Customer Reviews

Savage Lands

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book received good reviews, but get ready for a challenging read. The author's attempts at imagery can become tiresome when the reader wants the narrative to progress. The characters are never completely developed, and the story line is choppy. Because of the wide opinion on the book, it would seem to lend itself to Book club review.

Be prepared for a sluggish start. The early portion of the book is heavy with elaborate descriptions that delay rather than enhance the narrative. Some verbal images are distorted is a way so as to obscure their descriptive purpose. It can become annoying.

I recommend the reader be satisfied with not completely understanding the characters, their motives or their connections with one another. The author leaves the characters obscure, perhaps because the characters themselves are ill, or unfortunately developed. If so, this or the reason might have been conveyed more clearly. Empty characters can be developed. Why does Elizabeth immediately resent all the "chickens?" Is there not one among them with a single, admirable quality.

Being no expert on the early French settlements in Louisiana, I cannot address about the historical depiction. The description of social and political dynamics leaves much to the imagination. Clearly, despite Montaigne, Elizabeth's destiny was mainly determined by male figures in her life and only in small part of her own making.

Savage Lands begins with a very intriguing premise: Frenchwomen are needed in the French Louisiana colony in order to become wives. The year is 1703. The novel is a story about life in a new strange land. The major themes are the fate of the women (especially the main character, Elisabeth), difficulties of living in the new world, corruption, and the at times negative nature of human beings.

Despite the interesting premise Savage Lands is plagued by several problems that are in my opinion deal-breaking. To really enjoy a novel I need to have some vested interest in the characters. I don't need to love them but I can't be indifferent to what happens to them. Heck, even hating them is something because then you desire to see them fail. In this book the characters invoked neither hate or love...just general dislike. Elisabeth, the main character, becomes annoying very quickly. She thinks herself superior to other wives. She is meant to be independent and free thinking yet she inexplicably falls madly in love with her husband. Their love story is never fully fleshed out. Another problem with the novel was the enormous amount of details. I love rich and pertinent details but details for details sake gets old fast. Don't even get me started on the lack of dialogue. Overall I would have to say the problems really took away from the novel and prevented me from enjoying it.

In 1703, twenty-three girls of marriageable age embark on a perilous voyage from Paris to the French colony of Louisiana. Called "casket girls", these young women are destined for marriage to the colonists. While France seethes with the greed of speculation and the Mississippi Company forms to accommodate trading on a grand scale, the reality proves far different for those who arrive in the swampy bayou dotted with wooden shacks. The colonists and soldiers, slim in ranks, live meagerly, desperate to sustain a ragged existence, making treaties with local native tribes to counteract the English, who are also determined to conquer this land. Just as she did in The Nature of Monsters, Clark creates an utterly believable and daunting landscape, where Indian raids threaten and disease is rife, where settlers toil against incredible odds waiting for reinforcements from France.

The landscape is bleak, the problems formidable, but in Clark's impressive rendering of history at a turning point, the characters are richly drawn, alive on the pages with all the passion, danger, greed and fear that plagues these first Louisiana settlers. Most touching and memorable is Elisabeth Savaret. Disdaining the chatter and foolishness of the other women, Elisabeth claims the role of outsider. And unlike the others, her marriage to a French Canadian ensign in the army is filled with a wild passion that surprises her and threatens to overtake her life. Jean-Claude Babelon, Elisabeth's husband, makes springtime forays to the Indian camps, trading for goods and food, keeping his ear to the ground for the progress of the English, ambition and greed burning in his heart.

In time, Jean-Claude makes the acquaintance of a former cabin boy left to mingle with the Indians and learn their languages, August Guichard, reporting to the governor what he is able to learn. August thrives in this environment, making a fast friendship with Jean-Claude, eventually becoming part of the couple's charmed circle. But the serpent of betrayal brings about a wrenching event, part of the great drama unfolding in the fledgling colony. Clark captures the magnitude of the efforts at settlement, the extreme hardships, the passions that threaten to undo Elisabeth's and August's evolving participation in the hierarchy of the colony. The canvas is vast, tragic and magnificent, the characters caught in the vortex of history as distant from Paris as the moon. Clark proves, once again, her mastery of history and her deep understanding of human nature, colonial French Louisiana pulsing with the ambition and desperation of the settlers. Luan Gaines/2009.

As much as anything, the novel "Savage Lands" by Clare Clark is a study of women in the Louisiana Territory in the first half of the 18th Century. That author Clark has chosen that period and place as the setting for her new novel is significant, too, for they are less often presented in American historical fiction. As it is, a great strength in the novel is the author's faithful scholarship in the details of indigenous peoples and the topography of land and climate.

In 1704, Fench King Louis XIV sent twenty-three girls and young women to become wives in Louisiana, which had been populated by single male traders,explorers, and colonizers. This is the story of how those women and their new husbands fared. Many of the young females were criminals of a variety of sorts, nearly all had been desperately poor Parisians. Whereas the rumors of fabulous fortunes to be had were told of the colonies, what they met was a reality of starvation, dirt-floor cabins, uninhabitable climate, and epidemic disease. There, too, we see first hand slavery of both Africans and native Americans and indentured bondage as well as economic bondage to crooked government agents who control everything and civil authorities who made promises of sustenance that were never kept.

The story is principled by three heroic figures, Auguste, a cabin boy cum linguist. who learns several of the native languages, Jean-Claude, a facile trader among the tribes, and Elizabeth, the only truly educated one among the women. The interweaving of the lives of these three and those around them, make up the book's intricate plot of survival in the wild. Author Clark, a masterful story teller, weaves all these complicated strands together without ever losing the reader and holds you on the edge of your seat as the protagonist(s) face death almost on a daily basis.

