Emily FridlundCritiques

Not a fan of this muddled story that left me confused and a little depressed.

Madeline, who refers to herself as Linda, is a fourteen year old girl living in Minnesota with her family. She's drawn to one of her classmates, Lily, and the new history teacher Mr. Grierson, who gets charged with child pornography. When a new family moves in, Linda babysits for their little boy, Paul.

Early on we learn that Paul has "gone from living to dead" and the story alternates between finding out what happened to Paul and Mr. Grierson/Lily. I really wanted to love this book but it just didn't do it for me. The story is slow and not much happened even though the premise seems otherwise. I found the main character to be unlikeable. The writing is beautiful but not enough to save the book.

Set in a remote town in Minnesota, History of Wolves initially paints a picture of loner Linda developing a crush on her male teacher, leading the reader to leap to some ready assumptions about where this book is headed. However, the story soon diverges when the Gardiner family mores into a nearby home. Leo, Patra and son Paul all seem a little strange, and Linda gravitates towards them, eventually getting work as Paul's baby-sitter.

Linda makes Patra into an object of affection and is very uncomfortable when her academic husband Leo shows up. Caring for Paul is something of a challenge for her; he is both backward and infuriating at times, but Linda manages to get him interested in games mimicking her woodcraft skills.

Eventually this scenario goes sour, as Leo starts to assert his authority and tries to get rid of Linda. She resists, but it does not end well.

I mostly enjoyed this book and would probably rate it more highly except that I found the ending very dissatisfying, and Fridlund's attempt to reconcile the Gardiner and teacher threads of her story felt very unconvincing to me.

Never, and I do mean never, have I read an author with the mastery of writing the perfect “telling detail” as Fridlund. Sentence after sentence gives the reader the full sensory experience: I could see every scene, feel every feeling, taste every taste as if I were physically present in the book. She’s the next Donna Tartt in that regard. The prose alone makes this book deserving of its long list status. In addition, there’s real suspense here, and it propels you to keep reading; who doesn’t love that? Unfortunately, the plot doesn’t quite hold up to the lofty standard set by the writing. The ending should pack a bigger wallop then it actually does, and is going to leave at least some readers puzzled. I had to revisit some parts of the book to assure myself that I was comfortable with my own understanding. There are two main plot lines, and I felt one was much better developed (and also somewhat more interesting) than the other. The author made some plot choices that rely on readers having strong inference skills, and I do like books that make the reader work a bit, but I felt like to really be all that it could be, this book needed to make some plot points a bit more explicit. All in all, I completely enjoyed this one; I love dark books, and I love great writing – – give me both in one package, and I’m a happy reader!

Writing quality: 5/5
Originality: 4/5
Character Development: 4/4
Plot Development: 2/4
Overall Enjoyment: 2/2

Well written

This novel beautifully captures the sometimes heartbreaking isolation of life as a teenage girl in rural Minnesota. The imagery and atmosphere is so well detailed it's palpable; it's the stuff typically used in decades-old novels that's begun to go out of style in favor of page-turning easily palatable prose. It's refreshing that authors like this still exist and are coming out swinging with thoughtful novels filled with intent. I really enjoyed the book, and it filled me with many emotions about how strange and cloudy childhood can be — wonderment while you're living it and pain while looking back. Stories like these, like Carson McCullers' stories, like the greats, don't always need to be wrapped up and tied with a bow. And besides, this one provides enough lingering feelings and illustrative observations for the reader to come to their own satisfied conclusions about Linda and her life during and after her days in Loose River.

I had heard about History of Wolves by Emily Friedlund on the All the Books Podcast. I will admit that I was half listening as I was driving at the time, but it sounded really interesting, so I picked it up for the Kindle.

This Monday, I had a trip to NYC and whenever I do that, I always start a new book because I will wind up finishing one or two on the 2 hour one way train ride. I started this one, remembering it sounded interesting, but not remembering much else about it. This book is a gut punch that I was simply not ready for. After I finished it, I wanted to shout out on the train- 'Has anyone read History of Wolves, I need to talk about this book right now!,' but since I am not a crazy person, I chose to sit silently basking in the aftermath of this book.

The book centers around Linda, a girl of 13, who is a bit weird in school because of her life circumstances. She lives in the woods, in a former cult commune, and has been raised to live off the land. Her parents are mostly absent from her life, so she finds comfort in adults. One adult is a teacher who she admires greatly and desires to kiss. Later in the story, he will be accused of having child pornography and accused of sexual assault on a student (my second book in a row where this happens to a teacher!)

Linda is taken in by a family across the river. A mother and young child live there and Linda becomes a babysitter, but also "adopted" member of the family. She imagines herself in this family. That bubble will burst when the husband will re-enter the picture halfway through the book. While the description of the book spoils it completely, I won't on this blog post, but it gets bad and it involves a trial that Linda will be a part of (which you will get glimpses of early in the book, when she says things like- at the trial I said...)

As stated earlier, this book is a gut punch. It seems innocent for about the first quarter and then goes into some very dark places so much so that the sections where there seems to be some family reprieve will also become tainted and dark. This is a book that one has to be ready for rather than a simple pick up and read book. When I read it, I wasn't ready for it.

