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Dennis Danvers
WILDERNESS New York. Pocket Star. 2000. 309 pp. Pocketbook ISBN-10: 0380806460 Reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 10/21/2010 Recommend this book to other readers? * * * * * YES In 1991 appeared a book later nominated for the Bram Stoker Award as Best First Novel. It was WILDERNESS, by prolific Richmond, VIrginia writer Dennis Danvers (b. 1947). The tale is set in Danvers's home town of Richmond (with a grand finale escape among wild wolf packs in Ontario's giant -- bigger than Delaware -- Algonquin Provincial Park. The novel's all-North American cast and setting are in striking contrast to the 1995 British film version of the same name, allegedly unhelpfully cut to 90 minutes in a release for USA markets. The film is set in London, with final scenes in and near a non-existent wolf sanctuary in the Highlands of Scotland. Film tracks novel in more than usual detail but, when it does not, the film is the loser. In both versions Alice White, a young urbanized woman has, since puberty, become a female wolf every full moon. As a girl Alice had ripped out the throat of a young man trying to rape her. She had confessed but no one believed her. After a short confinement in a mental hospital, she was released to her parents. As an adult, Alice confides her story to a psychiatrist who disbelieves her too, but keeps her talking hoping to find a cure. Doctor Adams also teaches her self-hypnosis, so that she can make her delusion go away. The young woman, Alice, driven into sexual promiscuity, also reveals her secret to the first true love of her life. Towards tale's end both lover and his ex-wife actually see Alice in the city as a wolf. I will not spoil either film or novel by more detail. Both, especially the novel, probe rather convinclingly aspects of the nature of human personality (including unusually close bonding and even identity among mother-children, twins and lovers) and the possibility of shape-changing. There is no religious or moral judgmentalism, much scientific probing, The film is better than average, the book MUCH better than average. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/26936070.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 10/21/2010 name of review: "I'm a werewolf ... and I want to stop." rating: * * * * * review: "'I'm
a werewolf,' she said. 'I change into a wolf every full moon, and I
want to stop'" (Ch. 3).
Thus spoke 30-something Alice White to the young General Practitioner whom she first consulted in Richmond, Virginia about her shape changing. His reaction was to line up a psychiatrist named Luther Adams. Like every other adult in the novel with whom Alice merely speaks about her monthly change into a she-wolf (as distinct from, eventually, showing it happen to some), Dr Adams believes that she is mistaken. Eventually Luther teaches her self-hypnosis as a way to become gatekeeper of her own delusion and to stop forever from turning into a wolf. The last part of the novel shows Alice hard at work learning how to take control of and actively manage her changes to wolf and back to human. Alice is only at uncontrollable times a wolf. When she was 13, a young farm hand tried to rape her. Her involuntary reaction was to change shapes and tear his throat out. She admitted her deed but was disbelieved by sheriff, parents and psychiatrists. After a brief time in a mental hospital, Alice was given back to her parents. During those difficult teen years, she grew closer, not to her parents, but to her father's married aunt, Mrs Ann Rawson, who lived in Ontario just outside the mammoth Algonguin Provincial Park, a sanctuary for wolves and other wild animals. Toward novel's end Alice, now known in Richmond to be a wolf, flees to Aunt Ann. Meanwhile, Ann's abiding problem is loneliness and fear of getting sexually close to men. She fears all men as potential rapists and on rare occasions when she finds a male she trusts, she cannot bring herself to tell him about her changing into a wolf. All this changes when he begins a passionate romance with her university teacher, an expert in penguins, Dr Erik Summers. Summers is only hours from being finally divorced by his museum director wife Debra when he takes up with Alice. * * *
