Take a photo of a barcode or cover
frasersimons 's review for:
Once There Were Wolves
by Charlotte McConaghy
Unhinged women is rapidly just becoming a subgenre that ticks all my boxes, apparently. Combined with climate fiction (cli-fi), the thematic considerations work in tandem with the unhinged narration angle. It’s fraught, a difficult read, cuts you to quick, and forces you to confront questions in which there is no easy or “good answer”.
Basically, it’s everything I want from this intersection.
The main characters are two women; twins, raised by separated parents with views that overlap in the distrust of humanity, go to Scotland to introduce wolves to an ecology that has been altered by human occupation. Deer run rampant, systems are out of whack. The Scots think they know what they’re doing. The team going to Scotland to introduce the wolves think they know what they’re doing.
The past trauma—which is quite vivid, and deserves a content warning for sexual assault and domestic abuse, both physical and emotional—the women have suffered directly correlate to the plot and themes. The releasing of wolves into the wild is an apt comparison to loosing traumatized people who have not come to grips with their trauma into a similar unknown habitat.
When a person goes missing, events conspire to force the twins to confront their past, as well as every characters’ preconceived notions regarding nature and the degree to which a person, or animal, can alter the fundamental components at its core.
Lived experience, internalized trauma, socialization, ingrained, primal response. The animal aspects of human nature interrogated here create so much interesting tension in the plot. We know and learn as little about ourselves in our lifetime as we like to think we know about ecology and nature and the earth. Our very presence and continued existence is both something we cannot change and a force that rarely comes to anything but destruction.
In a real way, this story is a demonstration in intent vs impact, as much as everything else.
It’s a feat, then, that it’s such a pleasure to read. You’re in the head of those people dwelling in hurt and pain. It’s unsettling and impossible not to empathize with and get caught up in. But as with many trauma survivors, the ability to empathize, especially in one woman’s case, is heightened and their perceptions altered. But the rhythm and cadence of the disturbing makes it enticing, too. As if it begs, just like anger, to be listened to and allowed to encompass a person whole.
Basically, it’s everything I want from this intersection.
The main characters are two women; twins, raised by separated parents with views that overlap in the distrust of humanity, go to Scotland to introduce wolves to an ecology that has been altered by human occupation. Deer run rampant, systems are out of whack. The Scots think they know what they’re doing. The team going to Scotland to introduce the wolves think they know what they’re doing.
The past trauma—which is quite vivid, and deserves a content warning for sexual assault and domestic abuse, both physical and emotional—the women have suffered directly correlate to the plot and themes. The releasing of wolves into the wild is an apt comparison to loosing traumatized people who have not come to grips with their trauma into a similar unknown habitat.
When a person goes missing, events conspire to force the twins to confront their past, as well as every characters’ preconceived notions regarding nature and the degree to which a person, or animal, can alter the fundamental components at its core.
Lived experience, internalized trauma, socialization, ingrained, primal response. The animal aspects of human nature interrogated here create so much interesting tension in the plot. We know and learn as little about ourselves in our lifetime as we like to think we know about ecology and nature and the earth. Our very presence and continued existence is both something we cannot change and a force that rarely comes to anything but destruction.
In a real way, this story is a demonstration in intent vs impact, as much as everything else.
It’s a feat, then, that it’s such a pleasure to read. You’re in the head of those people dwelling in hurt and pain. It’s unsettling and impossible not to empathize with and get caught up in. But as with many trauma survivors, the ability to empathize, especially in one woman’s case, is heightened and their perceptions altered. But the rhythm and cadence of the disturbing makes it enticing, too. As if it begs, just like anger, to be listened to and allowed to encompass a person whole.