Fathers inevitably die, and it is their sons who follow after them. Our fathers do not always love us the way we think they should, but nor do we always love them the way they think we should, either. Arvid Jansen's father died six years ago, and it has taken him until now to realize that he has not, in fact, dealt with it at all. Worse, his wife and children have become estranged, and his brother's life is unravelling as much as his own. His life is disorientation, memory without hooks to hold them within his mind. He wakes, he eats, he sleeps, he forgets.

We meet Arvid in a very confused state. He has “awoken” outside a bookstore, with dirty, scratched palms and a bruised eye. He can't remember much of how he arrived there, or why he chose to return to this store where he worked years ago. He was an author of mild success, forgotten now, not immortalized in death like Yeats or Kafka or Schulz, as he might have wished.

The novel is written from a first-person perspective, allowing us deep insight into Arvid's mind. Action triggers thoughts which trigger memories of times that have long passed - more often than not to do with his father, a strong, stubborn, emotionally withdrawn man whom Arvid felt never quite connected with any of his sons. Any memory at all will invariably contain a reference to his father - a brief thought, a whispered lament, an essay-like discourse on regret.

I close my eyes, I hear the wind in the treetops, and it is a good sound. I have heard it both summer and winter on hundreds of cross-country treks with my father, when we rested and my breath was not the only sound I could hear, and sometimes the wind in the treetops was the only things that was good.

The novel is not only concerned with fathers. There is a strong current of loneliness which runs throughout. Arvid becomes involved with a young woman who lives in an apartment across from his own; they watch each other through their windows, communicating in silence. One particularly evocative scene happens shortly after they have become lovers:

...I see her turning and looking back at me, and we just stand there and then she lets her dressing gown drop ... Her skin shines dimly and is whiter than anything else I can see, and she lifts both hands and lays their palms against the pane, and then I do the same, lift my hands and lay the palms against the pane, and it's as if it was just that one window, a few millimetres of glass between her and me...

The novel is not without awkwardness, however. "Give me any car at all, as long as it's a Japanese and begins with an m and ends with an a." This sort of cleverness feels flat and forced - why not just say you like Mazdas? There are many little literary tricks scattered throughout this book, and most of them fall flat. They come across as being written by the author rather than thought by the character. It is worth wondering whether or not these stumbles are the fault of the author or the translator. In the Wake could not be confused with a novel originally written in English; there are too many pages of writing that would be considered “flat”.

For all its loneliness, sadness, withdrawn emotions and awkward phrasings, Petterson's novel is worthy. It is not difficult to fall into the claustrophobic, introverted world of Arvid, and the journey is well worth the effort. While Arvid's issues with his father are not resolved - and how could they be, for he is dead - there is a sense that he is progressing towards something further in his life that could help him. Whether that is hitting rock-bottom with his suicidal brother or embracing a woman he likes but not loves, we cannot know. But there is something happening within his breast, some stir of the heart that was not present at the beginning of the novel. Growth, then.