Emily Fridlund

"History of Wolves" is easy to read but harder to understand.

I know how I feel about this book but I'm not sure what to think about it.

It's a beautiful piece of writing that uses language with relentless precision to climb inside the head of the main character.

Each page is watermarked with a profound sense of loneliness that the main character, our narrator, struggles with, denies, rails against, imagines gone and sometimes gives in to.

I felt fully present in each of the moments described in show more this book. So much so that, as we drifted between past, present, imagination, dream, memory and action, I found myself accepting what was going on rather than trying to make sense of it, much in the same way that the main character does.

Novels amplify my desire for a narrative that makes sense, that tells me something, that gives me meaning. "History of Wolves" frustrates that expectation. Rather than leading me to a conclusion or a judgement and "making sense" of the main character's life for me, this novel invites me to reach my own conclusions and then to challenge them and then to wonder if conclusions are devised to be a source of spurious comfort in an ambiguous world.

The story is told by Madeline, now thirty-seven, revisiting the events of a summer when she was fourteen and the things that led up to it and followed on from it.

Madeline, who also goes by the name Linda at school and with the family she babysits for, is both the most unreliable of narrators and the most honest of narrators. She shares who she is by showing what she has done and what she was thinking and feeling at the time but she gives no direct lectures, even to herself, on what this means.

Her narrative is not linear. It follows her reflections, making connections between past and present and starting from different "nows" as she tells her tale.

Madeline/Linda both accepts and rejects the idea that she is broken, that her childhood made her into someone with one foot always reaching out into space at the edge of the cliff. She sees herself, or perhaps her idealised self, not as someone human but as a wild thing, at home in the woods and on the lake but who still sometimes succumb to the pull of a hearth and food and a pat behind the ear, like a wolf playing at being a domestic dog.

The book cover carries a Jodi Picoult style "How far would you go to belong?" tag line on the cover that seems to me to miss the meaning of this book entirely.

I don't think it's belonging that Madeline's looking for, or even love. I think she wants someone who needs her and depends on her and supports her in an identity she approves of.

Madeline can be cruel and fickle. She is aware of the power she has over others. She is also aware of her own insignificance. She seems to be trying to find people and a place where she can be what she is and still be needed by someone who sees her clearly. Except that is too glib. It may be what she wants but she would probably resist anyone who tried to give it to her.

"History of Wolves" walks around two ways of establishing identity: "We are what we do" and "We are what we think". Madeline, at least the thirty-seven year old Madeline, doesn't seem to find either argument persuasive. The way she reviews her own life suggests that she believes that we are who we are and it doesn't change much. At one point she goes further and suggest that evil enters the world when we let our actions be driven by belief, a personal narrative that tells us what we want to be true and absolves us from dealing with reality.

I need to think about "History of Wolves" some more. I probably need to read it again. Not because it's a puzzle I haven't solved or because the writer's intention escapes me but because I think it has more to show me.

The book often refers to the difficulty of recognition, of seeing clearly, either through fog, or through the loss of light at dusk or the emerging glow at dawn, or even the struggle to recognise objects identified on the journey out but which look unfamiliar on the way home and can only be recognised in retrospect. I think there is something here that says we need to let our eyes adjust to shape our world and that we need a point of reference. In this book, I think I saw each moment clearly but I have not yet been able to map the journey. Which makes it feel pretty much like real life to me. show less

