My review of Portland author Peter Rock’s new novel, My Abandonment, has been posted on the Rumpus.

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote about his urge to grab and devour a live woodchuck so he could taste the animal’s “wildness.” It’s an admission that seems to say more, specifically, about Thoreau himself than it does, generally, about man’s relationship to nature—and as such, it’s enthralling. Peter Rock’s My Abandonment, written in the voice of a young girl living secretly in a forest, is at its best in similar moments.