Category: Read

#WWWWednesday – 24th January 2024

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

An audiobook, a book for my personal Backlist Burrow reading challenge (that I hoped to complete by the end of 2023 but didn’t) and a NetGalley ARC.

HowToBeBraveHow to be Brave by Louise Beech (audiobook, Orenda)

All the stories died that morning … until we found the one we’d always known.

When nine-year-old Rose is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, Natalie must use her imagination to keep her daughter alive. They begin dreaming about and seeing a man in a brown suit who feels hauntingly familiar, a man who has something for them.

Through the magic of storytelling, Natalie and Rose are transported to the Atlantic Ocean in 1943, to a lifeboat, where an ancestor survived for fifty days before being rescued.

All Day at the MoviesAll Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman (Gallic Books)

When war widow Irene Sandle goes to work in New Zealand’s tobacco fields in 1952, she hopes to start a new, independent life for herself and her daughter – but the tragic repercussions of her decision will resonate long after Irene has gone.

Each of Irene’s children carries the events of their childhood throughout their lives, played out against a backdrop of great change – new opportunities emerge for women, but social problems continue to hold many back. Headstrong Belinda becomes a successful filmmaker, but struggles to deal with her own family drama as her younger siblings are haunted by the past.

SufferanceSufferance by Charles Palliser (eARC, Guernica Editions via NetGalley)

When his nation is invaded and occupied by a brutal enemy, a well-intentioned man persuades his wife that they should give temporary shelter to a young girl who is at school with their daughter. He has no idea that the girl belongs to a community against whom the invader intends to commit genocide.

Days stretch into weeks and then months while the enemy’s pitiless hatred of the girl’s community puts all of the family in danger. Nobody outside the family can be trusted with the dangerous secret and the threat from outside unlocks a darkness that threatens to derail them all. 

Recently finished

The Most Difficult Thing by Charlotte Philby (The Borough Press)

To Kill a King (Master of War #8) by David Gilman (Head of Zeus)

What Cathy Will Read Next

Where the Wind Calls HomeWhere the Winds Calls Home by Samar Yazbek, trans. by Leri Price (eARC, World Editions via NetGalley)

Ali, a nineteen-year-old soldier in the Syrian army, lies on the ground beneath a tree. He sees a body being lowered into a hole—is this his funeral? There was that sudden explosion, wasn’t there …

While trying to understand the extend of the damage, Ali works his way closer to the tree. His ultimate desire is to fly up to one of its branches, to safety.

Through rich vignettes of Ali’s memories, we uncover the hardships of his traditional Syrian Alawite village, but also the richness and beauty of its cultural and religious heritage. 

Book Review – History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

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About the Book

Book cover of History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in an ex-commune beside a lake in the beautiful, austere backwoods of northern Minnesota. The other girls at school call Linda ‘Freak’, or ‘Commie’. Her parents mostly leave her to her own devices, whilst the other inhabitants have grown up and moved on.

So when the perfect family – mother, father and their little boy, Paul – move into the cabin across the lake, Linda insinuates her way into their orbit. She begins to babysit Paul and feels welcome, that she finally has a place to belong.

Yet something isn’t right. Drawn into secrets she doesn’t understand, Linda must make a choice. But how can a girl with no real knowledge of the world understand what the consequences will be?

Format: ebook (223 pages) Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Publication date: 3rd January 2017 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find History of Wolves on Goodreads

Purchase a copy of History of Wolves from Bookshop.org
(Disclosure: If you buy book via this link, I may earn a small commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.)

My Review

‘It was nothing. I was nothing.’

An unsettling feeling permeates this book, the author’s debut novel. It starts with Linda’s home life: a mother who barely acknowledges her and a father who is absent most of the time. Their cabin is remote and spartan, hidden away in the forest reached by a track that you could miss if you didn’t know where to look. Having said that, the forest is where Linda probably feels most at home. She has a detailed knowledge of its flora and fauna, its quiet places and ancient trees. A little of a ‘lone wolf’ herself, it’s perhaps the reason she instinctively chooses ‘history of wolves’ as the topic for a school project.

Given her solitary life, it’s not surprising she is drawn to anyone who gives her attention, such as the male teacher who encourages her studies but whose motives are suspect. Strangely, she maintains a connection with this man for many years afterwards, compelled for some reason to follow his progress in life, even after his true nature becomes apparent. Lily, a fellow pupil Linda is drawn to, seems to be as equally troubled as she is.

Linda becomes fixated by the house across the lake and the family who inhabit it, observing it covertly to begin with and then contriving a meeting with Patra and her young son, Paul. Linda spends more and more time in the house, vaguely aware there is something unusual about the frequent absences of Leo, Patra’s husband, and about his attitude to his son, but unable to understand fully the import of the things she sees or overhears. It’s this sense that there’s something not quite right about the family that contributes to the unsettling atmosphere I mentioned earlier. And indeed, there is something very not right about the family, as events – which are tragic in nature – will demonstrate.

The book’s structure sees Linda looking back at these teenage experiences, recognising now the things she failed to comprehend at the time and regretting the things she failed to do. We also get glimpses of Linda’s adult life. This movement back and forth in time became quite confusing and I really craved getting back to the earlier events. However, I enjoyed the wonderful writing which conjures up the natural beauty – as well as the harshness – of northern Minnesota. ‘Winter collapsed on us that year. It knelt down, exhausted, and stayed.’

About the Author

Author 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.

She lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York. (Photo: Goodreads author page)