The bombed and wrecked London of The World My
Wilderness is unrecognizable today. It is the wilderness
where the 17-year-old protagonist, Barbary, feels most comfortable
and spends her days in 1946. Her mother has sent Barbary to her
ex-husband in London in the hope that he can civilize her. Barbary
had been a junior member of the Resistance in France during World
War II and has not been able to adjust to peacetime.
Barbary is a difficult project. When she’s supposed to be in art
classes, she is exploring bomb sites with her stepbrother, who
joined her in the Resistance and is also now in London. The
lawlessness of her war experience is what Barbary, “a jungle
creature,” knows. She reverts to stealing and lying until an
accident occurs and she must confront the wilderness within
herself.
With the subject matter of war’s emotional fallout, The World
My Wilderness departed from Macaulay’s social satires. “The
World My Wilderness showed that new depths of pity had
transmuted her satirical approach,” the [British] Dictionary
of National Biography said.
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