Enjoy this special Q&A with Lauren Groff to celebrate the publication of her latest novel, The Vaster Wilds.

You have described The Vaster Wilds as a retelling of Robinson Crusoe – can you tell us about your relationship with that book? And how and why you decided to write this book in that vein?

Oh, I absolutely adore Robinson Crusoe, not only because it's an adventure story, but also because it's a dazzling view into the mindset of an early-18th century English Protestant man. I wanted to flip this idea inside out, to use my own protagonist – a young girl – to recognize and critique the structures in which she has been raised.

Most of your novels centre around a female protagonist – what was different about writing this character compared to e.g. Marie de France? Reviewers have said you have turned the American tradition of man vs wilderness around in this book. Was that something you were intending to do?

Matrix was definitely centred around women, but Fates and Furies was split between the genders, The Monsters of Templeton was pretty equally divided, as well, and Arcadia was in the point of view of a man, so I do think I write for and toward all genders. I was certainly playing with the man vs. nature mythos that underpins the United States in this book.

Was it difficult to write a novel based nearly solely around one character?

It was! But she's never wholly alone, of course. She has her memories and a small, constant voice always with her.

The protagonist doesn’t have a name. Why did you choose this for the key character in the story?

She has some names that have never quite fit her completely – an orphan, likely from a prostitute mother who abandoned her, she is named Lamentations Callat officially, and when she enters into service at four years of age, she becomes something of a pet and is often called by pet names. In the wilderness, she understands the power of naming and withholds the pleasure of self-naming until her name is no longer of much importance.

Nature plays a huge role in the novel – disease, animal predators, starvation – how was the process of writing this? What was the research journey?

I adore research. I read a number of primary and secondary sources about Jamestown (the first permanent English settlement in the New World) in 1609 and 1610, and then some more modern texts interpreting and calling these primary sources into question. I sank back, with wholehearted joy, into Shakespeare to get a sense of rhythm and vocabulary and the way an Elizabethan mind would move, in following a thought, and did other research on what happens to human bodies in physical duress. This book was pure joy to research.

Can you tell us a bit about the wider themes of the book – about the search for freedom at the start of America’s history?

This book seeks to call into question some of the foundational myths of America, to move into and against the social structures that an English person at the time would have been born caged within, to play with received ideas about man's dominion over nature, and the nature of god. My hope – always! – is to engage the reader not only emotionally, but intellectually, viscerally, sensually, and spiritually as well.