I’ve never been much of a reader, I always wanted to be but I’d usually get burned by a book and drop reading for a long time (Divergent 3, Rainbow Six’s long winded prologue and opening chapters), but I recently picked up The Vaster Wilds.
This book is amazing, its beautifully detailed and horrifyingly mystical, every description perfectly encapsulates the inherent beauty of nature and the danger the protagonist faces, except for the constant insistence on describing diarrhea as ‘liquid hot shit’.
I’m about 50 pages in and people defecating has been described in almost every chapter, only as shitting. Shitting with an adjective, shit, a single shat early on. There’s no other description, or even lack thereof. We are intimately aware of anytime someone defecates in this story, and Groff would rather burn in hell than leave you without the details.
I think the worst is how it feels like information squash. For a book so particular on every minute detail, you’ll go long stretches reading about personified forest creatures, the girls inner conscious melding with her new reality, and then ‘oh also she shits really hard’.
by ellieisherenow