I think that this sketch may give you enough of a sense of the story to decide whether you want to learn more about the book. It was published in 1991 and inspired a 1995 British film (set in Britain) that otherwise adheres rather closely to the novel. When it does not, the novel is distinctly better, in my opinion. There is something in WILDERNESS for just about every adult: hot-blooded, day in, day out sex; probing questions about whether shape changing is impossible in the age of DNA research, meditations on loneliness and its cures and much information about wolves. I recommend that you first watch the film, available in DVD from netflix.com. If you like the film, you will love the book. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/Dennis_Danvers _WILDERNESS-1653020.html?cid=74&gat review&rid=191723 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 10/22/2010 title of review: "What was Alice trying to understand about herself by imagining she was a wolf?" rating: * * * * review: Fact: since her puberty when growing up in the countryside, Alice White, now living in Richmond, Virginia, has taken the shape of a wolf every full moon. Her psychiatrist, Luther Adams, and her lover, Professor Erik Summers, are the only people in her adult life to whom Alice dares to reveal herself. They do not believe her until Debra, Erik's recently divorced wife, first beholds Alice turn into a wolf (and not attack her, though provoked) and Erik then sees a wolf fleeing his house. Alice is very lonely, both as human and as occasional wolf. When she was a teen, a young man had tried to rape her. She involuntarily became the wolf and tore his throat out. But no one would believe her. Alice has strong sexual urges and regularly takes men for one-night stands. She is afraid, however, to love any man exclusively, lest he not believe her story and/or she tear him to pieces. All this changes when Erik moves into a house close to hers. -- Dr Adams helps Alice White learn to
control her shape changing by teaching her the art of self-hypnosis.
-- A brilliant geneticist friend convinces Erik that DNA research makes shape-shifting from one species to another plausible. Erik, once he accepts the facts, creates the hypothesis that lycanthropy is inherited. He then deduces that Alice has fled to Ontario where, Erik thinks, her shape-changing great aunt Ann conveniently lives next to the gigantic Algonquin Provincial Park, where several wolf packs live protected from mankind. I refrain from telling more about the plot lest I spoil your reading pleasure, should you choose to open WILDERNESS. None of the characters is portrayed as having any religious beliefs whatsoever. All are this-worldly conditioned reflexes responding to their emotions, education and environment. But there is provocative speculation about human identity. -- Is there a wolf lurking in everyman's
psyche?
-- Can we understand our need for human companionship better by studying identical twins (seen as cloned wholes in the novel) or by studying lovers (seen as bookends between a book, or as halves of a separated whole as in Plato's SYMPOSIUM) or some other relationship? -- "What was Alice trying to understand about herself by imagining she was a wolf?" (Ch. 11). Both Dr Adams and Erik Summers had at first thought that Alice was imagining herself a wolf in order better to grasp something in her purely human but troubled soul. But grasp what? Later, both men accept that Alice is at times a real she-wolf and -- that she eventually develops the skill
to abolish the wolf forever.
-- Or to abolish the human and stay a wolf forever. -- Or to go back and forth at will between two species and their equally powerful needs. Read the 1991 book and see which option Alice choses. Or view the 1995 British movie of the same name and watch a different ending. -OOO- Recommended reading: Stephenie Meyer - THE TWILIGHT SAGA. http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/ review.aspx?reviewid=1467379 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 10/22/10 title of review: "He didn't believe me, (but) he says he loves me." rating: * * * * review: When a whole category of depressing things happen to men, are those things inevitably even worse for women? That might arguably be the case for Emma Lou Morgan, heroine of Wallace Thurman's 1928 Harlem Renaissance novel, THE BLACKER THE BERRY. The whole novel is about her being (in her mind) too black to be respected by lighter-skinned American Negroes. Emma Lou thought that "She
should have been a boy, then color of skin wouldn't have mattered so
much, for ... a black boy could get along, but ... a black girl would
never know anything but sorry and disappointment" (Part 1).
