Just Finished Reading: The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

The Year is 1867. In a northern Canada wrapped in deep winter a cabin lies apparently abandoned. In it lies the corpse of trapper Laurent Jammet – brutally murdered. Before long the ripples of this awful crime move through the close-knit community of Dove River. A young boy goes missing either in pursuit of Jammet’s killer or guilty of the crime itself. The local magistrate fears for his two daughters and remembers the mysterious disappearance of two young girls years ago. The missing boys adoptive mother decides to go after him exposing a deep rift in her own marriage and the boy himself must decide on his future in a society dedicated to conformity. In the middle of it all is the ever present wilderness, the bone numbing cold and the howling of the wolves.

I picked this up on impulse some months ago. As my regular readers will know over the past few years I have developed quite a passion for historical novels. This did not disappoint. Despite it being Ms Penney’s first (and apparently only) novel it won the 2006 Costa (coffee) Book of the Year award. I don’t know what else it was up against but I can see why the judges liked it. Told from several perspectives – including the first person perspective of the mother – this is a multi-layered and complex novel (sometimes actually a bit too complex) which digs deeply into the lives of small communities living on the edge of the great wilderness, the lonely lives of trappers, the brutal reality of companies built of a dwindling fur trade and the appalling treatment of native Canadians. As with most first books, the author tries to do too much but the surprising thing is that she almost carries it off. This is a very impressive – indeed frighteningly impressive – first novel. Rich in atmosphere and with a large cast of believable fully rounded (and interesting) characters this is without doubt a book you can lose yourself in. It is both haunting and beautifully evocative. If you want to put the real world at arms length for a few hours at a time, this is the book for you. Recommended.