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The Wilderness
A gripping novel about a man who is losing his past to Alzheimer's. Like Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, The Wilderness holds us in its grip from the first sentence to the last with the sheer beauty of its language and its ruminations on love and loss.“Closer to Virginia Woolf’s meditative novels than anything else I can think of.... This is...Mrs. Dalloway prose.” —The Washington Post Book WorldJake is in the tailspin of old age. His wife has passed away, his son is in prison, and now Alzheimer’s is taking hold of him. Jake’s memories become increasingly unreliable. What happened to his daughter? Is she alive, or long dead? Why is his son imprisoned? And why can’t he shake the memory of a yellow dress and one lonely, echoing gunshot?“[A] brave imagining of [Alzheimer’s].... There are moments of clarity; there is the persistence of desire; there are enduring 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.” —The New York Times
386 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
164 people are currently reading
2828 people want to read
About the author
Samantha Harvey
11 books1,237 followersSamantha Harvey has completed postgraduate courses in philosophy and in Creative Writing. In addition to writing, she has traveled extensively and taught in Japan and has lived in Ireland and New Zealand. She recently co-founded an environmental charity and lives in Bath, England.
Her first novel, The Wilderness, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009, longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize and won the 2009 Betty Trask Prize.
Her first novel, The Wilderness, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009, longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize and won the 2009 Betty Trask Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 183 reviews
April 9, 2020
I have some trouble reviewing this because I meet people who have dementia most of the time in my work.
It is the story of Jake, an architect, who has Alzheimer's type dementia. The novel cuts between past and present and is very poignant. The story of Jake's family; his mother, wife and son unfolds. At the start of the book Jake has dementia at a fairly early stage; his wife died aged 53, his son is in a prison he designed. His history is not clear because as the book goes on it becomes clear that some of his memories are inaccurate because of his disease. The present gets increasingly blurred and Jake is living with an early love, Eleanor. It is never clear whether they have married.
The book is written from Jake's point of view and much of it takes place in Jake's mind. Unfortunately Jake is not a character that is easily liked and the reasons for this gradually unfold. There is an ongoing struggle for identity at the centre of the book, for all the characters (for Jake's wife Helen, his mother Sara, his son and the women he influences), while Jake's identity is being eroded.
I have some problems with the portrayal of dementia. In my experience people lose their memories and functionality; they don't gain new ones that didn't happen. The mental health professional is rather odd, and Jake is never seen in his own home (where functioning can be more accurately assessed).
The trajectory of the disease is not at all typical; those living alone with Alzheimer's usually do not accept a problem exists and are difficult to relate to, even for those closest.
Jake's walking and getting lost is typical, as is the teabag in the kettle, tins in the freezer, coffee cups in the bureau etc.
Forgetting the person you are living with is also quite common; I remember a couple who had been married over 60 years I visited as a newly qualified social worker (some years ago!). She had dementia and her memory was impaired. She felt her husband should be young so she daily attacked the old man she found in her house and bed, or ran out of the house to escape or fetch help. Her husband was devastated and described it as a living death; and I was there to provide a solution!!
There is no sense of Jake losing his physical abilities; using cutlery, the ability to use the toilet or turn a tap.
The end of the book is in the third person as Jake no longer has a sense of who he is. This is the most difficult area, as I think that even those with later stage dementia retain a sense of who they are. I just think they are unable to communicate it. This is an instinct from regular contact with the disease, I believe there is a sense of being locked in and not knowing the words, but being oneself. I can't prove this and I may be wrong.
This is an interesting book and a powerful one; unfortunately I didn't like Jake and the portrayal of the disease was a bit patchy.
It is the story of Jake, an architect, who has Alzheimer's type dementia. The novel cuts between past and present and is very poignant. The story of Jake's family; his mother, wife and son unfolds. At the start of the book Jake has dementia at a fairly early stage; his wife died aged 53, his son is in a prison he designed. His history is not clear because as the book goes on it becomes clear that some of his memories are inaccurate because of his disease. The present gets increasingly blurred and Jake is living with an early love, Eleanor. It is never clear whether they have married.
The book is written from Jake's point of view and much of it takes place in Jake's mind. Unfortunately Jake is not a character that is easily liked and the reasons for this gradually unfold. There is an ongoing struggle for identity at the centre of the book, for all the characters (for Jake's wife Helen, his mother Sara, his son and the women he influences), while Jake's identity is being eroded.
I have some problems with the portrayal of dementia. In my experience people lose their memories and functionality; they don't gain new ones that didn't happen. The mental health professional is rather odd, and Jake is never seen in his own home (where functioning can be more accurately assessed).
The trajectory of the disease is not at all typical; those living alone with Alzheimer's usually do not accept a problem exists and are difficult to relate to, even for those closest.
Jake's walking and getting lost is typical, as is the teabag in the kettle, tins in the freezer, coffee cups in the bureau etc.
Forgetting the person you are living with is also quite common; I remember a couple who had been married over 60 years I visited as a newly qualified social worker (some years ago!). She had dementia and her memory was impaired. She felt her husband should be young so she daily attacked the old man she found in her house and bed, or ran out of the house to escape or fetch help. Her husband was devastated and described it as a living death; and I was there to provide a solution!!
There is no sense of Jake losing his physical abilities; using cutlery, the ability to use the toilet or turn a tap.
The end of the book is in the third person as Jake no longer has a sense of who he is. This is the most difficult area, as I think that even those with later stage dementia retain a sense of who they are. I just think they are unable to communicate it. This is an instinct from regular contact with the disease, I believe there is a sense of being locked in and not knowing the words, but being oneself. I can't prove this and I may be wrong.
This is an interesting book and a powerful one; unfortunately I didn't like Jake and the portrayal of the disease was a bit patchy.
July 17, 2009
I borrowed this book from the v-city public library (and took it on my kayaking trip, where it got wet and moldy) mostly hoping for a dim intellectual insight into my grandmother's disease, which I hardly understand. I did not have high hopes or expectations but this ended up being one of the most haunting, lovely, and unforgettable books I've read in a long time. I loved it.
