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Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017.
Already being acclaimed as one of the most exciting new debuts of 2017, Emily Fridlund's History of Wolves is a brilliant coming-of-age novel that will appeal to fans of The Girls and The Virgin Suicides.
Linda, age 14, lives on a dying commune on the edge of a lake in the Midwest of America. She and her parents are the last remaining inhabitants, the others having long since left amid bitter acrimony. She has grown up isolated both by geography and her understanding of the world, and is an outsider at school, regarded as a freak.
One day she notices the arrival of a young family in a cabin on the opposite side of the lake. She starts to befriend them, first their four-year-old son Paul, and then his young mother Patra, who is also lonely and isolated. For the first time she feels a sense of belonging that has been missing from her life.
Leo, the father, is a university professor and an enigmatic figure, perpetually absent. When he returns home, Linda is shunned by the family unit. Desperate to be accepted again, she struggles to resume her place in their home and fails to see the terrible warning signals, which have such devastating consequences.
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History of Wolves Synopsis
So delicately calibrated and precisely beautiful that one might not immediately sense the sledgehammer of pain building inside this book. And I mean that in the best way. What powerful tension and depth this provides!Aimee BenderFourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, 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 outlander at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of his arrest deeply affect Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong. 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, Paul. It seems that her life finally has purpose but with this new sense of belonging she is also drawn into secrets she doesnt understand. Over the course of a few days, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life. As she struggles to find a way out of the sequestered world into which she was born, Linda confronts the life-and-death consequences of the things people doand fail to dofor the people they love.Winner of the McGinnis-Ritchie award for its first chapter, Emily Fridlunds propulsive and gorgeously written History of Wolves introduces a new writer of enormous range and talent.
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Emily Fridlund Press Reviews
Life offers Linda two simultaneous chances to fit in, although both, as we know from the start, go terribly wrong GUARDIAN
The chilling plot is only part of the mesmerising power of this assured and striking debut from this American novelist PRESS ASSOCIATION
A writer with a great future ahead of her...her prose is exquisite -- Louise Doughty
First thing you see is the bracing intelligence of the book's young narrator - no big-eyed sentiments for Linda, raised amid blighted ideals in the ceaseless winters and vast swamps of northern Minnesota. So observant is Linda that you trust her instantly, but it's her own search for trust, for connection even at enormous cost, that will hold you to the final hour. Emily Fridlund's language is generous and precise, her story grief-tempered and forcefully moving. History of Wolves is the loneliest thing I've read in years, and it's gorgeous. These are haunted pages -- Leif Enger
As exquisite a first novel as I've ever encountered. Poetic, complex and utterly, heartbreakingly beautiful -- T. C. Boyle, author of The Harder They Come
So delicately calibrated and precisely beautiful that one might not immediately sense the sledgehammer of pain building inside this book. And I mean that in the best way. What powerful tension and depth -- Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Reminds me of Curtis Sittenfeld...so original, a beautiful literary work -- Viv Groskop
The chilling plot is only part of the mesmerising power of this assured and striking debut from this American novelist PRESS ASSOCIATION
About Emily Fridlund
Emily Fridlund grew up in Minnesota. She holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. Her collection of stories, Catapult, was chosen by Ben Marcus for the Mary McCarthy Prize and will be published by Sarabande Books. She lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York. History of Wolves is her first novel.
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