In the deep dark woods.

Author : Emily Fridlund
Title : History of Wolves
Published : 22/02/2018
Pages : 288
Genre : Young Adult
Publisher : W&N

     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.

     I have to start by saying I never really pay much attention to the Man Booker prize. I realize as an avid reader this might sound a bit sacrilegious, but the way I choose which books to read has always been a bit hit a miss. Some might even describe it as chaos incarnate.  So for me, the sticker on the front didn't really hold much value to me. The setting on the other hand did, I think there is some magical charm to be held with books that take place of people living in these mighty forests. If done right it can take you away to some other place and transcend the pages which it is written on. 

     Linda's tells her story to us from to different points in her life. We get to follow her as a teenager as she is trying to work out how she fits into the world as she is disappearing and slowly becoming a thing of the past. She is definitely a child of the forest, this is life many will never really be able to understand. For me, this was my connection to her as I still can remember running barefoot through forests near where I lived as a kid. her connection to the outside world seems less with those she saw every day at school and more this the family that moved in across the lake from her's. As the outsider in Linda's story, you get to see that not all is as it should be. It's funny that while for the most part she never really feels in true danger I felt a great deal of protection for the heroine Fridlund has created. She has instilled a great deal of innocents into Linda and I think it goes a long way to my connection with her. Then we get to meet her many years later this woman whose past has never left her. She carries with her a great deal of trauma and guilt for the way things turned out. She is, however, starting to find peace with what took place. And with this, you also get to see the long-term effects of some of the bigger topics the author has taken on.

     The way in which the author describes her environments is I think what captured my imagination in this book. You can see the forest stretch out in front of you and I could almost catch the smell of the tall trees and flowing rivers. She defiantly does an amazing job of transporting you away to some other place. If it wasn't for the direction the plot take this would seem like an almost fairy tale-like story of a girl growing up and finding her place. Little by little you start to see that this small town harbors some very dark intentions. It is through the actions of others in this girls life that we see some of these topics challenged. This is not, however, the sort of book that will tie up every ending and give some sort of completion. In this sense, it felt to me like some of the Japanese books I have read. In that it gives you a snaps shot of someone's life, you spend some time with these people and then you move on to the next. I realize for some that this can be frustrating, For me though I enjoy the time I spend with them. It's kind of like the kid you meet over the summer holidays and when school starts again you don't ever see them again but you value the time you spent with them. 

     This book is by no means a fast-paced story, it's like one of those slow-moving rivers Linda see's on her days as she walks between the trees slowly making it's way to the sea. I think it does, however, tell the story it needs to. It is very much a tale of the things that happen to her and how people come and go and we don't always get to find out what happens to them after they have left our orbit.