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."
-- Tea 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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