While Fridlund has written some published short stories and other works, this is her first novel and it is so well done. It does get a bit draggy at places, but I was not sure if it was content or my situation-being on a train for 2hrs. Either way, it picks up again quickly and just takes off. I love a novel that you will re-read differently knowing the final outcome of the book.

I gave this one 4 stars.

Here is your Amazon link- History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Multiple storylines are woven together in this coming of age story of a teenage girl, Linda, living in a rustic cabin near a lake in northern Minnesota. The plot revolves around Linda becoming a babysitter to Paul, the four-year-old son of a family living across the lake. Linda has little experience caring for children but grows close to Paul and his family. A second storyline is related to rumors that one of Linda’s schoolmates may have become involved with one of their teachers. Linda is telling the story as an adult looking back on the traumatic experiences of her adolescence.

I enjoyed the author’s writing style and can see why this book was nominated for literary awards. The natural woodsy setting is vividly described. I became engrossed in the book and cared what happened to Linda and Paul. The tone is sad. The timeline shifts forward and backward throughout the novel. For me, the main detractor is that the multiple storylines are not particularly well-integrated. The scenes from Linda’s later years do not lend much insight into how she has coped with the guilt from her earlier years. Still, it is a promising debut and look forward to seeing what the author writes next.

Well-written, slow-burning plot. Coming of age story - a young girl who's family is the last remnant of a failed commune in the woods. As a teenager Madeleine or Mattie or Linda (she goes by several names) becomes involved with a mother and son who are living alone in a summer house across the lake.

The setting should be idyllic. A lake in the woods in the summer. A place where people go (or dream of going) on vacation. Instead the whole area has a feeling of menace.

Madeleine/Mattie/Linda is witness to some terrible things, but we also learn she's not always a reliable witness even to herself - not sure what she's seeing or what to even do or where to turn.

It seems as though her whole life turns on this summer, but it also seems like all the outcomes were inevitable all along.

Beautifully and vividly written but oh my god if I’d wanted to read a book about a child dying due to Christian scientist neglect, then.....yeah, no, I didn’t ever want to do that.

15-year-old Madeline aka Linda lives with her neglectful parents several miles from town in the remains of a dissolved commune, which she remembers from her early childhood. She acutely feels her social strangeness, her ease in the natural world. The two main plot lines are Madeline's 8th grade history teacher, who is accused of sexual misconduct, and her babysitting job for a Christian Scientist family with an ailing child. Which is more important, what you THINK or what you DO? I loved the strangeness, the ambiguity, the slow reveal of more and more layers without a pat resolution.

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund is a coming-of-age story set in the north woodlands of Minnesota. Fourteen year old Madeline or Linda as she likes to be called, lives in an abandoned commune where only her parents have stayed. Although socially awkward, Linda is very observant, she sees and examines everything that she comes across, observations about her parents, fellow students, and a questionable teacher form much of her thoughts. Another great interest in Linda’s life is the people who live in the newly built cabin across the lake. At first she observes them from a distance through binoculars but eventually she is hired to babysit their young son, Paul, everyday for a couple of hours.

Madeline forms a bond with both the mother, Patra as well as Paul, but when the husband returns after a business trip, secrets start to emerge and eventually both beliefs and inaction put the child in harms’ way. I believe the author’s purpose was to show how the events of Madeline’s fourteenth year carried over into her later life. We are given glimpses of her adult life in both her twenties and thirties and her thoughts still seem to be fixated on this time period in her life.

History of Wolves was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2017 and is a beautifully written debut novel. The story is dark and disturbing yet I never really felt connected to it. The characters were interesting but seemed very detached and I felt that the varied story strands didn’t quite come together leaving me to wonder what exactly was the point.

Set in Northern Minnesota and realistic. People are deeper than they seem

Review: History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund. 3* 12/12/2021

Rather of one’s judgment about the book and characters has nothing to do with, “History of Wolves” was the way the author introduces different issues of being curious and naïve and overflowing with contradictions throughout the book. Fridlund’s writing was immersed in a nature world concerned with issues of power, family, faith, and an opening between understanding something and being able to address on knowledge.

I thought the book was a jumble of afterthoughts. It’s a mystery novel combined with some child memories, sexual awakening, also child sacrifices takes many forms throughout the character Linda’s life. Linda was a typical and special person sometimes capable of great love and sometimes dramatically not. Hat’s just about all I can say about the book. It was overwhelming at times and I couldn’t get myself to enjoy what was written.

It isn't so much that "this" happened or "that" but how it ripples through a cloudy glass of remembrance. Beautifully written but at a distance, as we are from our own memories: sometimes we write ourselves as the hero, sometimes though rarely as the villain, haunted by "what ifs" but always knowing what is done cannot be undone.

I won this book as a Goodreads giveaway, but as you can plainly see from my rating, it did not affect my view.

While I liked the descriptive style of Fridlund's writing, I did not care for her characters, nor her disjointed (and sad) story. Why does her main character need two names, for example? Answer: she doesn't. I felt really terrible about what happened, but just did not feel engaged. Skip this one.

