Lucas Blogs About Wild Life

I usually make some silly joke here, but I am legit diggin' this cover design. Good on you, Jeffrey Alan Love.

So, what's this book's deal?

You ever wonder what it would be like if bigfoot were real?

Wait, do you not believe in bigfoot?

Well, I believe it's possible that there's some sort of unkown hominid species, but I am unconvinced by the specific evidence that has been offered of such a hominid existing in the Pacific Northwest. Anyway, Wild Life by Molly Gloss is an epistolary novel made up of diary entries and other writings, mostly by the novel's protagonist: Charlotte Bridger Drummond. Drummond writes speculative adventure novels while raising five boys in turn of the century Oregon.

Wait, the turn of which century?

The Nineteenth to the Twentieth, of course.

Ok, boomer.

Wow, that meme must be played out if it's appearing on this blog. Anyway, Charlotte's husband disappeared a few years ago, when their youngest son, Jules (as in Verne), was a baby, but she insists the body dragged from the river couldn't be his. She protests, perhaps a bit too much, the semi-courtship of her widowed neighbor, Horace Stubband, and flouts conventional gender roles by smoking cigars and riding a bicycle. She seems largely content with her life, which is disrupted when her housekeeper's granddaughter disappears from a logging camp and Charlotte is determined to join the expedition to find her. Oh, and her other sons are named George (as in Sand and Eliot), Oscar (as in Wilde), Lewis, and Frank (I'm not sure, but I think the last two may be named for Carroll and Baum).

Where does bigfoot come into all this?

Oh, right, some of the loggers say that the girl was hauled away by an orangutan.

An orangutan isn't a bigfoot.

No, but, it is a hominid.  Anyway, without giving too much away, Charlotte joins the expedition but gets separated and lost and ends up living with a family of sasquatches for a time.

Is that a SPOILER?

Kinda, but you know what, screw it, I'm gonna go ahead and say that the plot isn't the only thing that matters in this book. It's definitely on the more literary end of the science fiction spectrum. The whole thing is presented as a collection of documents uncovered by Drummond's grandchildren (one of whom is an academic and an expert on her grandmother's writings) in the 1990s. Mostly it's entries from Drummond's journal as she sets out on her journey, but it also includes excerpts of her writings (including a story about a girl adventurer stumbling on a society of telepathic bigfoots), newspaper clippings about bigfoot, and character sketches Drummond writes about various people she meets along the way.

So it's kinda like Dracula?

Yeah, I would liken Gloss's technique here to the way that Bram Stoker presents Dracula as a collection of journals, etc. in order to create a feeling of verisimilitude. Only instead of using that to stoke xenophobia and misogyny, Gloss uses it to explore themes of feminism and the constraints of societal expectations. Like Dracula, one of the driving concerns is violence against women, from Drummond imaging the sexual depredation of her housekeeper's son-in-law, to the loggers' speculation that the missing girl was raped by an ape-man, to the actual sexual assault perpetrated against Drummond in the course of the expedition. However, unlike Dracula, the danger of sexual violence isn't from some sinister outside force, it's from a society that views women as important only for their biological functions. This is one of the reasons why Drummond finds her time among the sasquatches so liberating.

This isn't just some anti-society screed, is it?

No, in fact, I would say that Drummond is liberated primarily in the sense that, after she returns to society—

Whoa, SPOILERS!

We crossed that rubicon a long time ago. Anyway, let's just say that before she goes into the woods, Drummond's feminism is somewhat performative, sure, she does genuinely enjoy activities that are stereotypically unfeminine, but she's doing them as much to show off her free-thinking independence as for her own enjoyment. Shes wants to project a specific image. After her return she finds herself genuinely unconcerned with the picture she presents to other people. She doesn't even realize that she has forsaken shoes for the entirety of the riverboat journey home until it's pointed out to her. Her time away from society has left her freer to be a  more genuine version of herself. This has also provoked a change in her fiction. Before the expedition, her writing is largely sci-fi fantasy adventure, very trope-y, very Edgar Rice Burroughs-y. The later fiction snippets are much more introspective and literary, showing real progress as a writer with a distinct voice.

Ooooh, okay . . . . So why do you keep comparing it to Dracula?

Two reasons: 1) they have a similar format, and B) I think it's a good point of comparison. I don't have any reason to think that Gloss wrote this as a response to Dracula, by any means. But I do think that it has some interesting things to say about the themes explored in Dracula, and, frankly, has a much better take on those themes than Stoker does. Also. . .

Here it comes.

Like Dracula, this book kinda drags in the middle. The beginning, where Gloss establishes Drummond's normal routine is quite good. There's a lot of good character detail, you really get to know her as a person. And once she gets lost and is found by the sasquatch family, the book moves at a good clip (I mean, it's actually quite lyrical and idyllic at that point, but it's always engaging, it's a sort of bigfoot ethnography, fun fact: the sasquatches use a tonal language based on whistling) but the actual details of the expedition don't quite flow as well. This is partly just due to the actual drudgery of tramping through the woods and the lava fields on a wild goose chase, but it's just not quite as engaging as the beginning or end of the story. So, in the end, I think I maybe admire Gloss's skill as a writer a little bit more than I actually enjoyed reading the book.

That's a bit of a backhanded compliment.

I suppose so. But it is a good book, it just wasn't my favorite.

So, what happened to the little girl?

It's a bit of a bummer, and definitely a SPOILER.

You're the worst, Lucas.

Wild Life by Molly Gloss, Saga Press trade paperback edition, February 2019 (originally published 2000), 302 pages, pairs well with edible roots and berries

Links:

Here's the author's website, if you're into that kinda thing.

Here's the cover designer's website, if you're into that kinda thing.

If you like stories about the sasquatch, and stop-motion animation, you may enjoy Missing Link from Studio Laika. It has nothing to do with this book, except for the inclusion of a sasquatch, but still.