A big thank you to NetGalley and Serpents Tail for providing me with an e-arc of this novel, in return for an honest review.

In The Word for Woman is Wilderness, Abi Andrews succeeds in merging fictionalised travelogue and memoir with evocative nature writing and nuanced meditations on subjects as diverse as gender, imperialism and astro physics.

The Word for Woman is Wilderness follows the thoughts and adventures of Erin, a funny and insightful 19 year old woman who opts to undertake a solitary journey into the wilds of Alaska from her hometown in England. Having never travelled abroad, Erin is inspired to undertake this journey having watched a documentary about hiker and traveller Chris McCandless (whose story was adapted into the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer) and considering how his journey may have differed if it had been undertaken by a woman. Meditating further on what she believes to be the societal archetype of 'solitary male explorer’, Erin’s goal is to directly challenge this archetype and prove that women are just as capable of completing a journey into the solitary wilderness.

The Word for Woman is Wilderness is an especially timely novel, as issues such as sexual harassment, gender identity and global warming occupy more and more of our colllective consciousness. It is a passionate, thoughtprovoking and at times poigniant novel of discovery; of unearthing and discovering our own personal identity, as well as the world we occupy and the myriad microcosms within nature.

I would highly recommend it, and look forward to reading more from Abi Andrews in the future.

The Word for Woman is Wilderness is due to be published on the 1st February 2018.

I took a little time to get into this novel as Erin who is planning an adventure to travel to Alaska seems to throw a lot of different topics into the beginning parts and the feminist angle may lead some readers to believe the book has a definite agenda.
However it is certainly - like Erin - worth persevering with this tale, as she does by writing and filming her travels across Iceland America Canada and then to her wilderness destination - Alaska.
This is a story of personal growth and overcoming challenges as the 19 year old faces all forms of transport, many different people and the potential hazards of nature and animals across some of the remotest lands.
"Even in the best place in the world in which to be a woman it is still better to be a man", states Erin's friend in Iceland, yet interestingly it is the male characters she meets on her travels who remain in my mind. Those who take Erin under their wing or show her astounding sights or even through their tragedy allow Erin to face her own personal demons.
In some ways it is Jack London's 'Call of the Wild' meets 'Moby Dick' with a definite nod towards the writing of Jack Kerouac, but Erin has much to say about the world in which we now inhabit.
Sometimes she swerves off into random topics such as the Pill, astronauts and the Gaia hypothesis but often these passages melt into the natural world and reach Erin's immediate surroundings in which she needs to survive. She does mention Bear Grylls quite a lot but I've actually got more of a liking for Erin's approach to the natural world than our Chief Scout adventurer who's made a career about all things wild. Erin really cares about the destruction of the planet (fracking and population growth are discussed amongst many other threats).
Sometimes those she meets are threatening and do not conform at all to how Erin believes the people of wild environments might usually behave. Her parents although terrified of her adventure could be proud of her whole approach and we as readers can learn a lot.
This is a debut novel and is certainly different from many other books. There are also photographs and drawings to add to the text which are interesting. Nature and the part of humans surviving in wilderness is a growing market amongst books and this novel is a valuable addition to the genre - and not just for women readers!

A remarkable book, part coming of age, part travelogue, part meditation, part feminist philosophy. It is rare that a book feels so fresh and unusual. In essence it is the story of 19 year old Erin, who, inspired by the story of Chris McCandless, travels to Alaska. So this is the travelogue. But along the way she muses on space travel, nature (with drawings and pictures) and in particular the place of women in the world and their contact with the natural world.
Throughout she retains her own unique voice - very much that of a 19 year old girl, but with a lot of mature thought and philosophy.
I wasn't wholly convinced by all her arguments, but am very pleased to have been introduced to such a special novel.

This is certainly an ambitious and in many ways a remarkable exploration of many themes by Abi Andrews as she charters an exploration made by the fictional 19 year old Erin from middle England to the wilds of Alaska via Iceland, Greenland and Canada. During her journey Erin is making a documentary but if you are thinking this will be some kind of conventional travelogue then you will be sadly mistaken as the narrative of the journey is overlaid with themes as diverse as space travel, religion, environmentalism and perhaps most important of all feminism as Erin discusses what the place of women would be in the male dominated mountain man culture of the wild. This is a story of a young woman going places and encountering adventures some exceedingly dangerous that would be distinctly out of bounds for the normal female.

There are constant references throughout the book to the ill fated journey into Alaska by Chris McCandless (Call of the Wild) who would eventually die of food poisoning isolated and trapped in his bus and indeed Erin eventually ends her journey staying alone in an isolated cabin not far from where McCandless perished. Here she reflects not only on her life but the state of feminism and the relationship of human kind to the environment. Also included in the book are various photographs which add authenticity to the story.

A remarkable book that enhances one's knowledge of the native peoples beliefs and how we need to evaluate our present stance on the environment and gender. I would certainly like to recommend this to all.

Didn't finish this book. I didn't enjoy all the hunting, skinning and killing. Definitely not for me.

