Accomplished ... The novel is a slow-burner, and Bromwich has the confidence to allow her story to build incrementally through the early chapters ... A novel that invites full immersion on the reader’s part; the reward is a deeply unsettling exploration of what it means to inhabit a female body but to reject femininity, and to feel a connection with the natural world that embodies both awe and terror. In this, its themes could not be more timely.
Bromwich paints Laura and her woods as vibrantly as an old-fashioned fairy tale and this is just as foreboding. Fans of highly interiorized, richly narrated feminist fiction will tear through it.
Haunting ... The result is a slow-burning tension that never quite resolves into something like closure but is nonetheless riveting and original. A gripping, richly layered story of a woman’s unraveling as she grapples with threats both past and present.
Subtle ... Peril eventually arrives in the form of dangerous wolves and even more dangerous hunters, but the developments will come too late for many readers. It’s a slow burn, though it works as a fine portrait of a woman’s communion with an untamed wilderness.
