History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

“As I gradually restore Words Like Silver to its archive of reviews written between 2011 and 2024, I'll aim to first and foremost make my reading history explorable by publishing the blurbs and short reflections as books cross my mind, with the goal of eventually transferring and fleshing out the original WLS content. For now, please enjoy this brief spotlight.”

Teenage Linda lives with her parents in the austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world.

Isolated at home and an outsider at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is faced with child pornography charges, his arrest deeply affects Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong.

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And then the young Gardner family moves in across the lake and Linda finds herself welcomed into their home as a babysitter for their little boy.

But with this new sense of belonging comes expectations and secrets she doesn't understand and, over the course of a summer, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life. One of the most daring literary debuts of the year and a national bestseller, History of Wolves is an agonizing and gorgeously written novel from an urgent, new voice in American fiction.

Unequivocally, this is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. But I don't mean that in a Flowers in the Attic or American Psycho way (source of all my nightmares), but in the sense that a lot of it burrowed its way inside my head and refused to leave.

It's a book that feels like winter. It's another atmospheric read, one that casts the wintery woods in a more sinister and significantly more lonely light. I had to read it in phases.

Some bits were troubling. The main character is strange. She's fascinated by her older teacher, and a girl on the edge of town. She's almost too intimate in her perception of other people, and the details she chooses to share are off-putting. Despite that, the bravery in that expression of her voice is worth noting. She's definitely not likable, but she paints a picture of everything that captures the actions profoundly.

I have so much to talk about in relation to this book.

There are dichotomies of the way I think that are fundamentally challenged by everything that unfolds within this, and it's all framed by this heavy image of the woods. It's not told chronologically, and the ability of the narrator to jump forward and backward punctuated the events nicely. It hurts to read. And the language is absolutely astonishing.

Some bits are sad in a way you don't really want to think about:

“It seemed unfair to me that people couldn't be something else just by working at it hard, by saying it over and over.”

“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?”

The last paragraph is haunting, but I won't spoil it for you.

In summary, I loved this book and it was beyond stimulating. It was also hard to read, so I wouldn't recommend reading it if you're bummed out. The language and the human nuances though are worth experiencing.

2024 Update: It's been seven years or so since I read and reviewed this book, but that last paragraph does pop into my head frequently.