The Wilderness

Written by Samantha Harvey

Narrated by Seán Barrett

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 early 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, for 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 are becoming 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, assisted by 'poor Eleanor', a childhood friend with whom for some unfathomable reason he seems to be sleeping, 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Jun 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781407440378

Samantha Harvey

Samantha Harvey has published two novels, The Wilderness and All Is Song. She has been short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Guardian First Book Award, and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. She has also won the AMI Literature Award and the Betty Trask Prize. One of The Culture Show's 12 Best New British Novelists, she has contributed to Granta (print and online), has held a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, and is a member of the Academy for the Folio Prize. She lives in Bath, England, and teaches creative writing in the master's program at Bath Spa University.

Reviews for The Wilderness

[rainpebble_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Wilderness by Samantha HarveyMy thoughts and comments:This book was a very difficult read for me what with my father-in-law and his father both succumbing to Alzheimer's Disease or dying of complications of the disease. It brought back a great many difficult memories and as my beloved father-in-law just passed a year and a half ago some of those are still very raw.This is the 2nd or 3rd Orange book of the month that I have read that has been written in a past tense and present tense back & forth manner. I do like this style of writing and I will say that this book was well written. However, I found it difficult to engage with any of the characters other than perhaps the protagonist's mother and her gentleman friend, whose parts were rather small.So I liked the style of the book but I can't say that I liked the book because of the personal issues that I had to deal with while reading it. Someone who has not had to live with this disease would, I am sure, have a whole different take on the book. I gave it 3 stars.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Jake narrates this book, and through this narration we see and experience his descent into Alzheimer's disease. First he is forgetful and sometimes confused. He retires from his job as an architect. He gets lost walking his dog. he overfeeds his dog. He forgets where his wife, mother, daughter and son are. And then he forgets who he is.I listened to this, and enjoyed Sean Barrett's narration. I did often find myself confused--which, I think, is the point? I suspect Harvey was attempting to showcase that confusion, and on audio it certainly worked for me. I did find this a little too long (10:45:00) for me, it was slow and repetitive. But then Jake find time very confusing at the end of the book also. So an interesting experiment, perhaps a little too well done.It's also sad and painful--first as Jake realizes there is a problem, then as he begins to forget there is a problem, then as he desperately tries to cling to his memories of his family and Elena and his dog. And then he looses those too.

[dubaireader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Memories, truths, confusion?It is difficult to review and grade this book, as I can see that it is cleverly constructed and perfectly illustrates the gradual demise and sense of confusion as Jake loses himself to dementia. On the other hand, it was very slow and I heaved a sigh of relief when I finally got to the end.I was listening to an unabridged audiobook, somewhat tediously read, in a rather monotone drone. However, the fact that it was audio, and therefore much harder to backtrack when I got lost, actually added to the whole confused air of the novel. When Jake was trying to recall the word for something, if I couldn't find the word immediately, the narrator continued without me, leaving me feeling as if I was suffering the same loss. Some of Jake's memories are facts, some, we learn towards the end, are false memories.In his time he had been a capable architect, he had a son, Henry, now in the prison that he, himself had designed. His wife, Helen, has died and there is a daughter, Alice. He is currently married to his childhood friend, Eleanor, who "has waited 30 years for him, only to find he is lost" (quoted from memory as I do not have a written version.)There are some clever themes that keep reappearing, the colour yellow, the sound of a gun shot and various references to cherry trees, cherries and falling blossom. Unfortunately my admiration for clever writing is not sufficient when I find a book too long and drawn out and am considering abandoning it as I stubbornly keep listening.More fool me!Other books I have read with a theme of Atzheimer's:Still Alice by Lisa Genova (5 stars)Memory Cage by Ruth Eastham (5 stars)

[pokarekareana · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For Jacob Jameson, life has become strange and confusing. His brain is failing him, his ability to recognise his loved ones is slipping away from him, and his memories constantly reshape and rearrange themselves within his consciousness. Jacob has Alzheimer’s disease.This was a touching, enthralling story, and yet it wasn’t really a story at all. It avoided the possible dangers of tangling itself into dreadful knots, or maintaining a clinical distance. I felt like I shouldn’t be able to read a book in which no character remains the same from one chapter to the next, but I was carried along by the vignettes of Jake’s life, in which more questions seem to be raised than are ever answered. This book is probably a difficult read for people who need all of the threads to be neatly tied up at the end of a story.I don’t know an awful lot about this disease. I have only ever experienced in the context of watching the slow disassembly of elderly relatives’ personalities in a constant spiral of circular conversation and repeating my own name to remind them who I am. Until I read this book, I had never really grasped the devastating extent of this confusion and amnesia. Scary, but immensely thought-provoking.

