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History of Wolves

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History of Wolves

By: Emily Fridlund
Narrated by: Caitlin Thorburn
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About this listen

Even a lone wolf wants to belong....

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 the family's orbit. She begins to babysit Paul and feels that she finally has a place to belong. But 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?

2018, Man Booker Prize, Short-listed

©2017 Emily Fridlund (P)2016 Orion Publishing Group Limited Family Life Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

Reminds me of Curtis Sittenfeld...so original, a beautiful literary work" (Viv Groskop)

"A writer with a great future ahead of her...her prose is exquisite" (Louise Doughty)
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)
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)
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)

What listeners say about History of Wolves

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not my usual read

An intriguing story, but hard for me to really get into as i couldn't relate to any of the characters.
I felt as though most of the story was made up of observations of the miniscule details of life. Whilst these observations were very evocative of the mundane, I felt like I spent most of the book wondering when it was going to tell me something of value to the larger story.

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robot reads shopping list

I made my way through by sheer determination. The narrator fell into a cadence that seldom matched the text. At times, I had to repeat in my head what I had just heard in order to try and frame it correctly. Consequently, I doubt I could tell you if the story itself has much merit.

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