History of Wolves
Shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize
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3.9 • 28 Ratings
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
'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
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Emily Fridlund’s stunning debut is a coming-of-age novel imbued with the slow-cooking suspense of a great thriller. Madeline Furston is a teenage outsider living on an abandoned woodland commune in Minnesota, where her fascination with a neighbouring family draws her into a terrible tragedy. Fridlund vividly captures Madeline’s loneliness with her powerful turn of phrase and expertly feeds tension and unease into the story. As the traumatic events unfurl, History of Wolves raises haunting questions about the difference between thought and action.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Fridlund's stellar debut novel, 14-year-old Linda, an observant loner growing up in the Minnesota woods, becomes intrigued with the Gardners, the young family that moves in across the lake from her home. As she gets to know them, she realizes that something is amiss. Having been raised in a commune by unconventional parents, Linda is prone to provocative statements and challenging authority. She's also fascinated by the scandal that occurs when Lily Holburn, a student at her school, accuses a teacher, Adam Grierson, of inappropriate behavior but then recants her testimony. At the same time, Linda forges a friendship with the comparatively worldly Patra Gardner and her endearing four-year-old, Paul, whom Linda babysits for a summer before his sudden and mysterious death. Matters take a curious turn once Patra's husband, an older man named Leo, returns after months away at work. Fridlund expertly laces Linda's possessive protectiveness for Patra with something darker, bordering on romantic jealousy. A sense of foreboding subtly permeates the story as Fridlund slowly reveals what happened to Paul. Her wordsmithing is fantastic, rife with vivid turns of phrase. Fridlund has elegantly crafted a striking protagonist whose dark leanings cap off the tragedy at the heart of this book, which is moving and disturbing, and which will stay with the reader.