[tea58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey is a book mainly about a man named Jacob. All the other characters are family, friends or business associates of Jacob. Sadly, Jacob is living the rest of his days on earth with Alzheimer's Disease. In my eyes, Samantha Harvey's book is all about memory. Before Jake lost the ability to remember his everyday life he worked as an architect. His own hands designed the prison in which his son lives out his days as a prisoner. Oddly, Henry and Jacob are both prisoners.Alzheimer's Disease is catastrophic. Henry might walk out of prison someday and experience freedom again. However, the cells of Jake's brain are dying. Cells that will not grow again. The death of his brain Leaves Jake unfamiliar with any coherent sequence of events. To remember three small words is a gargantuan task. To think whether his wife is dead or alive is also hard to recall."He spends his time getting up to look for his dog, then, after some wandering, sits, forgetting what it was he had got up to do. "Samantha Harvey's ability to write about the mind of a man sliding away from him like some person sliding down a hill on slippery ice is magnificent. I feel it had to be no easy task to look at the world through the eyes of a person with Alzheimer's Disease. On the cover of the book is a cup and saucer and a wilderness. Both ofthese items are so disconnected. Everyday Jake's thoughts about his wives, lover, son, mother are broken in to tiny pieces like the tiles of a mosaic. Only his mosaic will never form a work of art. His mosaic is always going to make him feel stressed, numb, lost or like he has done something wrong.The book is not an easy book to read. After all, it is about a broken mind. Still, the characters are interesting: Henry, Alice, Sara, Eleanor, etc. I would have liked to know more about Henry before he became incarcerated. It was fascinating reading about Sara's Jewish traditions and what it was like to live with a husband who was not Jewish. These are the scraps of fabric that make up Jake's identity.With all that Samantha Harvey has put in the book, she does not leave out the caretaker. I am sure the caretaker's life is beyond extraordinary during the days of caring for an Alzheimer's patient. All of the people involved in true stories are ordinary heroes dealing with the unknown. The only known factor being memory is what shapes us.

[lauralkeet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jake is in his 60s, and has Alzheimer's. The Wilderness is told from Jake's point of view, allowing the reader to experience the devastating progression of his disease. At first, Jake has trouble finding the right word to describe an object. It's a mild inconvenience, but he can still hold it together in public -- for example, at his retirement party. Slowly, he begins to lose his short-term memory, putting objects away in the wrong places and forgetting what he is about to do, or what he has just done. However, his memories of the distant past are still clear, and he clings to those stories and images as a drowning man would cling to a lifeline. Jake married a woman named Helen, and together they left London for "the wilderness" of Lincolnshire, Jake's boyhood home. They had two children, and lived near Jake's mother Sara and her second husband, an eccentric man named Rook. Life was not always easy for Jake and Helen: his career fell slightly short of his dreams, and creating a family was not as easy as they'd hoped. Sometimes they were there for each other; at other times they each found solace in someone else. The story of Jake's past is interspersed with moments from the present, in a kind of mishmash intended to reflect the wilderness his brain has become. As Jake's condition deteriorates there are more and more gaps in his short- and long-term memory. There was one scene in which some especially emotional events take place, and at the end it's revealed that this was all a dream, embodying many of Jake's regrets and wishes. The Wilderness is a sad story, and very well-written, but also quite difficult to read. I found myself taking it slowly, trying to ease the pain. I can't say this was an enjoyable book, but it was definitely worthy of its 2009 Orange Prize nomination.

[alexdaw · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story is about Jake who is steadily deteriorating from Alzheimers. Rather like a puzzle, we weave in and out of Jake's thoughts, dreams and daydreams as he tries to determine real memory from mis-remembering. Strong female characters feature in this story - from his mother Sara, to his wife Helen, his lover Joy and the woman who cares for him in his illness, a friend from childhood, Eleanor. I have not yet been acquainted with Alzheimers personally thought I have picked up fragments here and there from the press and also through personal accounts from friends who are caring for afflicted relatives. And it is a real affliction - a torment I believe - which is why the book is so very difficult to read!! The author has captured the torment beautifully...as a reader we struggle to know what is "real" and what is "fiction" - a clever conceit if you will. So whilst not my preferred choice for the Booker, I can admire the writing, the characterisiation and the concept. For a first novel I think this is a triumph and such a shame that it wasn't shortlisted.

[jimelkins · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

There is a scene early in this novel in which a man's mother gives him an old Bible as a gift. "'It belonged to my parents,' she said. 'Why don't you have it now, now that you're married to a religious woman?'" the mother asks. "'It's my gift to you both, maybe a wedding gift since you just ran away and married in secret.'"This is a typically bald moment. Big things come spurting out here without any warning. "He nodded, a little underwhelmed by the gift...""'Helen will like it,' he said eventually, deciding to find in his mother's gesture some attempt ar friendship with his wife.'"'I doubt it, the cover is human skin,' she said."Here are two questions Samantha Topol might ask herself. First, would Ian McEwan, for example, write this kind of scene? If she thinks the answer is Yes, or Possibly, or Why not?, then I suggest she might consider she doesn't have much feeling for novel writing. If the answer is No, then she might ask herself, Why not? The answer there might lead into all kinds of questions about how events are staged and framed in novels, how novelists lead into difficult subjects, how they let events resonate before and after they occur, how they let their characters ruminate and mull and ponder, and not just lurch from one revelation to the next.Some people really do experience life this way, and I feel Topol is one. That's a question of character, not writing. But this is a novel, and these moments are too naked, too coarse, too unmodulated, too full of clichés and unreflective stereotypes. At the moment I am reading Vila-Matas. He is far from a perfect novelist!--but he would never write scenes like the ones in this book.