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Interviews | November 3, 2009

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The Wilderness

by Samantha Harvey

The Wilderness Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Jake Jameson is a sixty-five-year-old architect who is on the cusp of retirement. One evening he’s sitting alone in the office, staring down at an architectural drawing. He can’t quite figure out what he’s supposed to do with it. Suddenly he remembers a word, one for which he has been searching for days to recall: entropy—for him the singular most interesting theory that exists, a theory that says everything loses, rather than gains, order.

This idea underlies this riveting tale of a man whose memories are slowly eroding. As Alzheimer’s begins to wear away his sense of identity, Jake builds stories around his life that inform his feelings of blame and responsibility—only to have the stories disintegrate faster than he can capture them. As the plot keeps shifting and the facts unravel, little mysteries start to form: for example, what was the problem with the missing letter “e”? What was behind the mythologies that his Jewish mother told him as a child? Where is his daughter, Alice? What happened to her? Eventually we realize that even Jake’s clearest memories may not be true. He is the flawed witness to his own past, the ultimate unreliable narrator. Yet in the end we are left with a clear and moving portrait not only of a sympathetic man but also of a heartrending disease as seen from the inside out.

Arrestingly understated and wise, THE WILDERNESS is a memorable first novel from an extraordinarily gifted new writer.

Review:

"The Wilderness" bills itself as a novel about a man who's losing his mind to Alzheimer's, but it's far more — or less — than that. It's closer to Virginia Woolf's meditative novels than anything else I can think of.

Yes, the novel starts realistically enough. There's Jake Jameson, 65, on the brink of retirement, utterly disoriented, zooming around above the moors and peat bogs... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review)

Review:

“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

Synopsis:

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.

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.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
teelgee, August 20, 2009 (view all comments by teelgee)
Wow. What an amazing book. The story of Jacob - Jake - who has Alzheimer's. This novel is written in a spiral -- circling around events of Jake's life as he remembers them, then circling back with additions or subtractions to the events; echoes, mirrors, parallels.... In the wrong hands this book could have been a mess, but Harvey writes it exquisitely, with great care and skill. Highly recommended.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780385527637
Author:
Harvey, Samantha
Publisher:
Nan A. Talese
Author:
Samantha Harvey
Subject:
Architects
Subject:
Alzheimer's disease
Subject:
Literary
Publication Date:
February 2009
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
371
Dimensions:
8.50x6.14x1.27 in. 1.22 lbs.

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