Of particular plesure for me in "Savage Lands" is the author's inventive use of figurative language. I hope I never forget the turns of phrase such as "his yellow eyes like battered coins in their litle purses of flesh"; "when the light in the cabin was gray and soft as though filtered through dust and the ease of sleep still hung about them"; "the town of Mobile rose like a dismal act of defiance from the chaos of swamps that encircled it"; and, "the sun flattened to a bronze disk and slid into the earth". These are but a few examples. The entire book reads like that, like poetry.

Discovering an author that is new to me is one of the delights of reading. Clare Clak is one such, guaranteed to delight you and grab you with her characters that never let go. A truly great reading experience, one that will also teach you a great deal of history.

I borrowed this book from the library and a quick read of the cover made me think this was exactly the book for me - historical fiction, love story, betrayal. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

This is an incredibly depressing book which is pretty poorly written. As other reviewers have pointed out, the characters are just horrible people. Not even interesting horrible, just the kind of people you'd hate being in the same room with, let alone reading a full story about. The narrative is really confusing.

The author jumps around a lot. She focuses on inane details like the swamps and barely mentions key points of the story. Halfway through the novel, the story changes entirely and a whole new crew of insufferable people are introduced. The copyeditor must have given up at some point because around page 200, there are some pretty basic spelling errors.

This is another tour de force from Clare Clark, and not to be missed. As with The Great Stink and The Nature of Monsters, Clark creates an intense and atmospheric world which instantly draws one in and is utterly absorbing until the very last page. The backdrop - the struggles of early 18th-century settlers in colonial French Louisiana - has clearly been impeccably researched and Clark realizes the desperate conditions and appalling hardships this small band of humanity must have suffered with astonishing detail. Against this scene Clark's main protagonists, Elizabeth and Auguste, immediately capture our attention and the unfolding drama of their intertwined lives is gripping. The result is a beautifully written story, uncompromising in its exploration of human endurance and suffering. This is a book to read slowly whilst savouring every page.

The storyline captured my attention. I had no idea that a ship full of young frenchwomen had been recruited to go to the new 'colony' of France in Louisiana to become wives of the settlers there. I felt the story started off well, beginning to flesh out the main character Elisabeth, her feelings about leaving France, what she chose to take with her, her attitude about the whole venture. And then....the author lost me. Elisabeth had a very superior attitude about her intellect, and despite attempts by the other women who made the voyage to befriend her, she used her intellect as an excuse not to bother with them. OK - so she's so smart she would rather be alone than interact with the others, so smart that she proceeds to self abort every pregnancy from her husband Jean Claude because of a simple statement he made once? Elisabeth makes much of her love for her husband, who in reality is very self absorbed, detached and gone from camp for months at a time. Hmmm.... yes, Elisabeth is one smart cookie - eh? About midpoint in the book I found this character so tedious I just didn't care what happened to her and stopped reading.

Claire Clark's novel is an interesting look back at a not-so-well-known bit of Southern history. It's about young women "purchsed" by the King of France to send to Louisiana to become wives of the French and Canadian settlers. I'm sure the intent was to populate the area and bring a bit of civility to the rugged land.

The writing is beautiful- with lush descriptions and wonderful insight to social dynamics. The central characters of Jean-Claude, Elisabeth and Auguste were hard to get attached to- each seemed selfish and difficult to like. Their plight was intriguing and kept me reading. I would have liked the novel more, if I'd become enamoured by one of them. Some bits of the story were slow, but I felt it reflected teh general tone & temp of teh times.

I grew up on the Gulf Coast and found Clark's descriptions of the heat, humidity, hurricanes, mosquitoes, etc to be right on target.

In 1704, the French colony of Louisiana is struggling: fewer than two hundred men living in a land which is as much an enemy as the English. Ms Clark's descriptions of the land, of its heat, humidity and insects provide a richly described backdrop for the lives of the three people around whom this novel revolves.

Elisabeth Savaret is one of twenty-three women sent from Paris in 1704 to marry men they have never met. Elisabeth brings with her precious books, and little expectation of happiness, but finds herself falling passionately in love with her husband Jean-Claude Babelon. Jean-Claude is frequently separated from Elisabeth as he travels amongst friendly Indian tribes trying to keep them friendly to the French by distributing gifts and muskets and also securing much needed food for the colony. There is a darker and more dangerous side to Jean-Claude as well, which gradually becomes apparent to Elisabeth.

Jean-Claude has befriended Auguste Guichard, a 12 year old boy who has been forced by the colony's governor to live with the Indians to learn more about them. It is Auguste's return to the settlement as a young man, where his friendship with Jean-Claude becomes complicated by love for Elisabeth that has devastating consequences for all involved.

Some aspects of this novel worked well for me: Ms Clark made the hardships endured by the settlers in such primitive conditions very real. At times I found the description almost overpowering, yet strangely appropriate. I found many of the characters difficult to like. Their actions and reactions may well be understandable, but the pervasive sense of hopelessness for many of the women, and the brutality of many of the men does not make it easy to engage with them. Overall I enjoyed the novel. It may not have entertained me as much as I would like but it made me curious to learn more about the French settlement of Louisiana.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Good historical novel with alot of detail of life in early America. It offers a different view of the french role in the early struggle to colonize America.
The central story is the life and loves of a young lady from france who was sent to the colony to find a husband. She marries a man she barely knows, and because of her deep love for him, she makes herself miscarry all of her pregnancies, a decision she comes to deeply regret later in life, when her health and fertility suffer as a result of her previous miscarriges.