History of Wolves (2017) by Emily Fridlund is a fantastic book, certainly one of the best I read this year. It’s a whodunnit that manages to preserve dramatic tension throughout, despite having made “the big reveal” quite early in the book. That alone is a great achievement; throw in a narrator who, as a teenager, remains both fascinating and believable, and an ongoing series of secondary plots that constantly interrogate notions of blame, of culpability, and of the relationship between thinking–or even desiring–a path of action and actually pursuing it, and you have a book that is a pleasure to read.
Both the scenes from the protagonist’s adult life and some of the secondary characters may run a little thin, but those are, ultimately, minor quibbles: I was thoroughly engaged in the emotional journey. One note, though: all of the characters in History of Wolves are damaged, and redemption is not easy to find; if you need your protagonists triumphant, the book may very well leave you cold and more than a little disappointed.
Additionally, while the novel explicitly struggles with some “big questions,” it neither offers a simple answer (this is a novel, not a fable), nor does it lose sight of the mechanics of fiction when doing so. Those are lofty achievements. Very highly recommended.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
The woods of northern Minnesota, and specifically those woods in winter, are so gorgeously drawn, with as much detail as to nearly be a character on their own. It’s an amazing job of incorporating a highly specific local feel into a narrative in a way that deepens a reader’s connection to the material.