Book Details

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. 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, 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.

Binding Paperback
Author Samantha Harvey
ISBN13 9780099526537
ISBN10 0099526530
Pages 336
Published 2010
Fecha de publicación 04/02/2010
Language English

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About the author

Samantha Harvey

1975 (Kent) See page of Samantha Harvey

Samantha Harvey (Kent, 1975) estudió Filosofía en la Universidad de York y en la Universidad de Shefﬁ eld, y completó su formación con un máster en Escritura Creativa y un doctorado en la Universidad de Bath Spa, donde actualmente ejerce como profesora. Es autora de las novelas The Wilderness (galardonada con el Premio Betty Trask y el Premio AMI Literature en 2009), All Is Song, Dear Thief y The Western Wind (Premio Staunch Book 2019), y del ensayo autobiográﬁco Un malestar indeﬁnido, un relato lúcido y sobrecogedor sobre su relación con el insomnio en el que Harvey despliega, además, toda una prospección de la condición humana: «Su lectura provoca angustia y compasión, pero también transmite una vitalidad delicada y admirable» (David Jiménez Torres, El Mundo); «Estremecedor» (Manuel Rodríguez Rivero, El País). Sus novelas han sido preseleccionadas para el Women’s Prize for Fiction, el Guardian First Book Award y los premios Walter Scott, James Tait Black, Man Booker, Baileys, Jerwood Fiction Uncovered y HWA Gold Crown. Ejerce también como crítica literaria en The Guardian y The New York Times, y ha colaborado con ensayos y artículos en The New Yorker, The Telegraph, The Guardian y la revista TIME, entre otras publicaciones. Orbital, su novela más reciente, ha sido galardonada con el Premio Booker, además de preseleccionada para el Premio Orwell de Ficción Política y ﬁnalista del Ursula K. Le Guin de Ficción.

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