History Of Wolves by Emily Fridlund Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Maybe if I’d been someone else I’d see it differently. But isn’t that the crux of the problem? Wouldn’t we all act differently if we were someone else?”- History of Wolves, Emily Fridlund 

Linda has an idiosyncratic home life: her parents live in abandoned commune cabins in northern Minnesota and are hanging on to the last vestiges of a faded counter-culture world. The kids at school call her 'Freak', or 'Commie'. She is an outsider in all things. Her understanding of the world comes from her observations at school, where her teacher is accused of possessing child pornography, and from watching the seemingly ordinary life of a family she babysits for. Yet while the accusation against the teacher is perhaps more innocent than it seemed at first, the ordinary family turns out to be more complicated. As Linda insinuates her way into the family's orbit, she realises they are hiding something. If she tells the truth, she will lose the normal family life she is beginning to enjoy with them; but if she doesn't, their son may die.
Superbly-paced and beautifully written, HISTORY OF WOLVES is an extraordinary debut novel about guilt, innocence, negligence, well-meaning belief and the death of a child.

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.

7 out of 10