Harvey's story (marked, in equal parts it seems to me, by her training in both creative writing and philosophy) is about Jake, a fully modern man. Jake is old, retiring, suffering from the onset of alzheimer's. His wife is dead, he's taken on a new companion, he's acquired a new dog. But the centripetal force of the novel is his past. Through Jake's unreliable, sometimes fantastic, overpowering churn of memory we meet a man who was a post-WWII architect, intent on rebuilding the world. He loves glass, for the way it so subtly imposes itself on the natural world (what difference does it make for a bird to live inside glass? The sky is, after all, always the untouchable sky...) When he moves back to the moors (after training and working in London) where he was born, with his beautiful new suburban-bred wife, he dreams of an impossible project: building a glass house on the peat. But his wife moves him into an old house, full of ticky tacky and history. Slowly, apparently against his will, he becomes a "dweller" in old worlds. The only project for which he will be remembered (the only one, really, which wasn't torn down a decade or so later) will be his prison project. He's asked to build an addition onto the old, historic prison. Idealistically, he builds a simple concrete T-shaped structure. But all of his dreams about the how the layout will force the men into community with one another (that they might be converted by their debts to one another) are made invisible by the cold cruelty of the concrete. Even his wife is chilled by the execution of his creative vision. Ironically, his own son later finds his way into that prison. But, it seems, by the time Jake is in the position to find out what the effect of living in those halls might be, he seems only intermittently to remember who his son is at all. This is the sort of sadness and failure that spills out over Jake's memories: he wanted a world of clean lines, of bright and clean clarity, but he was forced to live as a dweller in worlds which were built long before him, stuck in a moldy stasis between entropy and survival.
Or was he? Some of his memories suggest that a dweller is precisely what Jake wanted to be after all. He has alzheimer's, so we can expect that he will be an unreliable narrator. But I also wonder whether this wasn't just the sort of forgetting that marked Jake's life as a whole. He is angered, for example, by the fact that his mother was driven (by his arrogant British father) to shroud her Jewish identity from the public around them. As an adult he never becomes religious. Because he cannot invest himself in that sort of cosmology. He does not believe in the passing fancy of divinity, he believes in something he can touch: geographies, territories. And so, instead, dwelling in the history he feels is somehow his own, he develops a foundation that raises money for Israeli war efforts. His wife is a devout Christian, whose bible group meets weekly at their house. She thinks of their turn (from the life of London to the moors) as a biblical exodus to the land at the edge of the wilderness, and narrates it as such. She is constantly spooning out biblical references. And, though Jake appears to give them little heed, he often finds himself checking them against his own copy of the bible: a strange, perverse little curiosity... a Christian-format bible bound with human skin, a testimony to the irony of the tradition that his Jewish grandfather once found, and left for his family to shake its head at. Indeed, the idea of dwelling (not nostalgia for something he can no longer have, but the actual occupation of stale modes of life) becomes a bit of a perversion for Jake: it seems something he is drawn to, yet his fondest ideals find it abhorrent.
And, it seems to me, it is precisely in these sorts of oscillations that Harvey finds the wilderness. The wilderness, as we might know it from grand narratives of still unconquered American land, makes scant appearance here. The moors, of course, are a character in the novel. The characters go walking in the woods. But their time in each of these places is always punctuated by gun shots: the sound of game hunters. There is a tense relationship between human body and the forces we've come to call nature. And humans have a a modicum of control (albeit violent, erratic) over it. Wilderness does not exist here. Rather, wilderness exists in the more incomprehensible spaces. There is wilderness in the features of a child: is she her mother (marked with her features)? Or her father (marked by his manner)? The wilderness is in the shifting flux of her facial expression. Jake, at the end of his life, faces disease and seems also to face his exodus into the wilderness. Navigating tenuously between mold, the composting decay of what is past, and the unpredictable violence and mystery of total entropy Jake journeys into the wilderness. There, in that space, Jake's memories are no longer his own, he has no control over them. Rather, they mark, for the reader, signposts on his journey.
Harvey's story (marked, in equal parts it seems to me, by her training in both creative writing and philosophy) is about Jake, a fully modern man. Jake is old, retiring, suffering from the onset of alzheimer's. His wife is dead, he's taken on a new companion, he's acquired a new dog. But the centripetal force of the novel is his past. Through Jake's unreliable, sometimes fantastic, overpowering churn of memory we meet a man who was a post-WWII architect, intent on rebuilding the world. He loves glass, for the way it so subtly imposes itself on the natural world (what difference does it make for a bird to live inside glass? The sky is, after all, always the untouchable sky...) When he moves back to the moors (after training and working in London) where he was born, with his beautiful new suburban-bred wife, he dreams of an impossible project: building a glass house on the peat. But his wife moves him into an old house, full of ticky tacky and history. Slowly, apparently against his will, he becomes a "dweller" in old worlds. The only project for which he will be remembered (the only one, really, which wasn't torn down a decade or so later) will be his prison project. He's asked to build an addition onto the old, historic prison. Idealistically, he builds a simple concrete T-shaped structure. But all of his dreams about the how the layout will force the men into community with one another (that they might be converted by their debts to one another) are made invisible by the cold cruelty of the concrete. Even his wife is chilled by the execution of his creative vision. Ironically, his own son later finds his way into that prison. But, it seems, by the time Jake is in the position to find out what the effect of living in those halls might be, he seems only intermittently to remember who his son is at all. This is the sort of sadness and failure that spills out over Jake's memories: he wanted a world of clean lines, of bright and clean clarity, but he was forced to live as a dweller in worlds which were built long before him, stuck in a moldy stasis between entropy and survival.