“Maybe if I’d been someone else I’d see it differently. But isn’t that the crux of the problem? Wouldn’t we all act differently if we were someone else?” (Quotation pos. 1939)

Content
Madelaine Furston, called Linda, grows up in a small cabin at a lake somewhere in the rural woods of northern Minnesota. Her parents, old hippies, treat her like an adult person, letting her make her own decisions and ideas about live. In school, they call her “freak”.
When she is fourteen, almost fifteen years old, everything changes. Across the lake, which is very narrow at this point, one late winter day a family from the city with a small child arrives at their new summerhouse. The father soon leaves but the mother and the little boy stay. Linda begins to visit and soon she is Paul’s babysitter and feels like a girl friend to his twentysix years old mother Patra. She seems to have found a happy family who cares. Linda feels that something changes when Patra’s husband Leo, a Christian Scientist, returns, but she could not explain what was wrong because Patra and Leo are still exceptionally friendly, making it easy to assume that they are happy and everything is fine.

Theme and genre
This novel, shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, is about the difference between a truth that you create for yourself and desperately want to believe, and a reality where you should act. Important topics are outsiders, family, growing up in the lonely nature, and the strong influence of religion.

Characters
The characters of this story are not always likeable and understandable in their behavior and thinking. Linda, who is trying to find out if she is still just a kid, longing for a real family, or a teenage girl with all her worries, trying too hard to be an adult. As an outsider, she is interested in the lives of other outsiders, pretending to understand what happiness in their lives or just making things up.

Plot and writing
Madelaine “Linda”, now thirtyseven years old, tells the story of her childhood and youth as the first person narrator. Not always chronological, her memories switch between years and ages, persons, incidents, and some events that happened, and this leaves us readers with some loose ends and implausibilities. Delightful to read are the poetical descriptions of the nature, the lakes and woods, but tough, sad and sometimes depressing, when it comes to the dreams, invented stories and real living conditions of the female main characters.

Conclusion
An interesting, but not always plausible coming-of-age-story, a demanding read with only partly coherent figures, leaving the reader with some open questions.

adult fiction (human drama/secrets and tragedy--socialist commune child with possible abandonment issues babysits for a Christian Science family in rural Minnesota). Kirkus called this "atmospheric" and it does feel like a very immersive, absorbing, chilly blanket of foggy mystery.

Original and captivating. It is a tale of parental neglect and narcissism in the service of beliefs, Christian Science and hippie communalism, that don’t deserve the dedication of these particular fictional adherents. The 15 year old protagonist forages and watches but has no real purchase on the unfolding of the central tragedy. The writing is fluid and often beautiful. My only complaint might be words and ideas that seemed too advanced for even a precocious 15 year old. But that was only occasionally.

The teenaged Linda has well developed backwoods survival skills and underdeveloped social skills. This resulted from growing up as one of a pack of children in a commune in rural Minnesota, until the commune dissolved and the other kids left with their parents. The pair of adults who remained might have been Linda's birth parents, but their parenting style is so remote and distracted that you can't be surprised if Linda has an attachment disorder.

There's a new teacher in school and a new couple across the lake who don't seem to be there for the fishing. The relationships Linda forms with the newcomers seem promising for her, at first.

The pace of the story kept me engaged, and I liked that clues were dropped at a rate that allowed me to gradually see where events were heading. I think Ms. Fridlund crafted a good story, but I'm confused about why she ended it how and where she did.

I felt a bit let down at the end of this novel -- as if it had been building to a more dramatic conclusion, but then abruptly decided not to go there.

This is very readable; a coming of age tale set in Minnesota. Teenage Linda/ Mattie lives an impoverished rural life; her parents- former members of a cult- seem strange but unexplored.
An outsider at school, she hooks up with a new family across the lake. Young mum Patra is glad of a babysitter as she edits her - often absent - husband's scientific works. And thus Linda becomes close to 4 year old Paul - an appealing child...but is he quitre right? And then Patra's authoritarian,older husband returns...
There are tantalizing mentions of a court case. And there's am inadequately explained scond strand, as a schoolmate falsely accuses a male teacher of abuse...
I'm aftaid the last couple of pages stumped me. What? Why? Completely foxed.
So...very readable indeed...but you finish it mystified.

Gave up chapter sixteen. Strange people. Bizarre conversations that at times no matter how many times I reread I couldn't make sense of. When I thought it couldn't get any worse and I would push through along came chapter fifteen. From how Linda came to be at the cabin, to everyone's interactions, this was just plain weird.
It felt like the author was trying to hard. Knew where she wanted the story to go but didn't know how to get there.

Emily Fridlund has real potential, but it's not fully realized, and certainly not in this book. The timeline is messy for no good reason and many subplots trail off without any resolution. It reminded me a little of The Virgin Suicides, but it's still lacking finesse.

It starts so well! A creepy atmosphere, a morass of mysteries... but the payoffs we get are hugely disappointing, while other plot strands are practically abandoned. It's a debut, so Fridlund is an author to keep an eye on, but this was a bit of a miss for me.