Many of us have really deep intellectual lives, and thatâs something that I tried not to shy away from in this book… These women, they donât just have deep emotional lives, but they are… thinking about the world. Theyâre thinking about art. Theyâre thinking about things that are bigger than just reactions to circumstances.
âAngela Flournoy On NPR
Angela Flournoy’s highly-anticipated second novel âTHE WILDERNESS [pub: Mariner Books] dropped earlier this week already racking up a couple of literary trophies, ok, more like nominations, but major accolades nonetheless! The âsweepingâ story that âfollows five Black women over two decades of soul-searching and turmoilâ is already longlisted for the prestigious National Book Award, plus is a finalists for the â12th annual Kirkus Prize, which comes with a $50,000 cash award for winners in fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature.â The NAACP Image Award-winning author is no stranger to illustrious recognition. Ten years ago her debut sensation âTHE TURNER HOUSE was a National Book Award finalist.
Iâve always been interested… alongside the deep, decades-long friendships and connections… Iâve also been interested in the ways that people just cut family members off. So I wanted to think about the beginnings and what it feels like to have a kind of rupture with someone you love, or you grew up loving, and for it to kind of just bloom into this insurmountable distance between the two of you.Â
âAngela Flournoy On NPR
Admittedly, I havenât read The Wilderness yet. But I will. Some critics such as Jules Fitz Gerald of the Pittsburg Post-Gazette have said, âThe Wilderness follows a friend group of four middle-class millennial Black women â Desiree, January, Nakia, and Monique â in Los Angeles and New York City from 2008 to the near future of 2027.â While others like Publishers Weeklyâs Lorraine Savage describe it as âa story of five Black women and their bonds as they approach middle age.â Even the New York Times headlined it as, âFour Women, Navigating Friendship and Ambition in a World on Fire.â So initially I was like, âWait. Is this a story about four sistas or five?â đ¤ However, in a recent interview with NPR, the author explained, âIn addition to these friendships, thereâs this fifth person, this fifth woman, Danielle, whoâs Desireeâs sister, who kind of is on the margins of the story for much of the story because they are not in communication.â
The Wilderness is a kind of coming-into-middle-age novel, and I consider that journey, from young adult to a person navigating their 40s, to be just as full of mystery, self-discovery, and conflict as the one portrayed in a traditional bildungsroman. There are many road maps a young person might follow to come into their own as a teenager, but the paths are less clear for people leaving young adulthood, as what once felt certain begins to feel less so. I had an inkling of this, and I wrote into my own curiosities.
âAngela Flournoy in Publishers Weekly
I canât wait to get lost in The Wilderness. Though my TBR stacks are ever overflowing, Iâm making room for this âcoming-into-middle-age novel.â âThe friends step up for one another,â writes ZoĂŤ Jackson in The Minnesota Star Tribune. âThrough grounded bouts with the heartbreak of postpartum depression as well as more existential troubles, like how to make a place for oneself in a world post-pandemic and George Floyd reckoning. Their presence in each otherâs lives makes a dent in those pains, even when they find asking for help is hard.â
Black â Fact: Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Mickalene Thomas‘ 2014 painting âInterior: Zebra With Two Chairs and Funky Furâ is the cover of The Wilderness. According to the New York Times the gorgeous piece âdepicts a glamorous sitting room decorated elaborately with bright colors and animal prints.â Niela Orr writes, âItâs a complementary pairing: Thomasâs interest in Black womenâs interiority and our living spaces, the carefully curated rooms we triumph, wonder and crumble within, mirrors the splendor and coiled characterizations of Flournoyâs cast.â
Black â Fact #2: Angela’s executive editor at Mariner Books, Rakia Clark, acquired the manuscript for my debut novel âTHE CHEATING CURVE over 15 years ago. Subsequently, I hired the Ăźber talented and exceptionally kind Rakia as Juicy magazine’s books editor when I was editor-in-chief. She was a lecturer at CUNY at the time.
Synopsis Of The Wilderness From HarperCollins Publishers:
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthoodâoverwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequencesâswoops in and stays.
Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. Januaryâs got a relationship with a âgoodâ man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.
As these friends move from the late 2000âs into the late 2020âs, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one anotherâamid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.
The Wilderness is Angela Flournoyâs masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.
Synopsis of The Turner House From HarperCollins Publishers:
The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and goneâand some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroitâs East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts hauntsâand shapesâtheir familyâs future.
Praised by Ayana Mathis as âutterly movingâ and âun-putdownable,â  The Turner House brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. Itâs a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home.
