![]() ![]() ![]() Linda seemed to be on track to connect with her history teacher, Adam Grierson, only to have that derailed by a two-fold calamity. Fridlund provides Linda with two opportunities to connect, but both become muddled and leave her only more confused. Linda is a young wolf lurking in the trees on the edges of the pack with few tools, trying to discover the secrets she needs to join in. Her isolated childhood and lack of siblings have provided her with few useful social skills. She has no close friends at school because she is excessively serious, dreamy and passive. Her parents are dour ex-hippies clinging to a lifestyle that moved on long ago. Linda is close to nature, but isolated from most human connections. However, Fridlund amps up the strangeness with a dark, foreboding atmosphere that borders on the gothic. This situation is not unfamiliar to many teenagers. She is a loner, considered a “freak” and “commie” by her classmates. She is a teenager living with her parents-she’s not really sure they are her genetic parents-in a defunct hippie commune in Northern Minnesota. Wolves fascinate Mattie Furston, aka Linda. ![]() The narrator of Emily Fridlund’s coming-of-age novel, HISTORY OF WOLVES, seems to be a kind of wolf cub with neither the required social skills nor the pack to succeed in life. The wolf pack succeeds because of these skills. Wolves are predators, but also have highly evolved social skills. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |