The Wilderness: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Samantha Harvey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2009

It’s Jake’s birthday. He is sitting in a small plane, being flown over the landscape that has been the backdrop to his life – his childhood, his marriage, his work, his passions. Now he is in his mid-sixties, and he isn’t quite the man he used to be. He has lost his wife, his son is in prison, and he is about to lose his past. Jake has Alzheimer’s.

As the disease takes hold of him, Jake struggles to hold on to his personal story, to his memories and identity, but they become increasingly elusive and unreliable. What happened to his daughter? Is she alive, or long dead? And why exactly is his son in prison? What went so wrong in his life? There was a cherry tree once, and a yellow dress, but what exactly do they mean? As Jake fights the inevitable dying of the light, the key events of his life keep changing as he tries to grasp them, and what until recently seemed solid fact is melting into surreal dreams or nightmarish imaginings. Is there anything he’ll be able to salvage from the wreckage? Beauty, perhaps, the memory of love, or nothing at all?

From the first sentence to the last, The Wilderness holds us in its grip. This is writing of extraordinary power and beauty.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Winner of the 2009 Betty Trask Prize
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009
Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award
Longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize

“A haunting, intelligent novel, crowded with powerful characters, told in a language that is never ordinary, but always clear and elegant.”
—Tessa Hadley, author of The Master Bedroom and Sunstroke and Other Stories

“It used to be thought that Alzheimer's unspooled the brain in the precise order in which it had grown, a decline that matched, plot point for plot point, childhood development-a kind of neural Curious Case of Benjamin Button. As the English novelist Samantha Harvey suggests in The Wilderness, her brave imagining of the disease, it's less linear and more complicated. There are moments of clarity; there is the persistence of desire; there are enduing long-term memories that remain after there is no capacity to recall what was for breakfast or if there was breakfast or what the thing called breakfast is… While most books about Alzheimer's are written from the outside looking in, this one stays within the ever-narrowing parameters of Jacob's mind.., Earlier in her life, Samantha Harvey studied philosophy, and that training is felt here, where the nature of truth is as much the protagonist as Jacob Jameson himself, and Alzheimer's disease is equally villain and muse. Every life is a mystery, Harvey seems to be saying, even to the one whose life it is.”
—New York Times Book Review

“In the glut of novels being published at the moment a really exciting debut is as rare as it ever was. Samantha Harvey's first novel is an extraordinary dramatization of a mind in the process of disintegration. [The Wilderness is] brilliant— read it now, before it scoops up all the prizes.”
—The Times (UK)

“Moving through a rich, protean mental landscape, Jake recalls and reinvents his life's themes and passions… Using recurrent, simple images—the flash of a yellow dress, freckled eyelids—Harvey beautifully, patiently ushers Jake forward to the last flicker of recognition; the whole a stunning composition of human fragility and intensity.
—The Guardian (UK)

"The Wilderness is Samantha Harvey's first novel, but it feels like a mature work, as well crafted and as cryptic—'familiar and strange in one breath'—as an ancient boat found preserved in the peat of the northern-England moors where the book is mostly set.”
—Bookforum

“Harvey infuses the text with compassion. [The Wilderness] conveys the importance of dignity and respect for those we love, no matter what their affliction.”
—Las Vegas Review-Journal

"A treat for literature lovers who appreciate complexity in their novels and aren't afraid to deal with tough topics."
—Library Journal

About the Author

Born in Kent, England, in 1975, SAMANTHA HARVEY has an M.A. in philosophy and an M.A., with distinction, from the Bath Spa Creative Writing course in 2005. In addition to writing, she has traveled extensively and taught in Japan and lived in Ireland and New Zealand. She recently co-founded an environmental charity and lives in Bath, England.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese (February 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385527632
• ISBN-13: 978-0385527637
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,197,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mesmerizing, disturbing story, January 29, 2009

By 

PT Cruiser "PT Cruiser" (CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Wilderness: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Samantha Harvey does a magnificent job of taking us inside the mind of a man, Jacob, who is slowly losing his touch with reality due to Alzheimer's Disease. The story and the circumstances, are from his point of view, and we come to realize after a while that they are sometimes confused. Things that are seemingly facts don't always match and the reader has to try and sort out the real from the imagined. But in Jacob's mind the events which cover parts of his childhood, his marriage, his children, and one or more possible affairs are all perfectly real for much of the book. Certain thoughts are strong and common throughout the book and others are only touched on and one wonders how they fit in. As the disease progresses, he too becomes more confused, but we are left with only his thoughts, not knowing which are of actual events and which are imagined or tangled with other thoughts and not entirely accurate.

