Why Caite Dolan-Leach’s ‘We Went to the Woods’ is great

Caite Dolan-Leach’s novel “We Went to the Woods” could be a contemporary retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” if the book’s 20-something-year-old unreliable narrator, Mack Johnston, were both the documentarian Nick Carraway and the tragic hero Jay Gatsby, remaking her entire being in the name of love — or at least attraction.

Beau, Louisa, Chloe and Jack are Mack’s “Daisy Buchanan,” her green lights guiding her to radically give up the excess and modern comforts of reliable internet, television, electricity, flushable toilets, supermarkets and money — luring her into the woods of Hector, N.Y., where the five of them start their own utopian commune, a “Homestead” where they try to live by their romantic ideals, growing their own non-genetically modified food, quoting Henry David Thoreau and living off the land.

“We Went to the Woods”
By Catie Dolan-Leach
352 pp. Random House. $27.
2019.

The goal of the experiment is to plant enough food in the spring that they’d make it through the winter; to survive in their cabins in the wilderness; to live off the grid; to lower their carbon footprint; to not fall back into the safety nets provided by their parents (although their parents would welcome them back in a heartbeat); to do the impossible (if not improbable); and to prove that they could.

Mack, of course, has another reason for running away from her previous life in New York City; her hometown in Lansing, N.Y.; and her doctorate degree in anthropology. This reason is also why she shortened her name from Mackenzie to Mack; and why she enlisted to grow tomatoes and to drink unlabeled wine in the Homestead with her fellow white, educated and privileged 20-something-year-old companions.

She’s running away to her “Hakuna Matata,” a place without hate mail — where she could endless debate whether slimy or crunchy bugs are better; or how civilization will eventually end. In the meantime, she researches (she’s an anthropologist): Why did past utopian societies fail and how can they make sure their Homestead succeeds.

“We Went to the Woods” is a fascinating look into the promise and pitfalls of utopian societies. Their Homestead combusts. Gatsby was killed. But what endures was great.

Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of “We Went to the Woods” by Caite Dolan-Leach from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.

Is Alex Landragin’s ‘Crossings’ the next ‘Westworld’?

What if you could switch bodies with another person by staring directly into another person’s eyes?

That’s largely the premise of Alex Landragin’s debut novel “Crossings,” named after an ancient and almost forgotten practice passed down through generations of the island peoples of Oaeetee.

These “crossings” are also what connects the three parts of Landragin’s book, comprised of three fictional and interconnected manuscripts from different time periods penned by different authors.

“Crossings”
By Alex Landragin
384 pp. St. Martin’s Press. $26.99.
July 28, 2020

Based on the book’s preface, this collection was published by a bookbinder who inherited the manuscript from Baroness Beattie Ellingham. Ellingham commissioned the bookbinder to bind the text together without reading any of the words; however, she died under mysterious circumstances before the task was ever completed. The widespread commercialized publication of the fictional novel “Crossings” isn’t sanctioned by the works’ fictional authors; however, the premise that you’re reading an illicit posthumous work makes consuming the tale even more delicious.

At the center of the tale is the story of Alula and her lover Koahu, a daughter and son of the island nation of Oaeetee. Theirs are the “Tales of the Albatross,” the guilt of breaking their people’s law and becoming the source of their people’s eventual demise.

Their original sin: Crossing into another person’s body without crossing back to their own. Alula had a noble reason for stealing another’s life. Perhaps Koahu did, too. But the puzzle of piecing together their past lives and connections drives the narrative, which can be read in multiple ways.

“Crossings” isn’t written chronologically, but the tales make most sense when you read them front to back in the order in which they are presented. Landragin also offers an alternate retelling — one that jumps around through different parts of the novel like in a “choose your own adventure” style book. But while the promise of another secret novel within the novel is intriguing enough, the result of the latter is disjointed and confusing (especially in ebook format).

“Crossings” is for fans of David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” and the HBO series “Westworld.”

Alex Landragin’s “Crossings” will be published on July 28, 2020. I received a free eARC of “Crossings” from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.