Or was he? Some of his memories suggest that a dweller is precisely what Jake wanted to be after all. He has alzheimer's, so we can expect that he will be an unreliable narrator. But I also wonder whether this wasn't just the sort of forgetting that marked Jake's life as a whole. He is angered, for example, by the fact that his mother was driven (by his arrogant British father) to shroud her Jewish identity from the public around them. As an adult he never becomes religious. Because he cannot invest himself in that sort of cosmology. He does not believe in the passing fancy of divinity, he believes in something he can touch: geographies, territories. And so, instead, dwelling in the history he feels is somehow his own, he develops a foundation that raises money for Israeli war efforts. His wife is a devout Christian, whose bible group meets weekly at their house. She thinks of their turn (from the life of London to the moors) as a biblical exodus to the land at the edge of the wilderness, and narrates it as such. She is constantly spooning out biblical references. And, though Jake appears to give them little heed, he often finds himself checking them against his own copy of the bible: a strange, perverse little curiosity... a Christian-format bible bound with human skin, a testimony to the irony of the tradition that his Jewish grandfather once found, and left for his family to shake its head at. Indeed, the idea of dwelling (not nostalgia for something he can no longer have, but the actual occupation of stale modes of life) becomes a bit of a perversion for Jake: it seems something he is drawn to, yet his fondest ideals find it abhorrent.
And, it seems to me, it is precisely in these sorts of oscillations that Harvey finds the wilderness. The wilderness, as we might know it from grand narratives of still unconquered American land, makes scant appearance here. The moors, of course, are a character in the novel. The characters go walking in the woods. But their time in each of these places is always punctuated by gun shots: the sound of game hunters. There is a tense relationship between human body and the forces we've come to call nature. And humans have a a modicum of control (albeit violent, erratic) over it. Wilderness does not exist here. Rather, wilderness exists in the more incomprehensible spaces. There is wilderness in the features of a child: is she her mother (marked with her features)? Or her father (marked by his manner)? The wilderness is in the shifting flux of her facial expression. Jake, at the end of his life, faces disease and seems also to face his exodus into the wilderness. Navigating tenuously between mold, the composting decay of what is past, and the unpredictable violence and mystery of total entropy Jake journeys into the wilderness. There, in that space, Jake's memories are no longer his own, he has no control over them. Rather, they mark, for the reader, signposts on his journey.
May 4, 2021
I don't usually gravitade towards contemporary or literary fiction books, but I love quiet, character driven stories and I'm intrigued whenever something isn't told chronologically and you don't quite know what is real and what isn't. I think the book very much succeeds in those regards.
There are a lot of important and difficult topics in here, but it tells you about them without any drama. It's all very dream-like and fuzzy, there isn't really a plot but you can see things coming together as time passes.
A lot of the plot points are things I'm usually not too interested in to read about, but the presentation here worked for me.
There are a lot of important and difficult topics in here, but it tells you about them without any drama. It's all very dream-like and fuzzy, there isn't really a plot but you can see things coming together as time passes.
A lot of the plot points are things I'm usually not too interested in to read about, but the presentation here worked for me.
June 7, 2017
A really brilliant read - the writing is so brilliant, the exploration of memory clever and poignant. I found the structure and pacing superbly pulled out and the ending very moving.
April 10, 2010
The Wilderness is a wonderfully rich and heartbreaking debut novel in which Samantha Harvey takes up the formidable challenge of taking readers inside the deteriorating mind of a man afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. Sixty-five-year-old architect Jake Jameson desperately tries to make sense of a life imbued with joy, sadness, and regret, even as the memories that define him and his life begin to morph and slip free of his mental grasp. He has faced his fair share of tragedies: his wife died at the age of 53, his son is in prison (a building which, ironically enough, Jake designed), and something he obviously has trouble dealing with happened to his daughter some time ago. At the same time, Jake bears a yoke of mysterious guilt on his shoulders for reasons that aren't initially clear to the reader.
As the novel opens, the disease is just starting to make serious inroads into Jake's thought processes. We the readers are treated to the memories he still has of his life, most of which revolve around the years he spent with his wife Helen. A reasonably successful and idealistic architect in London, Jake brought his wife and son Henry back to his birthplace on the moors following the death of his father. We see glimpses of his somewhat unusual relationship with his mother (who abandoned the hallmarks of her Jewish religion in the wake of the Holocaust) and spend a good deal of time with his late wife and son. We learn how his wife died and see what a devastating effect her death had on Henry, although there is much ambiguity in the details from the start. And we see how other central people in his life shaped and changed him over the years.
In between these sorts of flashbacks, we watch as Alzheimer's gradually begins to rob Jake of everything, including his identity. Even as we begin to get some answers to the tragic questions of his life, though, we - both protagonist and reader - come to realize that even his deepest memories are increasingly suspect. At one point, Jake almost embraces the concept, seeking solace from the truth in a reimagined past he defines himself. It's the same reason he carries with him at all times - but refuses to open and read - what he believes to be love letters to his late wife from another man.
Readers will probably express quite a cross-section of reactions to this book. Some may not want to take the time to journey through the increasingly tangled maze of Jake's thoughts and memories, but I found this novel to be a remarkably rich and rewarding reading experience. We can't really know how the mind of an Alzheimer's patient truly works without experiencing it for ourselves, but Samantha Harvey has certainly made a valiant and worthy attempt to imagine how it might be. It doesn't really matter that every single one of our questions isn't given an answer we can surely depend upon. Truth is so much more than a collection of facts, and Jake's life - albeit through the window of his diminishing mental capacity - is laid bare before the reader's eyes. The metaphorical comparisons between Jake's life and the products and ideals of his profession (architecture) lend even further meaning to the story. Heartbreaking as the experience may be, The Wilderness is a poignant and fascinating read.
As the novel opens, the disease is just starting to make serious inroads into Jake's thought processes. We the readers are treated to the memories he still has of his life, most of which revolve around the years he spent with his wife Helen. A reasonably successful and idealistic architect in London, Jake brought his wife and son Henry back to his birthplace on the moors following the death of his father. We see glimpses of his somewhat unusual relationship with his mother (who abandoned the hallmarks of her Jewish religion in the wake of the Holocaust) and spend a good deal of time with his late wife and son. We learn how his wife died and see what a devastating effect her death had on Henry, although there is much ambiguity in the details from the start. And we see how other central people in his life shaped and changed him over the years.
