![]() ![]() To them, Linda is something of an enigma, overly serious, lacking the heedless playfulness of other children. History of Wolves follows a 14-year-old girl named Madeline, though nobody calls her that: "At school, I was called Linda, or Commie, or Freak." The unkind nicknames are the result of her upbringing on a northern Minnesota commune, long since abandoned by all of its idealistic residents, with the exception of her parents. Fridlund refuses to obey the conventions that her sometimes hidebound colleagues do, and her novel is so much the better for it. There's no moment of revelation at the end if anything, the protagonist ends up more confused than she was at the beginning. ![]() The book doesn't follow the now-familiar narrative arc that other novels in the genre do. There are exceptions, of course, and Emily Fridlund's electrifying debut novel History of Wolves is one of them. And the ending, whether happy or otherwise, can usually be described as bittersweet. Too many play out the same way: An odd but winsome young person goes on some kind of journey of discovery, either literal or figurative, and learns something about himself or herself in the process. ![]() ![]() There's a reason that some readers view contemporary coming-of-age novels with suspicion. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title History of Wolves Author Emily Fridlund ![]()
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