Name: Jeannette Ordas's review of History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
Item: History of Wolves
Rating: 2
Author: Jeannette Ordas

Emily Fridlund

"Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counterculture world. Isolated at home and an outlander at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of his arrest deeply affect Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong"--

History of Wolves

Szymon

Jeannette Ordas

This book is just wisps of something more not realized.

Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in an ex-commune beside a lake in the beautiful, austere backwoods of Northern Minnesota. Isolated at home and an outsider at school, she is mostly left to her own devices. So when a young family - mother, father and their little boy Paul - move into the cabin across the lake, Linda insinuates her way into their orbit. Yet something isn't right. Drawn into secrets she doesn't understand, Linda must make a choice that will affect the rest of her life...

Fraser Simons

Honestly, had I read this on paper, this might have been a 5. The narrator was great, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I feel like the structural things that are compelling about this do not translate to being spoken aloud. Time jumps and complex motifs “click” for me much better on the page. There’s like an almost physical sensation of my brain shifting gears and “getting it”. So anyway, I’ve ordered it and look forward to reading it again in the coming months.

This book is very much my jam. I love the ecosystem of Linda’s narration and how memory and time and visualization work in her mind. There are large themes being explored that are still soft subjective; I hate it when large themes are given in prescriptive ways (Midnight Libraries, let me tell you what is correct and what is not, for instance). 

It subverts coming of age in general, the potential danger of religion or rigid structure/doctrine in thought, sexual awakening, the pain, and altered states guardians and parents can inflict on children - wildly altering surprising aspects of a person. It’s about social dynamics, especially trust. 

Strangely, some of the critiques I’ve often seen of this is that they don’t like… find Linda relatable or likable, presumably this also means unlikable in a “fun” way for the reader, otherwise I don’t even know what to do with that. But I feel like people miss the intentions of very fundamental structural aspects of the book. It’s intentionally unreliable narration, the characterization, and interactivity of the narration via Linda’s memory. These work in tandem with the themes to communicate really important things about the protagonist. 

Even what she says her story is about, which is how some people have judged if the overall story is successful or not needs to be interrogated but seems to be taken at face value.

Overall I think this is spectacular. Very well written. Especially in that the writing, as I mentioned, lures the reader into a false sense of security about aspects of the form and subsequent implications and assumptions the reader has. And at a personal level, I just really liked that it was unsettling and haunting in a low-key way. It’s weird that some people don’t see that that is the point? Not that it’s the result of the craft nothing being applied with intent or purpose. 

I hadn’t even heard of this until a Booktuber, Shaelin Writes, talked about it during multiple videos. She has great taste in books so I thought I’d give it a try. Very glad I did~

Lauren Attaway

It took me a little while to embrace this book but once I was into it I finished it as fast as I could. The story's protagonist Linda bounces back and forth in time as Linda the adults struggles to come to terms with an event she feels partially responsible for in her teens. I think this novel did an excellent job of showing how the guilt a person may carry can affect their entire life. The book is beautifully written and definitely worth giving it a look. If it can grab your attention, it's worth it, but it might not be for everyone.

Amanda Wells

Before the Man Booker longlist was announced, this book had been a 'recommended' read for me both here on Goodreads, and on Audible. Once the list was revealed, I took that as the final push to read this book. And it turns out it was a very good move!

This book unfolds in such a complex and beautiful way, the story (or stories) revealed carefully and from multiple angles - softening the impact of some reveals, and making others more harsh. The way I related to and empathised with Madeline, really shifted how I might have interpreted the events of the book were they told in a more journalistic style - and that was both engaging, and uncomfortable.

I would absolutely recommend this, especially if you're looking to read some of the Man Booker longlist this year. It is superbly well written, but not in a way that sets itself apart from the reader. I felt drawn in and pushed back as directed by the author but not in any way except to shape my experience of the book and the protagonist's perspective. 

I would only caution that you don't start the book as I did, sitting outside waiting for a ferry in winter. The description of the Minnesota winter made my physical experience of my own (relatively mild!) winter feel bone-chilling!

Jayarna La Bozzetta

I have middling feelings towards this story. In some places I think it really hits you hard, and things are bleak and horrible and confusing. But other times it meanders too long with no real sense of purpose. I wish there was more focus in some areas, and a little less time spent on Patra and Paul in the middle of the relationship. That felt too long and one note in that portion.

I don't often read contemporary or literary fiction unless it has a strong theme or purpose so I struggle quite a lot with these stories that are more "slice-of-life" as I can't quite work out the point compared to novels with more purpose. However this one straddles the line between both which I think is ultimately it's downfall. It feels confused and ultimately the ending felt unclear and I felt like the author just had no idea what she was actually doing in terms of conclusion. It reaches for something but never quite gets there and I left this one feeling like "but why?" 