In between these sorts of flashbacks, we watch as Alzheimer's gradually begins to rob Jake of everything, including his identity. Even as we begin to get some answers to the tragic questions of his life, though, we - both protagonist and reader - come to realize that even his deepest memories are increasingly suspect. At one point, Jake almost embraces the concept, seeking solace from the truth in a reimagined past he defines himself. It's the same reason he carries with him at all times - but refuses to open and read - what he believes to be love letters to his late wife from another man.
Readers will probably express quite a cross-section of reactions to this book. Some may not want to take the time to journey through the increasingly tangled maze of Jake's thoughts and memories, but I found this novel to be a remarkably rich and rewarding reading experience. We can't really know how the mind of an Alzheimer's patient truly works without experiencing it for ourselves, but Samantha Harvey has certainly made a valiant and worthy attempt to imagine how it might be. It doesn't really matter that every single one of our questions isn't given an answer we can surely depend upon. Truth is so much more than a collection of facts, and Jake's life - albeit through the window of his diminishing mental capacity - is laid bare before the reader's eyes. The metaphorical comparisons between Jake's life and the products and ideals of his profession (architecture) lend even further meaning to the story. Heartbreaking as the experience may be, The Wilderness is a poignant and fascinating read.
March 26, 2020
The storyline was really interesting until about 2/3 of the way through then it became very redundant and quite confusing -which I understand is likely the point and art of the books writing. But, too often I found myself lost over and over again trying to recall events people and places amidst the confusion of the main characters inability to recall, so it took a lot of effort for me to complete. When, I finally did complete it, there were several more major cliff hangers than I personally could not accept.
The book is artfully and thoughtfully written but it is best completed in two or three sittings to avoid confusion and getting lost in the storyline. Also, there is a readers guide (I did not use) that may be more helpful in provoking deeper thought, interpretations and overall processing.
The book is artfully and thoughtfully written but it is best completed in two or three sittings to avoid confusion and getting lost in the storyline. Also, there is a readers guide (I did not use) that may be more helpful in provoking deeper thought, interpretations and overall processing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 23, 2021
Foarte bine scrise scenele în care boala se instalează, iar mintea protagonistului se degradează tot mai repede. Chiar înfiorătoare. Dacă nu și-ar fi înșelat soția, poate mi-ar fi păsat de el. Ce să spun, și-a uitat amanta! Am notat câteva citate aici: https://sandradeaconu.blogspot.com/20....
,,Cât de criminal, de sadic și de ridicol că nu mai sunt copil!"
,,Cât de criminal, de sadic și de ridicol că nu mai sunt copil!"
December 23, 2024
There is such pressure to remain true to the facts, and it seems so...vital to preserve events and people as they really are. But he knows how memory can make....true. Sometimes he lose the strength and the vigilance to stand up to its forces and thinks he would do just as well to let it transform the past as it wishes. p127
Samantha Harvey does evocatively compare the cramped and hectic urban life with the more spacious existence of the rural wilderness. The real wilderness she is exploring is the human mind which creates scenarios and then loses them.
I dont remember where I was going with that claim, but this is a book of Alzheimers. SH does not merely observe and describe her characters, she inhabits them.
There are so many words, too many actions that depend on the words, that it becomes impossible, when one begins to think it through, to ever know what to do. p40
A mind unmoored from familiar connection navigates the unknown. Jake is aware enough to know he is losing his mind, and he must be nimble enough to compensate and hide his condition as much as he can.
There was simply no option concerned with fading away in cautious, anxious increments; it's not like him to forget who he is. p99
If he had the words he would tell her what he thinks, but as it is he has a throat closed rigid with sentiments that have lost form. p310
Sometimes it's better to be a fool, my dear. p308
Samantha Harvey does evocatively compare the cramped and hectic urban life with the more spacious existence of the rural wilderness. The real wilderness she is exploring is the human mind which creates scenarios and then loses them.
I dont remember where I was going with that claim, but this is a book of Alzheimers. SH does not merely observe and describe her characters, she inhabits them.
There are so many words, too many actions that depend on the words, that it becomes impossible, when one begins to think it through, to ever know what to do. p40
A mind unmoored from familiar connection navigates the unknown. Jake is aware enough to know he is losing his mind, and he must be nimble enough to compensate and hide his condition as much as he can.
There was simply no option concerned with fading away in cautious, anxious increments; it's not like him to forget who he is. p99
If he had the words he would tell her what he thinks, but as it is he has a throat closed rigid with sentiments that have lost form. p310
Sometimes it's better to be a fool, my dear. p308
February 18, 2009
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 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.
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 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.
August 1, 2009
This is the first book I've read of my 2009 Booker longlist marathon (if the third on the list) and it's placed the bar pretty high.
The protagonist is a man suffering from Alzheimer's and remembering his life - but the bits and pieces that don't always mesh, he's never sure of the timeline and sometimes he's not sure of who he's remembering and scenes come back to him or fade away over and over.
And it's about his relationship with his mother, with his son, with the women he's loved or not loved and it's - it's just well done. By default, the narrator is unreliable, but he's trying so hard to *be* reliable, there's an earnestness about him. And there's the fact that you know something huge has happened and he knows something huge has happened - but he just doesn't know what that something is and we're all trying to piece it together.
It's just beautifully written and really sad without being depressing and I hope it moves on to the shortlist.
The protagonist is a man suffering from Alzheimer's and remembering his life - but the bits and pieces that don't always mesh, he's never sure of the timeline and sometimes he's not sure of who he's remembering and scenes come back to him or fade away over and over.
