The Wilderness

differently." - Vogue in its "The Best Books of 2025 So Far" Round-up

"A beautifully-written novel." - The Root

"It's easy to marvel at Flournoy's precision with character, the heart of the novel, but it's the book's hard look at social and political realities that give it its teeth.... Elegant and unsettling, this novel evades the expected at every turn." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Flournoy's pages radiate with intelligence as her characters attempt to shape their lives on their own terms. It's a knockout." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Expertly conveys the power of lifelong friendships that can feel closer even than familial bonds. Their friendship comforts and fortifies the women as they navigate the perilous, thorny, messy wilderness of modern adulthood. Flournoy is a talented writer, and this will be a good book club pick for fans of Brit Bennett, Terry McMillan, and Jacqueline Woodson." - Library Journal (starred review)

"We follow these vividly drawn women through the recent past and near future, exploring their friendship dynamics as they journey through life's significant changes and cope with heartbreaking loss. Flournoy is an immersive writer, describing the interiority of her characters and where their lives take place with striking detail and insight.... An absorbing, uplifting, and poignant story of community and deep connection." - Booklist (starred review)

"The Wilderness arrives like a miracle. Here is the novel I'm always waiting for, one which captures and explains and deepens the world around me. These women, these friends - in their grief and loss, their dedication and their communion - are so achingly real it's hard to let them go. A book of ideas, gorgeously written with clear-sighted vision by one of the wisest, most talented authors working today. Angela Flournoy's The Wilderness is a book to get lost in." - Justin Torres, author of Blackouts, winner of the National Book Award

"The Wilderness is a wonderfully ambitious novel that follows five women throughout decades of friendship, as they struggle to find purpose and belonging in their rapidly-gentrifying cities. Weaving through time, Angela Flournoy explores the complexity of friendship, family, and home in a voice that is expansive yet intimate, humorous yet devastating. I loved this book." - Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half and The Mothers

"Angela Flournoy is singular in how she renders the complicated solidarity that exists between friends. In The Wilderness, there is deep tenderness, room for the grayer areas of experience, for contradiction, ambivalence and the right to be lost." - Raven Leilani, author of Luster

"All the best novels about friendship are invitations to count yourself among them, and The Wilderness is no exception; the joys and the sorrows of this book are multiplied because they are shared. Flournoy has a long-lens talent, capable of spanning great distances while keeping her characters in crisp, but always compassionate, focus, as they face the changing pressures and realities of growing up. The result is both portrait and panorama of contemporary American life." - Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries and Birnam Wood

"Sometimes a book comes along that doesn't just capture the zeitgeist-the exact feeling of being a particular kind of person in a particular period of time-but spins it. The Wilderness takes twenty-first-century black womanhood on a wild ride, and just keeps getting wilder. A triumphant whirlwind of a novel." - Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows