Harper, 368 pp.
Published May 8, 2018
DISCLAIMER: I received a free physical ARC of this book from Harper via a Goodreads giveaway for review purposes. This did not inform or influence my opinion in any way.
Cursed. Maisie Cothay has never known the feel of human flesh: born with the power to kill or resurrect at her slightest touch, she has spent her childhood sequestered in her family’s manor at the edge of a mysterious forest. Maisie’s father, an anthropologist who sees her as more experiment than daughter, has warned Maisie not to venture into the wood. Locals talk of men disappearing within, emerging with addled minds and strange stories. What he does not tell Maisie is that for over a millennium her female ancestors have also vanished into the wood, never to emerge—for she is descended from a long line of cursed women.
But one day Maisie’s father disappears, and Maisie must venture beyond the walls of her carefully constructed life to find him. Away from her home and the wood for the very first time, she encounters a strange world filled with wonder and deception. Yet the farther she strays, the more the wood calls her home. For only there can Maisie finally reckon with her power and come to understand the wildest parts of herself.
What would life without touch be like? A parent's hug, the shove of a classmate playing tag, a lover's first kiss? Such a reality sounds dark, antiseptic, and cold, yet Maisie Cothay knows no other life. Afflicted with the power to kill and resurrect at the slightest touch, her world encompasses only a few rooms of Urizon, her late mother's estate, a sandbox in the palatial grounds outside, and the cautious presence of her father and an elderly housekeeper. What Should Be Wild uses the disruption of that solitary, sterile environment to explore the development from girl to woman in a chilling modern fantasy in the vein of The Handmaid's Tale and The Bloody Chamber.
Intertwined with her journey are the stories of seven women in a dark wood, a mirror of the forest beside Urizon. All Maisie's kin, these women—and, in one instance, a child—lived on the estate at different points over the course of 1,500 years. Each behaved in some way contrary to societal expectations at the time: premarital sex, poor manners, failure to marry before a certain age. These alleged failings endangered their well-being and so each woman found shelter in a kind of arboreal purgatory, never aging or falling ill. Such stasis draws pointed attention not only to enduring backwards attitudes about the role and capabilities of women, but a similarly abiding rebellion by the afflicted parties.
Maisie functions as a more general proxy for the journey towards womanhood and independence that her ancestors stalled. Through her actions alone can the others find peace and the predatory nature of the woods be sated. Her naiveté grates occasionally, even when she wields a reckless, brash attitude with all the justified entitlement of the perpetually sheltered. In her quieter moments of doubt and need Maisie becomes the most accessible; freed from Urizon yet still imprisoned by her strange gift, reconciling the powers and limitations of her touch serves as the emotional catalyst to usher her into womanhood.
Simply by reading a description of the plot and how Maisie and her ancestors fit within it may give one a good sense of the allegories at work. More often than not, Fine deploys them in a straightforward—even heavy-handed—fashion, which is sometimes a shame considering the richness of setting and myth she builds throughout the book. However, this directness leaves no room for doubt: What Should Be Wild hones in on the 'civilized' oppression of women, providing a daughter of the modern age with the tools and opportunity to undo centuries of harm. It's a powerful statement as only fairy tales can be, full of wonder and darkness and peril. While it may lack some of its predecessors' delicacy, it maintains every ounce of satisfaction in its protagonist's struggle and ultimate triumph.
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