And it's about his relationship with his mother, with his son, with the women he's loved or not loved and it's - it's just well done. By default, the narrator is unreliable, but he's trying so hard to *be* reliable, there's an earnestness about him. And there's the fact that you know something huge has happened and he knows something huge has happened - but he just doesn't know what that something is and we're all trying to piece it together.
It's just beautifully written and really sad without being depressing and I hope it moves on to the shortlist.
May 6, 2013
What is the truth about what happened in the past? Can we ever know? There have been many experiments in which a group of witnesses to the same event have been asked to recount what they saw. It is rare for such recollections ever to be complete or in complete agreement. When we recall events from our own past, how certain can we be that what we remember is how it really was? I know that when my wife and I engage in those “do you remember when ...” conversations her perception is usually different from mine.
So when Harvey’s protagonist, Jake, starts to lose his memory events from his past become distorted. Several incidents from his childhood and his early married life assume great significance; yet in each retelling something new is discovered or something that once seemed important is left out. Episodes merge together or fragment and become confused.
What is the significance of a cherry tree or a yellow dress? Why is a mini-skirt or a glass house important? Alongside a heart rending description of the deterioration of Jake’s descent into oblivion Harvey has created a disturbing exploration of memory which takes on a surreal quality. It is a quality that extends to the landscape in which most of the remembered events are set.
The steelworks and sugar factory are familiar features which fix the location fairly precisely to a part of Lincolnshire within a few miles of where I lived for about fifteen years. And yet, whilst reading the book I was puzzled by the constant references to peat moors. It was only after having written the first draft of this review that I recalled the demonstrations that took place during the late nineteen eighties and early ‘nineties protesting the destruction of habitat that accompanied the mechanised harvesting of peat from Thorne and Hatfield moors. Both are located in South Yorkshire, just across the border from Lincolnshire
The towns of Thorne and Hatfield were, during the period in which The Wasteland is set, mining communities. There is no mention of this or of the vast complex of refineries and chemical factories that line the coast of North Lincolnshire. These are minor details which will go unnoticed by most readers.
The desolation of the moors, often accompanied by “muffling snow” is an important motif for this stunning work. It accentuates the void between the period of Jake’s life that is revealed to us and the onset of Alzheimer’s some quarter century later. For many people the middle years of life are the most fulfilling and productive. The reader is left in no doubt that, for Jake, they represent unfulfilled ambitions and ideals lost or compromised.
If it is our memories that make us what we are, what do we become when our memories evaporate? Doomed to dwell in a cold and forbidding wasteland with no concept of what happened moments ago or who that person in the room with us is, are we even alive? Harvey’s achievement in conveying this sense of a life vanishing before her protagonist’s eyes is devastatingly successful. If you are, or someone you love is, approaching old age and you fear what the future holds, reading this book will not offer reassurance. Rather it will confirm your worst fears whilst explaining in graphic terms how this most feared of diseases gnaws away the very essence of a person’s being. Do not let that prospect put you off; The Wasteland works on many levels to entertain, inform and enlighten the reader.
So when Harvey’s protagonist, Jake, starts to lose his memory events from his past become distorted. Several incidents from his childhood and his early married life assume great significance; yet in each retelling something new is discovered or something that once seemed important is left out. Episodes merge together or fragment and become confused.
What is the significance of a cherry tree or a yellow dress? Why is a mini-skirt or a glass house important? Alongside a heart rending description of the deterioration of Jake’s descent into oblivion Harvey has created a disturbing exploration of memory which takes on a surreal quality. It is a quality that extends to the landscape in which most of the remembered events are set.
The steelworks and sugar factory are familiar features which fix the location fairly precisely to a part of Lincolnshire within a few miles of where I lived for about fifteen years. And yet, whilst reading the book I was puzzled by the constant references to peat moors. It was only after having written the first draft of this review that I recalled the demonstrations that took place during the late nineteen eighties and early ‘nineties protesting the destruction of habitat that accompanied the mechanised harvesting of peat from Thorne and Hatfield moors. Both are located in South Yorkshire, just across the border from Lincolnshire
The towns of Thorne and Hatfield were, during the period in which The Wasteland is set, mining communities. There is no mention of this or of the vast complex of refineries and chemical factories that line the coast of North Lincolnshire. These are minor details which will go unnoticed by most readers.
The desolation of the moors, often accompanied by “muffling snow” is an important motif for this stunning work. It accentuates the void between the period of Jake’s life that is revealed to us and the onset of Alzheimer’s some quarter century later. For many people the middle years of life are the most fulfilling and productive. The reader is left in no doubt that, for Jake, they represent unfulfilled ambitions and ideals lost or compromised.
If it is our memories that make us what we are, what do we become when our memories evaporate? Doomed to dwell in a cold and forbidding wasteland with no concept of what happened moments ago or who that person in the room with us is, are we even alive? Harvey’s achievement in conveying this sense of a life vanishing before her protagonist’s eyes is devastatingly successful. If you are, or someone you love is, approaching old age and you fear what the future holds, reading this book will not offer reassurance. Rather it will confirm your worst fears whilst explaining in graphic terms how this most feared of diseases gnaws away the very essence of a person’s being. Do not let that prospect put you off; The Wasteland works on many levels to entertain, inform and enlighten the reader.
June 10, 2009
Maybe if I didn't have anything else to read I would have finished this book. It was just too random and sad - but I don't know how a book about Alzheimer's can't be random and sad. I guess I should have picked up a different book and saved this heavier read for another time.
read until page 161
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"One day, he supposes, he will not even remember that he does not know or remember..."
"She told him if he remembered something and he couldn't think why, he should let it go; it didn't matter."
"When he looks in the mirror he does not see an old man, nor does he see a brain that lacks logic. He sees himself, greatly changed, but undeniably himself, and he is grateful to this self for persisting this long."
read until page 161
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"One day, he supposes, he will not even remember that he does not know or remember..."
"She told him if he remembered something and he couldn't think why, he should let it go; it didn't matter."
"When he looks in the mirror he does not see an old man, nor does he see a brain that lacks logic. He sees himself, greatly changed, but undeniably himself, and he is grateful to this self for persisting this long."
