Samantha Harvey: ‘I wrote The Wilderness with my heart.’
These are the words that caught my eye in this interview with Samantha Harvey, whose novel, The Wilderness, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Orange Prize and is now also on the shortlist for the Guardian First Book-Award.
When asked what she was most pleased with in the novel she said:
I wrote The Wilderness with my heart, if that’s not too sentimental a thing to say. So I’m most pleased that this thing that was in my heart has found expression in the world, and is interesting to people. Not everyone, I know, but some – and that really is enough.
It’s interesting to me that Harvey seems almost to apologise for saying such a thing. You did what? You wrote it with your heart? As if it is not the done thing, not terribly cool to write from such a felt sense of things.
And I find that so refreshing!
The book is written from the point of view of Jake, a sixty-year-old man with Alzheimer’s, and Harvey engaged in some comprehensive first-person research. She says:
‘I used first and third-person accounts and case studies of people with Alzheimer’s, I read medical books, went to Alzheimer’s care centres, spoke to carers, to a researcher and a neuroscientist. I watched films, I read poetry by people with dementia. I felt a huge responsibility to get it if not right exactly then at least plausible, and for it to resonate with those who know more about the disease than I do.’
I haven’t yet read the book but I’ll definitely be adding it to my Christmas bookshelf.
Tagged with: Guardian First Book Award • Samantha Harvey • The Wilderness