In her Booker Prize-shortlisted first novel, History of Wolves, Emily Fridlund has written an emotionally restrained yet poignant and wistful coming-of-age story that demonstrates that adults don’t always know best and that some situations can’t be salvaged no matter how good everyone’s intentions are. Madeline Furston, who prefers the name Linda (though she is also called ‘Freak’ by her classmates), is fourteen and lives in the lake district of northern Minnesota with her show more distracted and idealistic parents. The Furstons are the last remaining occupants of a remote, lake-front commune that her parents helped establish years earlier, when Linda was very young. Linda, who disdains the company of children her own age, is portrayed by Fridlund as a solitary, independent thinker (an inclination inherited from and unintentionally encouraged by her parents), fearless, a good student, and analytical beyond her years, particularly when it concerns the actions of the adults in her life. Linda relates her account in two narrative threads and after the passage of many years, from the perspective of someone looking back on a formative period in her life. In the first, when a new history teacher, Mr. Grierson, arrives at the school, the children are not sure what to make of an earnest young man trying hard to fit in and be liked. He seems harmless, a bit of a klutz, easily mocked, and in a wilful and impetuous moment Linda tries her hand at flirting with him, a move she later regrets. In the novel’s main thread, Linda is intrigued when a young family moves into the cottage across the lake from her house: a young man and woman and their toddler son. Curious and seeking companionship, she approaches the Gardner family and is quickly accepted into the fold, entrusted by the mother, Patra, to babysit her son Paul. It is spring. Leo Gardner, Patra’s husband and Paul’s father, a research scientist, is away working. A close and trusting bond quickly forms between Linda and Paul, but Patra, an anxious child-like woman who lacks confidence and seems lost without her husband, is incapable of committing to a genuine friendship. Upon Leo’s return, Linda is dismayed by the deferential and subservient turn in Patra’s behaviour, and in Leo’s company Linda remains guarded and subtly hostile, never sure where she stands with him. Throughout the narrative, from time to time, Linda hints at a momentous event and ensuing trial, but leaves the details vague until the latter sections of the novel. Fridlund imbues her story with great foreboding, each mention of the trial whetting the reader’s appetite for a tense and riveting courtroom drama. That the story does not really deliver on this promise is somewhat of a disappointment, though Fridlund does resolve Linda’s story in an emotionally satisfying manner. In the end, the reader of History of Wolves is left with the impression of a complex and exquisitely written novel that succeeds on many levels, but which might be trying to do too many things at once. show less

I picked this up when I saw it at my local library because it was long-listed for the Man Booker Award. Hmmm, what to say. It was written in a revelatory style that could have been very confusing, but instead told the reader just enough to shed light on the past and the future. The main character and narrator is a 14 year old girl who morphs periodically into her adult self. She is the product of a communal lifestyle in the north woods of Minnesota which fell apart when she was young. The show more remaining couple are or became her parents (unclear) and she was raised in the woods in poverty and resourcefulness. The story revolves around two significant experiences she had and how those impacted her later life. None of the characters wear a white hat, they are all flawed humans but in the most realistic way. Decisions made and consequences begotten seems to be a major theme. I found it easy to read but the issues it raised will stay with me. show less

Usually, I like reading books quickly. I like immersing myself in the world, a quick dive to the bottom of the pool and then back up again for a deep breath and the return of the pull of gravity on my limbs. If I take a long time reading a book, it's because it's difficult to read somehow, wordy in a nineteenth-century way or full of page-long sentences like those written by the literary Wunderkinder of the early twenty-first century or populated with a cast of thousands that I need show more notecards to keep track of.

This novel I read slowly for none of these reasons. History of Wolves drew me into the depths, past the hovering walleye, to a murky, beautiful place full of muffled sounds and a stinging cold from which I was in no rush to return.

Every word of this novel reaches deep. Fridlund wastes nothing. Linda's memories of belonging and joy are so closely tied to memories of betrayal and pain that she can't look at either directly. As we read, she circles around and around, getting close to the story and then drawing back, touching back on memories that take on one meaning in the first telling and another in the next. Fridlund puts the reader directly into Linda's mind, and while it's not always a comfortable place to be, it's painfully real. This novel demands a slow read to savor each morsel, to roll each word over the tongue like a pebble.

A friend and I were talking about the difference between a novel about a young adult and a YA novel, and while there are perhaps some generalizations to be made about purpose and literary merit, at the root the difference seems to be one of subtlety. Most YA novels I've read at one point or another explain the conflicts of the characters directly, telling the reader explicitly that the main character feels alienated because despite some specific difference---poverty or learning disability or supernatural ability---she's trying to be accepted by her peer group while remaining an individual. Linda feels the loneliness of a teenager trying to determine her place in the world, trying to feel accepted without blending in, but Fridlund shows all of this indirectly and more clearly and honestly than if she'd just written it outright.

I love this novel. I love the flawed, horrible, beautiful people. I love following Linda through the lakes and the woods, the slush and the mud, and the smell of pine sap and wet dog. I love seeing her poor decisions and her good decisions and the blurred dividing line between the two.

I've been reading novels lately with an eye for how they might help me improve my own character, and I can see two lessons that this book offers me on this front.

First is the reminder to experience everything. Hear each bird, smell each pinecone, taste each tropical Skittle, and note our relationship to these things because the same thing can seem different depending on the circumstances.

The second is to question my assumptions. Are the conclusions I'm drawing about the way the world works or about how the people around me act based on a sound premise? Am I leaving something out or missing a piece of the story that would allow me to understand a situation better? Are my assumptions blinding me to situations or evidence that might challenge my understanding of the world and of myself? show less