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In Wilderness: A Novel - Softcover

Thomas, Diane

 
9780804176972: In Wilderness: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0804176973 ISBN 13: 9780804176972
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

SELECTED AS ONE OF THE 10 GREAT THRILLERS FOR YOUR BEACH READING LIST BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
 
For readers of Ron Rash, Thomas H. Cook, and Tim Johnston, In Wilderness is a suspenseful and literary love story hailed by New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson as “heartbreaking, bold, relentless” and “the work of a true original.”
 
Includes an exclusive conversation between Diane Thomas and Christina Baker Kline

Told she is dying of the mysterious illness that plagues her, thirty-eight-year-old Katherine Reid moves to a remote cabin in the southern mountains to live out her last days. But in this peaceful solitude, her life may still be in terrible danger: A damaged young man also lives in the forest, and he watches her every move.

Praise for In Wilderness
 
“A harrowing exploration of desire and obsession, In Wilderness sends two people into a physical and psychological wilderness that becomes stranger and more terrifying the deeper they go.”—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train
 
“Not my usual thing, which makes me say it all the louder: I love, love, love this book—the fearless and unflinching story of two extraordinary, vivid people alone in a vast pristine wilderness, told with genuine suspense and a wonderfully empowering ending.  In Wilderness is altogether spectacular.”—Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Personal
 
“Thomas writes hauntingly of obsession and survival in this dark, unusual love story. . . . As the author moves her characters through the seasons of 1966, 1967, and 1968, she offers a deep and unforgettable look into how tragedy and madness can shape lives. Written from the points of view of two suffering people, the story takes on an almost surreal, lyrical quality. Riveting and raw.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Explosive . . . The tension continues to grow. . . . Thomas writes with richness, describing the natural world as viscerally as she does the interior lives of these two intense characters. . . . Recommended for readers who also like the raw, honest writing of Amy Bloom or Amanda Coplin.”—Library Journal
 
“Gripping . . . powered by genuine suspense and driven forward by two characters whose lives readers cannot look away from . . . a memorable story of an isolated, beautiful place and of two people trying to make sense of the world they have chosen to live in.”—Booklist

“Unforgettable: a mad, haunting, dreamlike story of love, obsession, and wildness . . . Diane Thomas mixes elegant prose with raw emotion.”—William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Diane Thomas is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Year the Music Changed. A lifelong resident of Atlanta and the Georgia mountains and part-time resident of the Florida panhandle, she now lives in New Mexico.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

The Woman

In advertising, she has learned, you live and die by the Rule of Three: “Less tar, less nicotine, same great taste.”

It’s the same in life: “Third time’s the charm.” The gray-haired gastroenterologist seated across from her behind his cluttered mahogany desk is Dr. Third Opinion, her last hope, who was supposed to sally forth and save the day.

But Dr. Third Opinion has not sallied forth, has chosen instead to betray her, to align himself with doctors one and two in his assessment that her pain and suffering come from her body’s failure to assimilate her food. Not to put too fine a point on it, she’s starving; soon her organs will start shutting down; she’s got at most six months.

And there you have it: “Three strikes, you’re out.”

Assimilate. Good word, that. Significantly more abstract and intellectual than digest, which might far too easily lead to overcontemplation of actual physical functions. She nods to indicate she knows the word’s import, knows the import of all his words. Which she does, her mind’s eye picturing each in a contrasting typeface—Garamond, Bodoni Bold, Helvetica—as if they are a dummy print ad sent her for critiquing. Dying. D. Y. I. N. G. She can get no closer to the thing than metaphor: exiting early from an unproductive meeting in some new office high-rise, into an empty hallway with harsh lighting, where she will wait alone for an elevator that never comes. This is not particularly satisfactory.

“What’s its name, this thing that’s killing me?”

Names matter. For a while they were her specialty, extracting from thin air the perfect single-word descriptor for a suburban subdivision, line of carpeting, or processed sandwich spread. Before names she specialized in graphic design—logos, illustrations—and married her boss. After names she got promoted to creative director. This doctor, like the other two, tells her he does not know the name of what is killing her. Among all the colleagues, laboratories, scientists, and sorcerers her physicians have consulted, not one has come up with an answer. She is dying of a lack of information.

If she opens her mouth to scream now, she will never stop.

