History of Wolves

“I want to do wolves,” I told him.

“What, a history of wolves?” He was puzzled. Then he shook his head and grinned. “Right. You're a fourteen-year-old girl.” The skin bunched up around his eyes. “You all have a thing for horses and wolves. I love that. I love that. That's so weird. What is that about?”

History of Wolves is about Madeline (known at school as Linda, Commie, Freak, never Mattie, but she's sometimes called Mattie), who grew up in a drafty cabin (used as a commune until the group splintered apart, leaving the girl to be raised by a couple who may or may not be her biological parents) on a lake deep in the woods of rural Minnesota. Now thirty-six, Linda is recalling the events from the year she was fourteen – a year that saw the confluence of two seminal dramas in her life – and interspersed with her adolescent recollections are scenes from when Linda was in her twenties and living with the consequences of these events. It sounds a bit complicated and it is a bit more complicated than it needs to be: first time novelist Emily Fridlund, with a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing, is an undeniably talented writer, but this book feels so written; so tightly crafted as to have wrung the human juices out of the tale. The atmosphere – the woods, the lake, the cold, the detachment – was beautifully captured, and the ideas are original and intriguingly explored, but I didn't connect with any of the people; didn't care about their dramas, and that feels like a fatal flaw. 

At the trial they kept asking, when did you know for sure something was wrong. And the answer probably was: right away.

This idea that there will be a trial is revealed near the beginning (and as the second paragraph of the first chapter tells the reader that someone eventually dies, and despite Linda having knowledge of two separate criminal events, it's clearly telegraphed what this trial will be about). And I don't know if this was a truly effective use of foreshadowing: this wasn't a slowly unspooled inevitable tragedy (which, when done well, is one of my favourite types of books), but rather, the loosely organised middle-aged recollections of someone who is trying to share the pertinent details of a story from long ago, while digressing to other ideas (which, as a literary effect, also takes skill to pull off). So when we get to the climax of the tragedy, I wasn't surprised and I didn't really feel anything at all. (And it doesn't help that Linda herself is so emotionally distant from everyone; we feel nothing through her.)

I never told her what I really thought of Christian Science, which is that from what little I know, it offers one of the best accounts of the origins of human evil. 

This is where it comes from, Ann.

I think, now: That's the story I'm trying to tell here.

This quote comes from near the end, as though Linda is finally seeing the point of her own story through its telling. This doesn't quite make her an unreliable narrator – I believed everything she had to say, even if she seems unwilling to reveal her own roles in the dramas until the end – but it's part of what made the whole feel overwritten to me: the reader is suddenly, out of nowhere, reminded that someone is telling a story here and that was a very conscious decision by Fridlund; a pro move made to look amateur. It all feels so workshopped.

What's the difference between what you want to believe and what you do?...And what's the difference between what you think and what you end up doing?

And this is the real crux of the book: The two dramas are mirror images of each other – in one, well-reasoned thoughts and the best of intentions inspire questionable behaviour that leads to tragedy; in the other, evil thoughts and desires are suppressed, leading to no inappropriate actions – and we're led to examine which is worse; our intentions or our behaviours (which isn't as cut and dry as it seems: consider the difference between the charges of murder and manslaughter to see how the courts weight a killer's intent when the effect is the same). This is made more fascinating by including characters who are Christian Scientists – people who believe that matter is thought; that a toothache can be prayed away with perfect faith. And this is made more interesting by having Linda's parents be ex-hippies: dirty secondhand clothes, constantly gutting fish to eat, walking hours in the cold to attend school, using a rolled up jacket as a pillow – Linda's life looks like one of deprivation and desolation, yet this is exactly what her exurban parents intentionally chose for her; what her college-educated mother (who always mocked the young Linda for doing her homework and participating in “the system”), with a sweep of her arm indicating the drafty cabin and the overgrown bush, says she would have loved to have grown up with. Does every parent's good intentions excuse the effects they have on their children? And what of a child's responsibilities? At fourteen, which was worse: that Linda didn't act when she could see someone needed help, or that she plotted out a darkly twisted revenge fantasy? 

Thought or action. And what if, like Christian Scientists, you believe they are the same thing? It's such an interesting concept, and at the sentence level, History of Wolves is undeniably well written. But despite some potentially compelling drama, I'm left cold. This isn't the kind of book I expect to find on the Man Booker longlist, and I don't see it making the shortlist. I might have rounded this up to four stars, but am grading down to rank against the other nominees.

The Man Booker 2017 Longlist: 

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster 
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry 
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund 
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid 
Solar Bones by Mike McCormack 
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor 
Elmet by Fiona Mozley 
The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy 
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie 
Autumn by Ali Smith 
Swing Time by Zadie Smith 
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 

Eventually won by Lincoln in the Bardo, I would have given the Booker this year to Days Without End. My ranking, based solely on my own reading enjoyment, of the shortlist is:

Autumn

Exit West

Lincoln in the Bardo

Elmet

4321

History of Wolves