I imagine a kind of sistership between two fictional heroines, black Emma Lou and caucasian Alice White. Alice is the misunderstood heroine of the 1991 American novel WILDERNESS and of the 1995 British film of the same name. Eventually Emma Lou learns to live with her blackness. What Alice has to learn to live with seems tougher: involuntarily being a werewolf for one night every full moon. For this has been Alice's fate since age 12. Might this have been easier has Alice been a boy? Certainly, no man would have tried to rape her. One difference between the two young women: no amount of bleaches and skin treatments can stop Emma Lou from being black. But being taught self-hypnosis by a psychiatrist who disbelieves her empowers 33-year old Alice to change shapes at will. She suddenly has three choices: -- become a wolf and stay a wolf till she
dies;
-- hypnotize the wolf away and stay human forerver; -- spend times of her own choosing in both
worlds.
Now Alice's biggest sorrow is solitude and inability to relate lovingly to males. She was nearly raped at age 13. Spontaneously and on the spot she became a she-wolf and tore out her attacker's throat. She confessed. No one believed her. Alice now desperately wants companionship with fellow humans. And to her that means, for a start, finding someone who believes her. No belief proves no love. She has just brought herself to tell Erik Summers, the first man whom she has ever fallen in love with, that she changes shape and has killed a human. Alice then rushes to consult Dr Luther Adams, her psychiatrist. She is angry with her lover. Why? "He
didn't believe me. Goddammit Luther, he says he loves me. I don't know
what that means to you doctor guys, but being believed would seem
pretty basic to me" (Ch. 9).
Her skeptical lover does soon enough believe that Alice can change shape. For his ex-wife actually saw an enraged Alice morph into a wolf and Erik, without personally seeing the change, did then behold a wolf leaving his home in Richmond, Virginia only to disappear. Scientist Erik consults a brilliant geneticist who assures him that DNA-research and related makes it thinkable that an animal can change into another species. Erik then guesses that Alice's beloved great-aunt Ann is also a werewolf. He drives to Ontario to Ann's house located right up against the huge game preserve called Algonquin Provincial Park. But Alice, wherever she has fled, hates Erik intensely for not believing her simply because she had told him the truth. It will be very hard for Erik to prevent Alice from choosing wolfdom forever. I will tease you no more with the plot. Both Alice and "her" wolf are dimly aware of each other. And in the normal sociable worlds of both females, being a "lone wolf" is tantamount to isolation and misery. I do not recall Alice White ever feeling extra sorry for herself simply because, if she has to be a werewolf, why couldn't she be a male werewolf? But surely that might be easier than being a she-wolf. WILDERNESS, like the much earlier THE BLACKER THE BERRY, is a notably better than average read. With the many strikes against her that any human female has, why do some have additional unwished for burdens: an unpopular skin color or shape changing? Read the book and think some curious new thoughts. -OOO- tags: shapeshifter, lycanthrope, Algonquin Provincial Park, richmond, genetics, DNA http://www.amazon.com/Wilderness-Dennis-Danvers/ dp/0380806460/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid= 1287016892&sr=8-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 10/23/2010 Review Title: "Twins: two of the same thing. Lovers: different halves of one thing." Product Rating: * * * * PROS: One woman's animality respectfully probed. Can love cure loneliness in both humans and wolves? CONS: Utterly this-worldly, carnal. Implausible case for shape-changing based on current genetic research. BOTTOM LINE: Enjoy WILDERNESS, the good 1996 film. Then WILDERNESS, the better 1991 novel. Explore wilderness and wolf within one woman's soul. Is love Plato's search for our other missing half? aohcapablanca's Full Review: "Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!" (Rubaiyat, quatrain XI).
