BOOK REVIEW: We Went to the Woods by Caite Dolan-Leach #wewenttothewoods

They went off the grid. Their secrets didn’t. For readers of The Secret History and The Immortalists comes a novel about the allure—and dangers—of disconnecting.

About the Book

Certain that society is on the verge of economic and environmental collapse, five disillusioned twenty-somethings make a bold decision: They gather in upstate New York to transform an abandoned farm, once the site of a turn-of-the-century socialist commune, into an idyllic self-sustaining compound called the Homestead.

Mack, a publicly disgraced grad-school dropout, believes it’s her calling to write their story. She immediately falls in love with all four friends, seduced by their charisma and grand plans—and deeply attracted to their secrets. But it proves difficult for Mack to uncover the truth about their nightly disappearances and complicated loyalties, especially since she is protecting her own past.

Initially exhilarated by restoring the rustic dwellings, planting a garden, and learning the secrets of fermentation, the group is soon divided by intense romantic and sexual relationships, jealousies, slights and suspicions. And as winter settles in, their experiment begins to feel not only misguided, but deeply isolating and dangerous.

Caite Dolan-Leach spins a poignant and deeply human tale with sharp insights into our modern anxieties, our collective failures, and the timeless desire to withdraw from the world.

Reflection

Have you ever been at a point in your life where you wish you could sort of go off the grid? Escape into nature and set up a new life away from the troubles behind you? In We Went to the Woods, a former doctoral student named Mackenzie (the similarities started and mostly ended right there) moves back to her home in Ithaca following an ill-advised and scandalous move on a reality show that ultimately gets her kicked out of grad school.

When she leaves her parents’ home to follow a group of four, young, attractive strangers establishing a commune in upstate New York, Mack finds herself in another anthropological experiment. On a piece of farmland owned by one of their families, the five set up a small commune of cabins for sleeping, a main cabin for cooking, and a water source. As they settle into their new lives, things go well at first and their narrative is peppered with small moments of freedom as they embrace their departure from society. But over time, their interpersonal dynamics complicate and things begin to become tense as they interact with the much more established commune nearby.

This book is fraught with political and social tensions. A group of very privileged, white people set off to leave society behind, in a story that seems to mock the sort of social elitism of a group such as these people. Though their arguments center around pesticides and environmental concerns, the true question raised by this book is why people choose to leave their lives, rather than what they hoped to build. This group seemed ill-prepared to actually adapt to this way of living. Though they draw from the past, they also seem to lack the forethought to not fall into the same pattern of failure as groups who came before them.

An interesting book that may not appeal to many readers, but brings up interesting questions about why these sorts of communal living arrangements succeed or fail, and why someone may choose to leave their life behind, as well as to return to it. The characters are at once deep thinkers and incredibly shallow, preferring to showcase their political beliefs while ignoring any sort of emotions or feelings related to one another or themselves.

Thank you to Random House for my copy. Opinions are my own.