The Wild [Paperback]

Whitley Strieber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1991

When Bob Duke turns into a wolf and begins to roam the streets of Manhattan, his wife and son vow to find him and restore his humanity. By the author of The Wolfen and Communion. Reissue.

Product Details

• Paperback: 378 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (March 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812512774
• ISBN-13: 978-0812512779
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,166,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No One Can Resist the Call, July 6, 2000

By 

Michael D. Winkle (Tulsa, OK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wild (Paperback)

A small, loving family faces ruin due to its inability to mesh with harsh, workaday New York City. Bob Duke, the traditional breadwinner, a poetic, impractical man, reaches the end of his rope (and money) and seeks any out. The "out" comes when a wolf in Central Park Zoo catches his gaze and "captures" him. On a business trip to Atlanta, Bob transforms temporarily into a wolf, wreaking havoc in a hotel. Upon his return to New York he changes again, more-or-less permanently. This metamorphosis marks the beginning of a crazy rollercoaster ride leading from a filthy dog pound to the Canadian forests as cops, SWAT teams, hunters, coy-dogs, and everyone else rise up to hunt him.

"If only he could talk! 'This is all so silly,' he would say. 'I'm about the least offensive person you could meet.'" (p. 205, TOR ed.) If The Wild is a horror novel, the horror is learning how truly helpless and terrified one would be, trapped, fully aware, in an animal's form. Bob can't talk or write, his hands are now unmanipulative paws, and virtually anyone who sees him tries to kill him. His plight is described with the poignancy of Olaf Stapledon's bucolic novel Sirius, but the pursuit of Bob Duke races along with the frenzy of a Jackie Chan movie.

Bob Duke, used to pate de foie gras and caviar, must eat diseased rats and Drano-soaked garbage. He fights dogs, wolves, a child-rapist, and an extremely unfriendly bear. He nearly drowns, freezes, and starves in the woods. Meanwhile, wife Cindy and son Kevin search for him, aided by a tired old Native American shaman and a Dana-Scully-type psychiatrist. I have read many stories of shape-shifters; such characters usually are loners from the start. (In Andre Norton novels like The Jargoon Pard, for instance, the heroes are outsiders, nearly friendless if not actually hated by their peers.) In The Wild, Bob Duke's family suffers almost as much anguish and pain as Bob himself, and their life on the run is as hellish as his. This is an obvious course to take but one I don't remember reading in a lycanthropy novel before.

What I have read often enough is that the animal's spirit somehow pollutes the human soul -- intelligence fades, he/she becomes bloodthirsty, psychotic, or downright evil. The Wild describes a perfect melding of human intelligence with wolf instinct and supernormal senses -- Bob can hunt down a deer and simultaneously feel sorry he has to kill "Bambi". "And he would die having had one of the highest of experiences: to be a raw animal, in the body of an animal, with all his human consciousness intact." (p. 304) The human mind is enhanced, not soiled, by the lupine.

There are scenes of wolf dominance-submission in The Wild that may offend some readers, and Bob Duke is such a loser as a human that some may not sympathize with him. None of this has lessened The Wild's impact on me. It became my favorite book the moment I began it, and nine years later I doubt anything will threaten its supremacy. I will simply follow it "deep into the freedom and safety of the wild." (the end)

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and disturbing, June 5, 2001

By 

Angela Linton "Angie" (Manchester) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wild (Paperback)

Whitley Strieber is a very gifted author but so far this is only the 3rd book of his that I've really enjoyed - the other two being "Billy" and "The Wolfen". Like them "The Wild" is a genuinely disturbing novel full of images that I will probably never forget - though in some cases I will certainly try to ... I doubt that any other writer could so successfully portray the transformation from man to wolf - the struggle between the desire for 'the wild' and the love of family. I found the novel both deeply compelling and deeply upsetting to read - particularly because of the many images of animals dying unpleasant deaths.

Verdict: Probably the most convincing werewolf novel I've ever encountered - he really gets inside the skin of the animal ...

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting twist on traditional werewolf legend., June 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wild (Paperback)

Most people are familiar with horror stories about doomed person forced to turn into wolf/monster during the full moon and kill innocent people. The good news for Bob Duke, the protagonist of *The Wild* is that he does not become a traditional werewolf. The (initially) bad news is that he does turn into a wolf, and the transformation is permanent. As Duke gradually gets used to his new body,he comes to love the freedom of being a wild animal. Whitley Strieber has written a great work of imagination, showing the reader what it might be like to be a wolf with the sentience of a human being. Although most bookstores put *The Wild* in their horror sections, I think it is more a fantasy. The only drawback comes in the ending-I think it would have been nice if Strieber had shown greater faith in humanity.