By her count she’ll make it through Christmas into 1967. Maybe see the trees leaf out, but that’s less certain. Thirty-eight seems young to die. But maybe if you’re ninety-six so does ninety-seven. She has disciplined herself these past four years to give no outward sign. Of anything. Except she can’t quiet her trembling hands.

“I see.” She doesn’t, it’s just what one says. Or maybe not; she’s got no idea what one says, she’s never died before.

The doctor frowns, delicately clears his throat. “If you’ll forgive me, there’s one question I try to ask all my patients. For my own edification, really, so if you’d rather not . . .”

“Oh, no, it’s fine.”

Truly, it is. He looks so earnest, the doctor. He seems a kindly man, in his white coat; she hopes his gray hair is premature and that he can look forward to a long career.

“Can you recall for me the last day that you felt completely well?” The doctor pauses. “There’s no hurry. Take all the time you need.”

All the time she needs would be six decades, although right now she’d be quite satisfied with five. Or four. Yet answering his question needs no time at all. The last day she felt completely well was May 24, 1962, a day she still remembers for an incident of such transcendent beauty she mistook it for a foretaste of all her life to come.

With her belly gloriously swollen, she was seated on a red stepstool in the baby’s room, or what would be the baby’s room in two more months, drawing pictures on its robin’s-egg-blue walls. A kite, eyes closed in rapture, rode the blowing wind; a rabbit in a frock coat and monocle had just popped out of his rabbit hole; a library table frowned beneath its load of books. Alice in Wonderland, Tom Sawyer, Little Women, she was lettering their titles when there came a loud commotion from the peaceful residential street—brakes grinding, men shouting, and a strange hissing sound. She flung her brush onto the canvas drop cloth, can still see it there in a faint spatter of black paint, and ran down the hall into their bedroom, hers and Tim’s, to see what was the matter.

Outside the open window, a city truck was spraying the runtiest of the ginkgoes in the grassy strip beyond the sidewalk, the tree with all its fan-shaped leaves eaten to filigree. The window framed a tracery of leaves and branches in a pearly mist shot through with rainbows. She remembers thinking she did not deserve to come upon such beauty, that she already had her child inside her, which was far and away beauty enough. Nonetheless, she stayed there, nose pressed against the rigid metal screen, for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, filled with too much gratitude to move. Stayed until the spraying was completed and the truck lumbered off down the street. A small collection of leftover rainbows lingered as drops of consolation on the screen—along with an oily film inside the draperies that, Tim said the next morning, stank like a cheap Florida motel and gave him tropical dreams.

When she is finished speaking, the doctor gazes past her with so great a sadness she experiences a moment of confusion, unsure if she has also told him how, only a day or so later, the headaches started and her energetic child quit moving. She never spoke of it, but even that unyielding denial did not save him. Tim couldn’t face it, made believe it never happened, left her to grieve alone. Became first a shadow and then slipped away, under the door or something. Left her controlling interest in the agency, an unwanted guilt offering, began another someplace far away—Milwaukee? Minneapolis?—she never can recall exactly where. Sometime in there her illness got its start and grew without her knowing, like gossip you don’t hear until too late.

Dr. Third Opinion sighs. He leans back in his creaky chair, stares past her into some middle distance to her left. “A hundred, hundred-twenty years ago, we used to tell patients like you, patients we had no hope of curing, to go west, move to the country, take the Grand Tour of Europe. Anything. A change of scene. After all this time, we can’t do any better.”

“Were they healed? The ones who went away?” Hates her voice’s horrid, hopeful whine.

He shrugs. “Who knows? I doubt most of their physicians ever heard from them again.”

He writes in his prescription pad, tears out the page. “This is for Valium. Refillable as long as you need it.”

She squints at it, can’t read his writing, bets it cuts off in six months.

“And don’t hesitate to call me if you need to.”

“Thank you, Doctor, that’s most kind.” What good would calling do?

After he leaves, she checks her reflection in the mirror by the door. Dull dark hair, hollow eyes, drawn mouth; the glen plaid suit hangs so loose on her now. She regrets not keeping her religion after high school. As things stand, she’s got no idea of what’s wanted, no chips to bargain with, nothing to trade. If she believes in anything, she believes in Sartre: Death is nothingness, silence under a bleak sky.

Absence of pain, one hopes. Not much help otherwise.

She touches the pearl earrings she put on earlier that morning, her gold watch. She wants to cry and doesn’t dare, for the same reason that she...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0804176973
ISBN 13 
9780804176972
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
336
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
GPSR Kontakt
gpsr@libri.de

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