February 5, 2010
Of all the 2009 Booker nominees I've read, this has blown everything else out of the water. I've become addicted to this book in the few days we've spent together, sneaking off to read it at every spare moment, completely caught up in Jake's deterioration and recollection. The signposts that Harvey deposits throughout the book performed little cinches on my heart every time I encountered one.
It's absolutely breathtaking what the author has done in (de)constructing the world of the Alzheimer's patient.
It's absolutely breathtaking what the author has done in (de)constructing the world of the Alzheimer's patient.
August 19, 2009
I don't think Samantha Harvey goes too far to identify her protagonist's thoughts, because if she did he would be far too incoherent (see The Sound and Fury) for this novel to be pleasurable reading. That's not to say this story of the fractured four years in which his Alzheimer's condition worsens is a fun read. At least it is possible to follow his revisionist memory, but through these re-worked memories we do sense the devastation.
June 12, 2012
The story of a man looking back on his life as he slowly deteriorates as a result of Alzheimer's. The description of his confusion as he gets worse is very good and you get a real feel of his confusion. Unfortunately the flashbacks which are not linear are slightly confusing and frankly not terribly interesting. It doesn't help matters when he starts misremembering events. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic or memorable so all in all I was quite glad to get to the end.
March 24, 2010
This proves I will read anything. Its about a man who has it all, then loses it all,literally. Its too wordy and digresses, leaving the whole story unresolved. I guess thats what a book about Alzeimers might be, remind me never to get it (the disease). It might have been better if written in the voice of the woman who loved him
September 10, 2025
This book generated a good discussion at our book club meeting. It is definitely not a gentle, happy place read but allows insight into dementia.
September 8, 2025
samantha harvey is a genius and this was so well done but i could’ve done without the israel stuff every other page
April 22, 2012
My rating should be 3.5 stars, which seems to be the average rating for this book at the moment I'm writing this review.
This is the story of a man called Jacob or Jake. When we first join him he is in a small plan. His son, Henry, has given him a flight over the land where he lives as a birthday present. From the sky he sees the prison he designed where Henry is incarcerated at the time. Jacob’s thoughts aren’t completely coherent and there are a lot of things he is not entirely sure about.
It soon becomes clear that Jacob suffers from Alzheimer’s and during the rest of the story we follow him as both his memories and his present become ever more confused. We are witnesses to his irritation, fear and anger as the disease robs him of more and more of the things he knows. While he remembers certain events from his past the reader has no idea whether what he remembers actually happened or was only imagined. But then, neither does Jacob. And while initially he is aware of the fact that his memories are not necessarily to be trusted, it isn’t long before he loses that knowledge.
“He doesn’t know if he remembers or not; he doesn’t know the difference between what you remember and what you think you remember, or worse still, what others remember for you. He doesn’t know who he is.”
As the decease takes over more and more of Jacob’s brain, he continues to lose who he is, what is happening to him and who the people around him are until finally he has lost so much of himself that he appears to be at the start of his life rather than its end; without his memories his life surely hasn’t begun yet.
This was not an easy book to read, quite the opposite in fact. I always have a problem when reading a book about Alzheimer’s because this is a disease that scares me more than any other. This book was difficult for another reason as well though. In this story the reader rarely knows what is real and what isn’t because all of it is told from Jacob’s perspective. And Jacob’s is the most untrustworthy perspective possible.
In this book Alzheimer’s seems to be a character as well as and instead of something the main character suffers from.
I wonder if the author aims to make the reader experience the Alzheimer’s experience as she leaves them wondering whether they’re looking at the past or the present, reality or fantasy, no more certain of what is real and what isn’t then Jacob is.
As much as this book is about a man losing his memories, his past and slowly also himself to Alzheimer’s this is also a book about the unreliability of memories in general. Can they ever be trusted? Or does the passage of time and the way we want the world and our lives to be colour them to such an extent that we can never be entirely sure whether what we remember is actually what happened?
When it comes down to it, there are only a few memories to which Jacob keeps on returning. Is that because those were moments that stood out in his life, had special significance? Or is it because there is a certain randomness to what the brain retains and what just disappears into nothingness?
I can’t help feeling that I missed a lot of references in this book; that a lot of it went right over my head. There must have been more to all the mentions of religion, the human-skin bible, to Jacob being a Jew and Helen’s Christian fate than just mere mentions in a story. The duality between the fates is even reflected in the main character’s name; is he Jake or is he Jacob and does that matter, does it make a difference? However, if there is more to this story, I have no idea what that “more” could possibly be.
I can’t say I liked this book and I did have a hard time reading it, almost having to force myself to get back to it every time I put it down. To be honest, I’m not sure I would have forced myself if this wasn’t a book club read. Continuously feeling as if I was missing vital plot points made me feel a bit inadequate, a feeling I don’t enjoy and which may explain why this book was such hard work for me.
On the other hand, a book that leaves me with this much to wonder about can’t be all bad, may in fact even be good. Maybe it is just a case of this not being a book for me in which case I shouldn’t judge it too harshly.
This is the story of a man called Jacob or Jake. When we first join him he is in a small plan. His son, Henry, has given him a flight over the land where he lives as a birthday present. From the sky he sees the prison he designed where Henry is incarcerated at the time. Jacob’s thoughts aren’t completely coherent and there are a lot of things he is not entirely sure about.
It soon becomes clear that Jacob suffers from Alzheimer’s and during the rest of the story we follow him as both his memories and his present become ever more confused. We are witnesses to his irritation, fear and anger as the disease robs him of more and more of the things he knows. While he remembers certain events from his past the reader has no idea whether what he remembers actually happened or was only imagined. But then, neither does Jacob. And while initially he is aware of the fact that his memories are not necessarily to be trusted, it isn’t long before he loses that knowledge.
“He doesn’t know if he remembers or not; he doesn’t know the difference between what you remember and what you think you remember, or worse still, what others remember for you. He doesn’t know who he is.”