Abi Andrews has written a remarkably ambitious and thought provoking meditation on what it is to be a woman with strong connections to the earth, the environment and the wilderness. She develops a philosophy through the young 19 year old Erin, a brave and courageous woman, who embarks on a thrilling and enthralling adventure through the Arctic wilderness and across the US. It begins with a reflection on why it is men who are explorers and adventurers, such as Bear Grylls. She watches a Chris McCandless documentary which provides the impetus for the far reaching decision to travel across the Arctic through a difficult road trip and eventually choosing to live in an isolated cabin in Alaska completely alone. She undertakes the mission of making her own video documentary and biography, filming interviews with people and the events that she encounters, including her personal impressions and emotional feelings on the whole process. This is an extraordinary challenge to the tenet that this is a man's world.

I loved Erin's exploration of a wide and diverse range of subject matter, crucial to the development of a universal feminist philosophy on the protection of the wondrous wilderness, connecting the threads of her thinking on being a woman with that of the need for environmental protection. She draws on Inuit approaches on life and death in her conclusions. This is a terrific story of adventure, original in its construction of a philosophical approach to the study of feminism, with a Erin who is implacable in her determination to protect the wilderness she is bewitched by and loves. A wonderfully brilliant read that makes a change from my usual reading fare. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Serpent's Tail for an ARC.

This is an adventure novel unlike any adventure novel you have read before (I think so, anyway: clearly, I haven’t read all of them, so I can’t be sure). There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the author, Abi Andrews, takes her female protagonist, Erin, into what has historically been a man’s world: exploring the wilderness. Secondly, the book’s mixture of fact and fiction is so well constructed that without the phrase "A Novel" in the title you could be forgiven for thinking you are reading a travel diary, albeit a very literary one. What we get when these two combine is a "feminist documentary on wilderness".

That first characteristic, a woman in a man’s world, is key. Without doubt this (at least, the first 80% of it) is a feminist book setting out to show the injustice and oppression of the patriarchy that has dominated society.

After watching a film about Chris McCandless, Erin makes a decision to take a road trip across Canada in order to stay on her own in a remote cabin in Alaska.

"I cried and promised myself I would start a savings account to fund a trip to Alaska, where I too could live in the wilderness in total solitude. Then I went through the film step by step and analysed how it would have been different if the guy had been a girl."

Because

"Even on those documentary channels that do programmes on whole families homesteading in the wilderness the woman is always Mountain Man’s wife, never, ever Mountain Woman, just an annexe of the Mountain Man along with his beard, pipe and gun."

She decides that she will use a video camera to capture events and interviews with people she meets and to create a documentary for which she has great plans on her return. The way the documentary and her feelings about it develop are fascinating elements of the story: the documentary serves as a way of filtering experiences to decide what or how things matter.

For a while, I was a bit worried that the premise of the book seemed to be “man has subjugated woman and man has subjugated nature, therefore women and nature should have an affinity”. I wasn’t sure about quotes like:

"Cetaceans are women’s allies in the war against patriarchy because patriarchy holds the cetaceans down with us. Orcas travel in matriarchal pods. The root of the word dolphin, delphus, means womb."

But, as the story and the philosophy develop, they become more and more compelling and coherent. I am not saying I am in 100% agreement and am converted to Erin’s views of women’s place in the world and the right way to live, but her thoughts are well put together and make for an engrossing, thought-provoking read.

The book is the story of her journey and the time she spends alone in Alaska. The journey to Alaska includes a number of incidents that confirm Erin’s view that it is a man’s world (mainly unwanted sexual attention).

Mixed in with the events, Erin takes time to record her thoughts about a wide variety of topics, all of which she connects together. So, we get a travel documentary filled with feminism, biography and then also thoughts about things such as the Voyager space missions, the lunar landings, time capsules, the Golden Records, Rachel Carson, the Unabomber, Jack Kerouac and many others. Gradually, all of these different topics converge and connect and the final 20% of the book becomes Erin’s philosophy for life which is largely based on the Inuit philosophy of metempsychosis:

"Metempsychosis. That is what the Ancient Greeks called the transmigration of souls, similar to what the Inuit believe in. E=mc2 is the famous equation by Einstein and what it means is that the amount of energy in a particle is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared, and what this means is that the Inuits are right again. It means that energy and mass or matter are interchangeable."

This combination of story and contemplation gives the book the feel of a documentary rather than a work of fiction (and clearly not everything in it is fiction). Andrews' writing is vivid and observant: I was left feeling that someone somewhere must have lived all of this given the detail as it’s hard to imagine someone thinking of all that without experiencing it.

"We walked inland through the mountains against the meltwater of the glacier as it found its way to the sea. It was urgent, dense and grey; panicked like a jar of paintbrush water knocked onto a meticulous landscape."

Alone in Alaska, Erin’s thoughts get more and more extravagant and include dream sequences. It is this that helps her pull it all together and leads us to the final sections of the book which focus more on philosophy and how to live life.

You don’t have to agree with everything Andrews gives Erin to say and think, but, even if you don’t, there is plenty of food for thought in what Erin discusses. The story is fairly straightforward, but is well written. The combination of story and contemplation makes this an absorbing book.

To be published by Serpent’s Tail, I received a free review copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.