I loved reading this book first for the beauty of its prose and its author’s impeccable use of the language. After that came the original premise and expert handling of the story’s construction. Somewhere around the one third of the book, I realized how much the personality of the main character reflected that of a wolf. I don’t know if the author did this knowingly or if the book wrote itself after some point, but it works beautifully.

The main character Zoologist Rachel Caine, after studying wolves on a reservation in Idaho, gets a job in Cumbria, in an estate where the Earl, the eccentric owner, wants to re-introduce the wolves into his estate and adjoining reserve. Cumbria is also Rachel’s hometown, although her moving there has to do more with her unplanned pregnancy by a co-worker/friend in the Idaho Reservation.

Rachel’s dedication to keeping the wolf-pair wild, her reticence from establishing a strong and reliable love relationship, her preoccupation with her somewhat damaged relationship with her mother Binny, which repeats itself in her dreams, her cooled relationship with her brother Lawrence and his wife Emily, which improves during the story’s progression, her attraction and relationship to Alexander, the vet, in Cumbria, and later her dedication to her son make her an interesting protagonist. Added to her character, the secondary and other supporting and additional characters are also original and quirky in their own ways. An added positive is that all characters have good and bad sides shown in proper amounts that the novel requires.

The novel also deals with large themes such as political and personal freedoms, work ethics, family, the concept of wilderness, animal-human links, environmentalism, and human fallacies.

The ending of the story is satisfactory with some loss but with all the loose ends cleverly tied up.

To wrap it up, this is the first novel I read by Sarah Hall, and it won’t be the last because I am going to look up and read whatever else she has written.

enjoying a book that is more or less different.

the characters

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She is the prize-winning author of four novels - Haweswater, The Electric Michelangelo, The Carhullan Army and How to Paint a Dead Man - as well as The Beautiful Indifference, a collection of short stories. The first story in the collection, 'Butchers Perfume', was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, a prize she won in 2013 with 'Mrs Fox'.

Its themes are relevant to our day and the author is an excellent writer.

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Created Apr 21, 2019 at 3:02pm • Submit your own review...