...[an] electrifying debut ... Fridlund refuses to obey the conventions that her sometimes hidebound colleagues do, and her novel is so much the better for it ... History of Wolves isn't a typical thriller any more than it's a typical coming-of-age novel; Fridlund does a remarkable job transcending genres without sacrificing the suspense that builds steadily in the book ... History of Wolves is as beautiful and as icy as the Minnesota woods where it's set, and with her first book, Fridlund has already proven herself to be a singular talent.
The author’s deft use of foreshadowing hints at some impending tragedy over the horizon ... the tension between what Linda hopes to have with them and the facts as they emerge is expertly handled by Fridlund, who builds a palpable sense of dread through flashbacks and foreshadowing ... the chilly power of History of Wolves packs a wallop that’s hard to shake off. In the process, Fridlund has constructed an elegant, troubling debut, both immersed in the natural world but equally concerned with issues of power, family, faith and the gap between understanding something and being able to act on the knowledge.
...here is the danger in withholding crucial information from your readers for so long: Eventually they expect their uncertainty to be rewarded, preferably with interest. This does not happen in History of Wolves, as promisingly as it starts out. I sensed where Ms. Fridlund was heading before she started dropping explicit clues, and even if I hadn’t, I suspect I’d have been underwhelmed. Those thunderheads massing on the horizon let loose only a weak drizzle ... History of Wolves contains the kernels of many possible novels, with lots of larger ideas to plumb...[but] all the ideas in the world can’t make a great novel. It’s what you do with them that matters.
...[an] exquisitely observed, quietly affecting debut novel ... Told from the distance of more than two decades, and deftly leavened with humor, it’s a tale of good and evil, second chances, and chasing ideals to the bitter end ... Paul is vivid from the moment we meet him, a sweet, prickly, opinionated little guy. Fridlund remembers what it feels like to be that young, and she has a similarly direct recall of the sensations of adolescence. What she does most elegantly, though, is transport us to the wilds of northern Minnesota, twigs crunching underfoot in the woods, lake water cradling the body of a canoe. The novel has multiple strands, and while Fridlund leaves some unresolved deliberately, the ending does fizzle. What leads up to it, though, is an absorbing contemplation of guilt and regret, agency and its abdication, and what it means to survive the wilderness.
That I was relieved at the slow-motion tragedy that does unfold is testimony to Fridlund’s daring. An artful story of sexual awakening and identity formation turns more stomach-churning; child sacrifice takes many forms, and sometimes the act doesn’t require bloodshed but simply adults too wedded to their ideals ... Fridlund has a tendency to double up on her descriptors, to use two adjectives where one would do. But she is masterly when she lets more scraped-down prose push a series of elemental questions to the fore: Do intentions matter? What price will you pay to feel wanted? How does it feel to ?be both guilty and exonerated? The result is a novel of ideas that reads like smart pulp, a page-turner of craft and calibration.
...the puzzles, in this debut novel by Emily Fridlund, are both practical and profound ... Fridlund's neatly calibrated narrative gives us to understand, nature, no less than a feeling, is subject to loss.
This novel asks some difficult questions...Fridlund offers only her story in answer to these queries, and the effect is profound and disturbing. And surely it’s interesting to see these disparate lives unfolding in such proximity. The book’s peculiarity is its own reward. For all of this, the novel excels ... Because Patra’s and Leo’s faith is foreign to Linda, it remains mostly foreign to the reader as well, a fact that left me wishing the novel had investigated more directly Leo’s hold on his kin. The book also can’t quite decide whether it’s a literary novel or a thriller, and so in a sense fails at being either ... All of which is unfortunate, as this novel has so much else to offer, not the least a tragedy of Shakespearean scope.
Fridlund’s novel is compelling and deliberate. Tension is seeded throughout the narrative at just the right intervals, even though the incident at the core of the novel—the death of young Paul Gardner—is known from page two. The mystery surrounding Paul’s death does its work to pull the reader along, but Linda and her longing is our focal point ... Christian Science’s influence in History of Wolves is great enough that it’s apparent in the story’s structure, as well as in Linda’s choice to approach the worlds of both science and health. It is a minor thread, but one that could have been used to greater effect, allowing us to better answer the question of Linda’s future ... With this beautiful debut novel, Fridlund proves herself as a talent to watch.
God and grooming, child death and grotty sex, blame and betrayal – this should be a recipe for morbid curiosity. But when everything is explicitly foreshadowed, nothing is at stake. Fridlund carries on meticulously dressing her traps long after they’ve been sprung. In some ways, this is the standard literary fiction shortcoming of thinking plot is the least important part. In others, Fridlund’s weaknesses are her own. Characters tend to be vague outlines with tics. Leo tucks his shirt in a lot; Linda’s mother baptises her obsessively. But there are none of the subtle mechanisms that make characters coherent – and capable of acting surprisingly. There is only one mood: slow and sad ... For a novel that aspires to say something about about power, History of Wolves is strikingly impotent.
...an unsettling and powerful debut ... It took me a day to realize how much I loved the book, in part because I wasn’t sure what it meant. It sent me back to re-read chapters to sniff out clues. In that way, I can understand Linda ... History of Wolves resembles Lorrie Moorie’s A Gate at the Stairs, which concerns a Midwestern college student who works as a nanny for a couple about to adopt a foster child and about the clues she misses along the way ... History of Wolves is a lyrically written but sad and inscrutable work that keeps surprising to the end.
Fridlund keeps us in suspense not by widening the drama to create a serpentine whodunit but by tightening the narrative, restricting our vision to what Linda observes with her keen, clear eye ... Fridlund’s economical sentences have a lulling, seductive rhythm that she breaks at critical moments, employing a single image, like a trapdoor, to drop us into the void ... Leo is a memorably pathetic tyrant just as Linda’s 'inattentively industrious' mother is a wonderfully drawn New Age narcissist. But a frail child dominates this novel and his inevitable disappearance loosens both its suspense and its emotional hold. Linda’s adult life, though sharply drawn in alternating vignettes, seems oddly formless, which may be the point – she is adrift in the world – and her character loses coherence when she leaves Still Lake. Palpable to the final scene, however, is the 'low rumble of fear' that Fridlund mercilessly sustains.
... [an] unnerving, beautifully crafted novel ... Fridlund uses shards of intersecting storylines and glancing, uncomfortable juxtapositions to capture moments of rationalization, denial, and delusion ... The novel feels dreamlike in its wondering, hypnotic gaze, as well as in its recursive structure, but it is entirely realistic in its events.
Is there such a thing as a thriller wannabe? If so, Emily Fridlund’s History of Wolves might qualify. Its ominous, evocative tone leads you to the altar of murder and mayhem before abruptly changing course. Death and disruption are on the itinerary, but not predictably, which is both a strength and weakness for this intriguing debut novel ... She writes with immediacy and precision, evoking the trails and waterways of the North Woods as if she has counted every leaf. Likewise, her characters come at you with full-frontal awareness.