Library shelves groan under studies of America's evolving conceptions from colonial days until now of "wilderness." To some Pilgrims and Puritans the wilderness was dark, evil, a place to be wrested from Satan. To James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking hero Natty Bumppoo a wilderness was attractive because not yet corrupted by Europeans. Comes Richmond, Virginia's author Dennis Danvers, with his 1991 novel WILDERNESSS and later the follow-on British three-part mini-series and 1996 feature film of the same name. Danvers and, to a lesser degree his cinematic down-line, creditably display the wilderness within the soul of 33-year old Alice White. Like the earliest Europeans in pristine North America, Alice can choose either to fear and extinguish whatever darkly lurks in her psyche or to trek inside her wilderness searching despairingly for antidotes to loneliness, for meaning and for love. I recommend that you enter WILDERNESS by watching the 90-minute DVD version starring Swedish actress Amanda Ooms as Alice White. It is a better than average film and tracks the novel surprisingly well, despite its scenes being shifted from Richmond, Virginia and Ontario to London and Scotland. Film's ending differs from novel's, which gives you material for thought. The Novel
Ever since she was 12 years old growing up in rural Virginia, Alice has spent every single night of a full moon as a she-wolf. She and her wolf are dimly aware of their connection, without understanding it. Are Alice and wolf twins? Are they lovers like Alice's beloved great-aunt Ann and her husband Howard? That couple lives happily in Ontario, on the edge of the huge Algonquin Provincial Park, a wild animal sanctuary, including several packs of wolves. "Alice knew a pair
of twins at school; Ann and Howard were much like that, but the twins
seemed two of the same thing, while Ann and Howard were different
halves of one thing," (Ch. 6).
Only one time other than at full moon, had Alice ever changed her shape. That was in a barn when teen Alice was assaulted by a young man. Spontaneously, Alice became the wolf and tore out the throat of the attacker atop her. She confessed but not the sheriff, not her parents, not a doctor, nor the staff of a mental hospital where she was briefly under observation believed Alice. Years later, in Richmond, Alice works in a travel agency while taking far more University courses than she will ever need for a degree that she is not pursuing. By coincidence, her about-to-be-divorced faculty advisor, Erik Sommers, a biologist specializing in penguins, has just moved in next door to Alice's row house. For some months now, Alice has put herself in the care of psychiatrist Luther Adams. She tells both Adams and Sommers the true story of her lycanthropy and of her homicide. Neither believes her. But Luther teaches Alice self-hypnosis so that she can destroy the imaginary wolf within her. Alice learns well and is soon able to shift real shapes in both directions at will. Erik is the first man that Alice has ever been in love with. She is desperately lonely for male company and has bedded man after man in seemingly endless one-night stands. But Erik is something new, what she has been dreaming of as both woman and wolf: a permanent cure for personal loneliness. She loves him; he loves her. But suddenly his ex-wife Debra wants Erik back. And Erik must choose. Alice White insists that if Erik really loves her, he must believe her story on no evidence other than her word. He does not. Enraged, Alice morphs before rival Debra's eyes but does her no harm. Erik does not witness the shape change but does see a wolf leaving his flat. A consultation with an old graduate student friend, now a world-renowned geneticist, convinces Erik that DNA-related research proves that changes from one species to another are biologically possible. Erik then leaps to the conclusion that lycanthropy is hereditary. And he guesses where Alice and her inner wolf have fled. He drives day and night to Ontario to find her. From this point novel and film take different turns. Fortunately for her future happiness, self-hypnosis has given Alice White the power to choose among three options: eternal humanness (intended by Dr Adams and prayed for by Erik Sommers), eternal wolfdom (not something that Erik wants) or moving back and forth at will between two worlds. If the film WILDERNESS is good, the novel behind it is even better. At some level, Alice's desperate search for perfect love in the wrong places, especially in passionate sexual encounters with unloved men or with one loved adult male, reminds me of Plato's SYMPOSIUM or Saint Augustine's CONFESSIONS. It is disappointing to me but probably not to many readers, that by novel's end Alice has not (yet) risen to Augustine's famous insight, "Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they
rest in Thee."
Alice, whether as human or as she-wolf, needs loving companions of the same species. May she and her wolf find as much happiness as she can, say I! P. S. Thank you DramaStef for making WILDERNESS reviewable by me and other epinionators. -OOO- Recommended: Yes. http://www1.epinions.com/review/Wilderness_epi/content_528761130628 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/danvers_wilderness.html file: danvers_wilderness |