may Cook
write some more books in it." -- San Francisco Chronicle"Her
writing is deceptively simple, beautifully corporeal . . . " -- San
Francisco Chronicle"Expertly plotted . . . highly seductive writing
. . . It is the anthropological acuity in Cook's writing that makes
it so persuasive. She explores how our nature is informed by the
land we inhabit, how our conception of civility is relative to the
circumstances in which we find ourselves." -- Times Literary
Supplement (London)"The emotional core of the novel--and its true
source of brilliance--lies in the relationship between Bea and
Agnes, the most intricate and morally arresting relationship Cook
has conjured to date." -- Nation"An absolutely breathtaking
novel...captivating and engaging in the struggle for survival but
also in the loss of one's humanity in the fight for survival and
what we try to hold onto when the world has changed forever...A
poignant perspective on human survival when the world has made
survival much harder." -- Girly Book Club
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