As the decease takes over more and more of Jacob’s brain, he continues to lose who he is, what is happening to him and who the people around him are until finally he has lost so much of himself that he appears to be at the start of his life rather than its end; without his memories his life surely hasn’t begun yet.
This was not an easy book to read, quite the opposite in fact. I always have a problem when reading a book about Alzheimer’s because this is a disease that scares me more than any other. This book was difficult for another reason as well though. In this story the reader rarely knows what is real and what isn’t because all of it is told from Jacob’s perspective. And Jacob’s is the most untrustworthy perspective possible.
In this book Alzheimer’s seems to be a character as well as and instead of something the main character suffers from.
I wonder if the author aims to make the reader experience the Alzheimer’s experience as she leaves them wondering whether they’re looking at the past or the present, reality or fantasy, no more certain of what is real and what isn’t then Jacob is.
As much as this book is about a man losing his memories, his past and slowly also himself to Alzheimer’s this is also a book about the unreliability of memories in general. Can they ever be trusted? Or does the passage of time and the way we want the world and our lives to be colour them to such an extent that we can never be entirely sure whether what we remember is actually what happened?
When it comes down to it, there are only a few memories to which Jacob keeps on returning. Is that because those were moments that stood out in his life, had special significance? Or is it because there is a certain randomness to what the brain retains and what just disappears into nothingness?
I can’t help feeling that I missed a lot of references in this book; that a lot of it went right over my head. There must have been more to all the mentions of religion, the human-skin bible, to Jacob being a Jew and Helen’s Christian fate than just mere mentions in a story. The duality between the fates is even reflected in the main character’s name; is he Jake or is he Jacob and does that matter, does it make a difference? However, if there is more to this story, I have no idea what that “more” could possibly be.
I can’t say I liked this book and I did have a hard time reading it, almost having to force myself to get back to it every time I put it down. To be honest, I’m not sure I would have forced myself if this wasn’t a book club read. Continuously feeling as if I was missing vital plot points made me feel a bit inadequate, a feeling I don’t enjoy and which may explain why this book was such hard work for me.
On the other hand, a book that leaves me with this much to wonder about can’t be all bad, may in fact even be good. Maybe it is just a case of this not being a book for me in which case I shouldn’t judge it too harshly.
June 15, 2009
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey (Book Review)
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey is now in paperback by Jonathan Cape. It has been short listed for the Orange Prize. It is the author’s debut novel. She has a masters degree in philosphy and has taught English, so I am now suprised it is literary and truthfull. It has been brillantly researched. This is a psychological fiction novel about Jake a 60 year old architect who has short term memory loss but his long term memory is ok. The story is his reconciltion of life as he remembers it as he sits on a plane overlooking his country. It is written in a compassionate and literary style. Nothing is as it seems. The disease highlights loss and confusion in life.
“In amongst a sea of events and names that have been forgotten, they are a number of episodes that float with striking buoyancy to the surface”.
As his Alzheimers progresses his memory and his identity goes. It is narrated in the third person and its prose is lyrical. This book is the wilderness of a confused mind attacked by Alzheimers Disease. The story moves back and forth as Jake goes through memories. Fact and fiction and past and present blur in his stories.
” I feel like all my wires are been unplugged one by one. Not even in order just one by one.”
This is heartwrenching and a thought provoking read. It reads like a family drama and we slowly gather the jigsaw pieces together to discover the true story. This book conveys the signifance of our memory and the cruelty of old age. We can outlive our bodies and minds. Anything is plausible and nothing is certain. The themes that run through the novel are: loss, conflict, marriage, love and religion.
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey is now in paperback by Jonathan Cape. It has been short listed for the Orange Prize. It is the author’s debut novel. She has a masters degree in philosphy and has taught English, so I am now suprised it is literary and truthfull. It has been brillantly researched. This is a psychological fiction novel about Jake a 60 year old architect who has short term memory loss but his long term memory is ok. The story is his reconciltion of life as he remembers it as he sits on a plane overlooking his country. It is written in a compassionate and literary style. Nothing is as it seems. The disease highlights loss and confusion in life.
“In amongst a sea of events and names that have been forgotten, they are a number of episodes that float with striking buoyancy to the surface”.
As his Alzheimers progresses his memory and his identity goes. It is narrated in the third person and its prose is lyrical. This book is the wilderness of a confused mind attacked by Alzheimers Disease. The story moves back and forth as Jake goes through memories. Fact and fiction and past and present blur in his stories.
” I feel like all my wires are been unplugged one by one. Not even in order just one by one.”
This is heartwrenching and a thought provoking read. It reads like a family drama and we slowly gather the jigsaw pieces together to discover the true story. This book conveys the signifance of our memory and the cruelty of old age. We can outlive our bodies and minds. Anything is plausible and nothing is certain. The themes that run through the novel are: loss, conflict, marriage, love and religion.
November 11, 2013
There is a scene early in this novel in which a man's mother gives him an old Bible as a gift. [return][return]"'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.'"[return][return]This is a typically bald moment. Big things come spurting out here without any warning. [return][return]"He nodded, a little underwhelmed by the gift..."[return]"'Helen will like it,' he said eventually, deciding to find in his mother's gesture some attempt ar friendship with his wife.'[return]"'I doubt it, the cover is human skin,' she said."[return][return]Here are two questions Samantha Topol might ask herself. First, would Ian McEwan, for example, write this kind of scene? If she thinks so, then I'd have to conclude 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.[return][return]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 clich�s 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.
June 27, 2012
Wilderness sees a man casting back, or trying to cast back on his life, impeded by his descent into dementia. Fractured memories slip away, as he tries to glue them back together again. There is a hint of narrative being subverted, as memories are reconstituted but differing from their previous airing. But this is only lightly offered throughout as a framing mechanism. Some of the writing is ravishingly beautiful, to match its bleak marshland of Lincolnshire where the novel is set. "her body lost to the blanket; he only knew her lap was there because the bible was resting on it, otherwise she was a swirl, a question mark, an open question".
