I know that some people disagree. Some people hated it, believing it to be badly written, opaque, confusing, or dreary. It certainly isn't an uplifting book--my initial reaction when I first read it was that I was so filled with existential despair I wouldn't be able to sleep that night. But it's about Alzheimer's. I suppose you could write a Tuesdays-with-Morrie-ish book about Alzheimer's that would offer some kind of cheesy, false uplifting message, but why would you do that? (Let's hope I didn't just give Mitch Albom any ideas.) And it is opaque and confusing at times--since we're seeing the world through the eyes of Jake, the dementia-stricken protagonist, I don't see how it could be otherwise. I can't see the "badly written" part, though. I think the writing is lovely, while remaining true to Jake's character:
The moors spread ahead of them, and behind them Quail Woods is being disassembled tree by tree. One must be careful, he thinks as he turns from the man's back and strains to see the land below, not to become too attached to what is gone, and to appreciate instead what is there. He eyes the small neat grids of houses below and finds, as he always has, that these spillages of humanity are not to be scorned for their invasion on nature but are to be accepted, loved even; he names some of the streets in his head and maps the area with compass points and landmarks, his hands now clasped to his knees.
At the point at which he expects the plane to descend, the pilot suddenly turns its nose upwards to the empty blue sky. "One last dance!" he shouts. The wind rips through the cockpit as they change direction and the prison appears way down below at a tilt, as if sliding off the surface of the earth. Looking down briefly he sees, perhaps, a figure waving. Henry said he would look out for him and wave. He lifts his arm in response, less edgy now and more exhilarated by the air smashing against them and the disorientation as the plane lists and the scenery changes faster than the mind can map it.
I will say that Jake's form of dementia does not resemble the dementia of any Alzheimer's patient I've ever known, or known of. I think this is a problem for some people, perhaps especially (and I'm speculating here) if they have been a caregiver or close family member of an Alzheimer's patient. This did not bother me, because I didn't find it to be a wholly improbable form of dementia and because we're mostly seeing the dementia through Jake's eyes, and it is conceivable to me that the dementia feels different from the inside than it appears to the outside world.
The book functions as something of a detective story, in which the reader has to unravel exactly what happened in Jake's life and how all the disparate images and people who recur in his dementia-ridden mind fit together. I usually don't like literary puzzles like this--I've said before that I don't even try to work out who the murderer is in mystery novels, I just allow the author to tell me--but in this case I thought it really worked; when the last pieces clicked into place in the final pages of The Wilderness, it was very satisfying.
The one aspect of this book that didn't work for me was the characterization of Jake's wife Helen. It seemed to me that she was supposed to be sympathetic, but I couldn't stand her. She seemed smug and self-absorbed, and reminded me unpleasantly of the protagonist's wife in Netherland. I don't have a problem with unlikable characters, but unlikable characters that the author seems to expect us to like always puzzle me.
All in all, though, The Wilderness is a great book, superior to everything on last year's longlist, and I highly recommend it. I hope to see it on the shortlist, although I think the competition for those six slots is pretty stiff and it's become clear to me over the years that the Booker judges and I rarely see eye-to-eye. I'm still rooting for Hilary Mantel. But if Harvey manages to overcome the odds and beat not only Mantel but also the likes of Colm Toibin, A. S. Byatt, Sarah Waters, William Trevor, and J. M. Coetzee to win the prize itself I don't think it will be a miscarriage of justice at all. (But I would feel a bit bad for Hilary Mantel.)
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