The prose is certainly very pretty and the atmosphere and the main character are very well written.

Dina

I'm not really sure how to rate this, so I'm gonna go with three stars for now and edit it later if I feel like I want to rate it differently.

The thing with this book is that it's not really what you expect at all. I remember picking it up at a bookstore when I went on a road trip with family members I hadn't seen in years (and some I'd just met) and thinking "hmm. This one sounds really intriguing". And it is — intriguing, that is — but it is also really strange and confusing.

There are so many things going on and so many time jumps (back and forth, with no warning whatsoever), and even the ending is kind of weird. Maybe it was just me who didn't really get the whole gist of it. I got the general idea and I understood what happened to the kid in the end, but the whole thing with Lily went way over my head.

The writing is really compelling, and there is that constant sense of mystery, like you're picking up crumbs but still so far away from the big picture. And it does wrap a lot of things up in the end, but there are also some things that are just left there, floating in an ocean of nothing. Or, again, maybe I just couldn't see them for what they were or what they represented.

Anyway, this book was overall both a peculiar and frustrating experience. Sometimes I got really engaged in it, others I would be so confused that I just couldn't stop frowning at the book.

Laura

If you have a thing for pretty books, definitely get the hardcover copy. The dust jacket isn't my favorite, but the actual hardback book is gorgeous. 

Now that I've said that, I can move on to the actual review. I started reading the novel expecting, well, what was advertised- a beautifully written literary fiction novel about an event that defined Linda's growing up. I did get that, in some ways. And there were things I loved and things that didn't work for me, but there were more things that did work for me than didn't. Make sense? 

I'm sure, then, that if you've scrolled down and saw my final rating, you are surprised as to what I gave it. The thing is, while I was reading this book, one word kept popping in my head. Contrived. History of Wolves doesn't feel genuine. It feels like the author sat down and thought to herself "I want to write a (very, I admit) well-written literary fiction novel starring a teenage girl who's different from all the other kids and of course let's add a young child and an intense female friendship and it will have an ambiguous ending like all literary fiction novels do nowadays." It's the kind of novel that is manufactured to get 5 star ratings on Goodreads and put on several Best Books of the Year lists. 

Not saying that's a bad thing per say. I'm just saying that it was so transparent that it ultimately became the reason this book got the rating it got. And what did I like about this book? I liked the writing, of course. Fridlund obviously knew what she was doing technically. Most of the description, especially the description of the woods, was extremely vivid, and the prose had a nice dreamlike quality to it. I could picture it almost exactly. I really liked how she chose to portray Christian Scientists, especially since what happens in the book could easily make them villains. While I definitely don't agree with the ideology behind the Church of Christ, Scientist, it was nice to not have the Church demonized completely. I applaud Fridlund for her sensitivity. On that note, it was nice that almost no one was actually villainized. Even the teacher arrested for possession of child pornography was treated with sensitivity and almost compassion, and I was also pleasantly surprised with the path she took when writing about Mr Grierson and Lily. Again, props to her.

Still, I felt disconnected from Linda. There was something about her narration that just made me feel distant from the story. Maybe it was her constant cutting away from the story about the Gardners, the story I wanted to read about, to interject something that was happening in Linda's future. I appreciated this at first, but then it started to grate on me. I understood why she was doing it, but I'm not sure if it was entirely successful here. I also didn't like that Paul, the son, was treated as a kind of morality pet of sorts. I felt like his role was one of emotional manipulation. As a matter of fact, none of the characters seemed very real to me, Linda included. They all felt so flat, and it seemed to me that the thing that was meant to make them seem like real people were their individual quirks, if that makes sense. As I mentioned above, the ambiguous ending seemed, to me, like it was put there because these types of novels need one. It didn't seem sincere.

Do I think this book is worth picking up? Of course. Did I like this novel and enjoy reading it? Of course. But there are those little things that, put together, just made me unwilling to give it a higher rating than what I did.

Rochelle Butcher

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE 'A writer with a great future ahead of her...her prose is exquisite' LOUISE DOUGHTY, author of APPLE TREE YARD How far would you go to belong? Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in an ex-commune beside a lake in the beautiful, austere backwoods of northern Minnesota. The other girls at school call Linda 'Freak', or 'Commie'. Her parents mostly leave her to her own devices, whilst the other inhabitants have grown up and moved on. So when the perfect family - mother, father and their little boy, Paul - move into the cabin across the lake, Linda insinuates her way into their orbit. She begins to babysit Paul and feels welcome, that she finally has a place to belong. Yet something isn't right. Drawn into secrets she doesn't understand, Linda must make a choice. But how can a girl with no real knowledge of the world understand what the consequences will be? 'One of the most intelligent and poetic novels of the year' New Statesman

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History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

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