A deeply creepy novel set in on a remote Scottish Island

5th December 2022

The Wilderness by Sarah Duguid, a deeply creepy novel set on a remote Scottish Island.

David and Anna are urban empty nesters in London. Their sons are in their twenties and long gone. When Anna and David get the devastating news that two young girls are in dire straits in their remote home on a Scottish Island, they  immediately take the flight from London City Airport to Inverness. We have to wait a little while to discover who the children are and how they have come to find themselves marooned.

On the island, bodies have to be buried and the wider family has gathered for the funerals. The author inserts David’s long term pal, Brendan, in amongst the mourners who have come together on the island. He seems to have arrived on a whim, and we know that Anna deeply despises him. We also know through her that he is pretty much a failed anthropologist, if not a failed human being in her eyes. Why he dogs their lives remains unclear.

It transpires that the couple is best placed to care for the youngsters, and so the two decamp, without real discussion, to the wilds of Scotland so that the children don’t have to suffer further upheaval. The longterm aim is to make the children’s transition as easy as possible to a new life in London, and hunkering down on the island for a few months means they can all get to know each other. They start to settle in and, blow me down, Brendan arrives like the proverbial bad penny and stays for the duration.

Brendan is portrayed as unwashed and hairy (according to the girls) and comes with shaman and healing experience. He is determined to assist the young girls through their grief. Yes, he is creepy but it is the author’s handling of his behaviour that is creepily and rather repulsively spine-chilling. Brendan has few boundaries and the girls accuse him of entering their bedroom unannounced. He denies this. He then goes on to describe one of the girls in her red/white candy cane night dress as “sweet enough to lick”. If, as an author, you decide to introduce inappropriate behaviour in an adult, where children are present, then you have to be really sure of your ground. The author unfortunately does not seem sure of her ground.

The author goes on to overlay the story with further sexual innuendo: for example, she has Anna pondering whether she should “jiggle herself about like an old-fashioned housewife” on the “washing machine that is making its crescendo towards its final break-neck spin”. I mean, jiggle-washing? Brendan is given the task of lustily eating a mango, which, given its consistency and texture, is a standard metaphor for sexual activity, but the author has Brendan slurping his way through the fruit in a revolting way.  Why include it, to be honest, when we already know that he is a repellent man? “Are you feeling ripe?” he goes on to enquire of Anna, at which point I felt quite nauseous. Later, Anna is discussing her sexual relationships with her son – how does that fit in? Her son describes how he is separated from his girlfriend and feels now is his time to go traveling at the age of 26. Anna is all the while wondering whether she will ever be a grandmother (when she isn’t busy on multiple occasions wiping the condensation from her windows). This story can just feel so random…

At base, the author ineffectively tinkers with a very difficult subject, which makes the story of Brendan all the more cringe-worthy and off-putting. This kind of subject matter needs a robust and confident approach, and because this story is anything but assured, it drifts into a rather discomfiting experience.

The storyline feels like a very early draft that could be so much more if the characters had been fleshed out. We have no real idea why Brendan inveigles himself into the couple relationship/family. We suspect that there may be some marital issues between Anna and David (and in fact they do go away for a weekend together but we have little understanding behind the reasoning of their next move). The children are at times indistinguishable from each other, so when they both start “pawing the ground” with the tips of their feet, it feels they are ready to launch into some kind of double-act. Dialogue throughout is perfunctory and just when some psychological depth might ensue, the conversation ends.

Look, what the author does really well is conjure up the barren and inhospitable landscape. The characters are soaked through for much of the time, whilst they construct a shrine (remember we have a would-be shaman in their midst). The rain descends and obliterates the landscape, the sea foams, the wind howls, and it is all rather remote and bleak. She also has a very nice, fluid writing style which is what kept me reading to the end.

Overall a much tighter editing hand could have developed this novel into a cohesive read but as it stands, it remains creepily unpalatable. The author really does have an engaging way of telling a story – I think it was the choice of subject matter and poor editing that did her considerable disservice on this occasion.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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