BOOK REVIEWS : HISTORY OF WOLVES
BOOK REVIEWS : HISTORY OF WOLVES
By : Michael Schaub
There's
a reason that some readers view contemporary coming-of-age novels with
suspicion. Too many play out the same way: An odd but winsome young person goes
on some kind of journey of discovery, either literal or figurative, and learns
something about himself or herself in the process. Often, there's an awkward
romance. And the ending, whether happy or otherwise, can usually be described
as bittersweet.
There
are exceptions, of course, and Emily Fridlund's electrifying debut novel History
of Wolves is one of them. The book doesn't follow the now-familiar
narrative arc that other novels in the genre do. There's no moment of
revelation at the end; if anything, the protagonist ends up more confused than
she was at the beginning. Fridlund refuses to obey the conventions that her
sometimes hidebound colleagues do, and her novel is so much the better for it.
History
of Wolves follows
a 14-year-old girl named Madeline, though nobody calls her that: "At
school, I was called Linda, or Commie, or Freak." The unkind nicknames are
the result of her upbringing on a northern Minnesota commune, long since
abandoned by all of its idealistic residents, with the exception of her
parents. To them, Linda is something of an enigma, overly serious, lacking the
heedless playfulness of other children. "[My mother] wanted very badly for
me to cavort and pretend, to prove I was unharmed, happy," Linda muses,
but she finds herself unable to participate in the ruse.
Linda's
year is changed by the arrival of a new history teacher, Mr. Grierson, the kind
of adult desperate to be seen as cool by his adolescent charges. Linda makes a
passing attempt to seduce him; later, he's arrested and accused of possessing
child pornography and having sex with one of his students.
'History of Wolves' isn't a typical thriller any more than it's a typical coming-of-age novel(Michael Schaub)
When
a new family moves across the lake from the mostly abandoned commune, Linda
sees a chance to distract herself from her unhappy home and school life. She
develops a quick affection for Patra, a young woman who works editing her
astronomer husband's manuscripts, and their four-year-old boy, Paul. The couple
hires Linda to babysit Paul during the summer days.
Linda
doesn't know quite what to make of Paul, or of children in general. "By
their nature, it came to me, children were freaks," she thinks. "They
believed impossible things to suit themselves, thought their fantasies were the
center of the world. They were the best kinds of quacks, if that's what you
wanted — pretenders who didn't know they were pretending at all."
Patra,
Paul and Linda grow close, although Linda harbors misgivings about Leo, the
quiet and mysterious father of the boy. It doesn't take long for Linda's doubts
to be confirmed, when something terrible happens — it's out of the blue, and it
leaves both Linda and the reader in shock.
History
of Wolves isn't
a typical thriller any more than it's a typical coming-of-age novel; Fridlund
does a remarkable job transcending genres without sacrificing the suspense that
builds steadily in the book. She's particularly effective using descriptions of
nature to provide eerie foreshadowing: "You know how summer goes. You
yearn for it and yearn for it, but there's always something wrong. ... The
afternoons are so fat and long. You want to see if anything you do
matters."
Perhaps
the greatest accomplishment in the novel is Fridlund's portrayal of Linda, who
the reader encounters not just as a teenager, but, in brief flash-forward
scenes, as an adult still psychically wounded from the events of the summer.
Sometimes people overcome the traumas they were subjected to as children;
sometimes they don't. For most people, and for Linda, it's somewhere in
between.
"Maybe
there is a way to climb above everything, some special ladder or insight, some
optical vantage point that allows a clear, unobstructed view of things,"
an adult Linda reflects. "But isn't that the crux of the problem? Wouldn't
we all act differently if we were someone else?"
Looking
in hindsight isn't any more accurate than trying to predict the future, of
course; and neither really works out for Linda. But she's such an incredible
character — both typical and special, sometimes capable of great love and
sometimes spectacularly not — that it's hard to turn away from her sometimes
horrifying story. History of Wolves is as beautiful and as icy
as the Minnesota woods where it's set, and with her first book, Fridlund has
already proven herself to be a singular talent.
--------------------
Source : NPR books
Michael Schaub is a writer, book critic and regular contributor to NPR Books. His work has appeared
in The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Portland Mercury and
The Austin Chronicle, among other publications. A native of Texas, he now lives
in Portland, Ore.
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