Fic­tion

The Wilder­ness

Saman­tha Harvey
  • Review
By – January 6, 2012

What is it I’m sup­posed to know?” This is the cen­tral, haunt­ing ques­tion of this first per­son, fic­tion­al account of a man suf­fer­ing from Alzheimer’s. Jake is a 65- year-old man who has been for­get­ting things. He bri­dles at the indig­ni­ty of being asked to draw some­thing as sim­ple as the face of a clock. Yet when he fin­ish­es the draw­ing, he can tell by the tester’s face that he has failed the task. Look­ing at the pic­ture him­self, he can see that some­thing is wrong with it but he can­not iden­ti­fy the problem. 

Saman­tha Har­vey con­jures Jake’s fog­gy state of mind with gen­tle, spare prose. Being inside his head is like coast­ing on a wave as the tide recedes; Jake knows he’s try­ing to reach some­where he’s been but he’s being dragged away. We float along with him, gath­er­ing the sto­ry by what the oth­er char­ac­ters say and how they react. 

The book reads more like inter­con­nect­ed sto­ries than a nov­el, and the facts of Jake’s sto­ry are some­times murky. Maybe we are not meant to under­stand exact­ly what has hap­pened. What is painful­ly clear is that Jake’s inte­ri­or dwin­dles until he no longer rec­og­nizes his wife, Helen. What reads as sad and dreamy is ulti­mate­ly ter­ri­fy­ing. We learn the sorts of things he is doing from his wife: Jake, you have put your clothes in the oven.” Jake, you have fed Lucky five times today, she’ll die if you don’t stop it.” While not every­one will want to immerse them­selves in such sad­ness, this book would be help­ful to peo­ple who have loved ones with Alzheimer’s.

Sara Leopold Spin­nell is a co-founder of Trav​elu​jah​.com, a web­site that pro­motes Chris­t­ian trav­el to Israel. She lives in New York City with her hus­band and two children.

Discussion Questions