Why this book didn't work for me was that the main character who is losing his memory and identity, isn't really all that appealing. While I felt sympathy for his plight, I didn't really pity him, nor did I welcome gathering knowledge of the petty touchstones of his life. He is unfaithful to his wife and always wishing for his lost love. Yet he impugns his wife for her perfection, which "gets a bit wearing sometimes". He uprooted his family from London to return to his childhood landscape, the wilderness of Lincolnshire, with his perpetually unrealised dream of building them a house made entirely of glass. If he is eternally dissatisfied with life and the state of things, it is entirely his own fault. He is not a man who sees anything through.
Why this book didn't work for me was that the main character who is losing his memory and identity, isn't really all that appealing. While I felt sympathy for his plight, I didn't really pity him, nor did I welcome gathering knowledge of the petty touchstones of his life. He is unfaithful to his wife and always wishing for his lost love. Yet he impugns his wife for her perfection, which "gets a bit wearing sometimes". He uprooted his family from London to return to his childhood landscape, the wilderness of Lincolnshire, with his perpetually unrealised dream of building them a house made entirely of glass. If he is eternally dissatisfied with life and the state of things, it is entirely his own fault. He is not a man who sees anything through.
April 29, 2025
This was a touching, sad read. Jake is diagnosed with problems with him memory. Jake tells his own story. He flips back and fore between current (just retired architect) and his life when his children were born. We have a son who's in prison (probably - we never heard how that had happened) a daughter, Alice, his wife Helen and current partner Eleanor. It starts off being quite clear story telling and then got more and more difficult to work out (for the reader) what was real, what was now, what had happened then. One could almost sense the fear and confusion for Jake as the reader. By the end of the book Jake's not verbal but he tells us his feelings when he's being looked after by strangers, the embarrassment of others touching his body, the humiliation at finding himself in a wet bed, but then the comfort of a kind stranger who bathed him with care and he was back at an earlier stage in his life. Harvey chose that Jake had increasing inability to recall anything at all by the end and I found that a comforting way of winding down and dying. Maybe dementia isn't just increasing confusion and dementia but, eventually, our minds aren't confused as they aren't anything. They no longer receive or interpret information but then that's not distressing; just nothing.
January 21, 2024
This “dementia fiction” story follows Jake as he loses his memories over the course of ~five years due to his disease, but also what the flashes of some of those fading memories meant and how they fit into the glimpses we are getting. As someone who watched two beloved grandparents slowly (and then quickly) succumb to dementia and Alzheimer’s, there were some very emotional moments and memories for me seeing Jake (and those around him) hit some of the milestones my grandparents also hit. Unlike my personal experience, Jake isn’t always the most likable guy before we meet him, which makes his irritation, confusion and forgetting ever more complicated.
Because of a lot of flashbacks and forwards, as well as confusion from Jake, I’d recommend doing this on audio: the narrator does an excellent job bringing Jake’s voice (including pauses, beats, rises in inflection, mumbling, etc.) I was able to keep things separated in my mind, and have heard this is a lot tougher on the page.
Because of a lot of flashbacks and forwards, as well as confusion from Jake, I’d recommend doing this on audio: the narrator does an excellent job bringing Jake’s voice (including pauses, beats, rises in inflection, mumbling, etc.) I was able to keep things separated in my mind, and have heard this is a lot tougher on the page.
December 5, 2024
Harvey’s language is intriguing. She draws a whole palette of images and lays them playfully right in front of you, but you are not able to touch them. Something I really liked about Orbital, but here it was a little bit too distanced.
The reader follows Jake, a retired architect with a certainly troubled life. Jake, who is plagued by dementia, unpacks his whole life and especially all of the woman he has had. He is his own centre of his own universe and there is something so annoyingly patriarchal about him that just kept me from liking this book a lot. Here and there Jake’s actions are problematised, but the female figures - maybe except his mother - exist to serve him in some way and their characters stay utterly dull.
3.3/5
The reader follows Jake, a retired architect with a certainly troubled life. Jake, who is plagued by dementia, unpacks his whole life and especially all of the woman he has had. He is his own centre of his own universe and there is something so annoyingly patriarchal about him that just kept me from liking this book a lot. Here and there Jake’s actions are problematised, but the female figures - maybe except his mother - exist to serve him in some way and their characters stay utterly dull.
3.3/5
May 24, 2021
A graphic description of decline into Dementia and/or Alzheimer' disease, in a novel format. It is well-written and creatively and usefully arranged, By objective standards a good book. I hated it. A lot. A couple of reasons. Her male protagonist, the one with dementia, was not a sympathetic character *before* he developed dementia. There was little likeable about him. He inevitably exercised poor judgment and egocentricity. His wife is the single non-jerk in the novel, and she just squeaks past. My mother died of Alzheimer's, and the horror and disorientation of that may stay with me forever. There's no "demystifying" of it. A well-crafted bok, And I hated it.
November 15, 2009
This story succeeds in conveying the disorientation and confusion of a character with advancing Alzheimer's disease in an effective and often beautiful way. However, this approach ultimately left me unsatisfied, as I kept waiting for something to happen and got to the end of the book with several questions left unanswered.
July 27, 2010
This book is very interesting and the story is envolving. My only mistake was to read it when school was a mess and, eventually, I had to make a few breaks, which compromised my complete understanding of the book. I still think this book is beautiful and all the "madness" in it is overwelming - in a good way.
February 10, 2012
Beautifully and perceptively written; thought provoking without being contrived - I was totally drawn into the thickly layered story, experiencing Jake's icreasingly vain attempts to order his memories and retain his sense of self against the ravages of Alzheimers. A remarkable book.
February 22, 2023
Not for me. The blurb on the back says “From the first sentence to the last, The Wilderness holds us in its grip.” Hmmm I think I slipped out of its grip almost twice per page. I struggled through but found it something of a chore.
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