Mona Fastvold has mounted an exquisitely crafted sophomore feature with The World to Come, the tale of two married women in the early American frontier who find love and solace from the confines upon them. Structured by diary entries, Fastvold takes a lyrical approach to a dire story that echoes into modern times like a tender, warning reminder. She depicts a not-so-distant time when harrowing medicine was documented plainly, where there was little room for feeling lest you derail your own means of survival, where the interior lives of women were excised. But as much as Fastvold’s thematic observations feel like removing a bandage from a still festering wound, it also swoons with the divine release that comes from unexpected, consuming, necessary love.
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