The revelation that friendship can be vital to our resilience is what struck me the most while reading this novel. Watching these four women go through it, and by “it” I mean the vividly relatable turmoils and expectations that await us in adulthood and middle age. I mean, I will never know what it’s like to go on a grand travel excursion with a parental figure to help them on their final journey, and to lose a sister through it, but I do know what it’s like to lean on friends when family will not or cannot help see you through the hard times. So many of us know what it’s like to grieve the living, to finally risk it all and get that divorce, to flounder in our careers and in romance. As an Angeleno and a Black woman, there were scenes that felt so close to home it was like I stood with both feet in those pages.
Above all, Flournoy’s tenderness and compassion in fashioning the lives of these flawed, talented, beautiful women gave this book its big, beating heart and gave me the story about Black women and friendship I didn’t know I needed. We can have a story that involves trauma and doesn’t try to look away from race and racism, but that is serious and funny and layered, with all the gravitas we tend to give literary fiction, in a story centering Black women. While I absolutely shed tears reading this book, it’s the love that stays with me. We need more books like The Wilderness.
What have you been reading lately? Let’s chat in the comments!