When I first selected this book, I was drawn to the subject matter, a disease that is so hard to understand, but then turned away because I thought it would be depressing. I came back out of curiosity and the thought that this could be a unique story, wondering how the author would handle it. The subject matter is, of course, depressing. But Harvey is a very insightful and talented writer and the end result is a book that is both interesting and somewhat of a mystery at the same time as the reader tries to distinguish facts from increasing confusion in the character's mind. The book that made me empathize with the character as I tried to sort through his memories and come to my own conclusions about what was real and what was not. It's a story that won't leave me for a long time.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite simply spectacular, February 17, 2009

By 

Judith Paley (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Wilderness: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

But oh no, not an easy read. I'm used to racing through books, but who can race through the tangled wilderness of a deteriorating mind. And who would even want to skim quickly through the rich landscape of imagery created by this most-talented author...

Ms. Harvey deftly flips back and forth through time and memories as Jake's mind and world erodes. If we are lost, consider poor Jake-- or perhaps your mother, or your father-in-law, or your great-aunt Charlotte --as they wander through the tangled wilderness of their failing brains. Per Jake: "Time speeds up, rushing headlong into conclusions, then it stops. There is something teenagery about it. Something uncomfortable and maladroit as if it has not learnt how to pace itself with space."

And what is the nature of memory after all, when, in fact, the act of remembering irretrievably alters the memory. What's real in Jake's meanderings, what's manufactured? And what's with all this wandering around on the moors through blinding snow or fading yellow light to the jarring noise of random gunshots?

With prose worthy of Ian McEwan and the creepy imagery of Tim O'Brien's "In the Lake of the Woods", and finally and most completely, with her own talent and style, Samantha Harvey has created a masterpiece.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Literate but it loses me, February 10, 2009

By 

A. Anderson "Book Person" (Chico, Califiornia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wilderness: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This story is, I think, an exploration of the meaning of memory and and self. If memory erodes, self erodes or warps. It is a worthy topic, but I never could quite get into it.

Perhaps it is just too much work for me. Instead of crystalline language and tight architecture, it is as though the elements of book were dropped on the floor, swept back up and packaged so the reader is challenged to put it back together again. To quote the author, "The idea of the eternal story delighted Helen and perturbed him. If a thing went on forever, how could one ever know its centre point, where its weight settled? It seemed to him to not be a story at all...far too resonant of the way he is beginning to think, the motifs that repeat in his mind like subliminal messages..." [p.210] This suggests the author's intent and reader's challenge.

Samantha Harvey wants the reader to feel the disorientation of Alzheimer's. As a reader, I was willing to try and work with the author, giving the story and book time to mature as I read but I lost patience. So many of the sentences are weighted with implied significance that felt as though I needed to remember for later, and then disappeared to be replaced by a new sentence with new significance. Perhaps that is what Alzheimer's is like and Harvey has accomplished something astonishing. At the same time, the characters discuss their their duty to each other: who and how to love, whether the duty of being a Jew is greater than the duty of being a father and husband, of the limits of friendship and responsibility for one's actions. This is a literate, intelligent book with a high minded sense of non-structure that challenges the reader to bring his own order, picking up brief conclusions or assessments then reassessing a few pages later. I am willing to do that work if the language, the word choices, the structure, the atmosphere or the depth of the characters seduce me along the pages--if the craft of the writing is irresistible. I did not find that here, although I am sure that some readers will.

I felt the book was much like modern art: clear talent, tremendous intelligence but intended for an intelligentsia of which I am not a member and whose signposts I do not recognize.