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Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017.
Already being acclaimed as one of the most exciting new debuts of 2017, Emily Fridlund's History of Wolves is a brilliant coming-of-age novel that will appeal to fans of The Girls and The Virgin Suicides.
Linda, age 14, lives on a dying commune on the edge of a lake in the Midwest of America. She and her parents are the last remaining inhabitants, the others having long since left amid bitter acrimony. She has grown up isolated both by geography and her understanding of the world, and is an outsider at school, regarded as a freak.
One day she notices the arrival of a young family in a cabin on the opposite side of the lake. She starts to befriend them, first their four-year-old son Paul, and then his young mother Patra, who is also lonely and isolated. For the first time she feels a sense of belonging that has been missing from her life.
Leo, the father, is a university professor and an enigmatic figure, perpetually absent. When he returns home, Linda is shunned by the family unit. Desperate to be accepted again, she struggles to resume her place in their home and fails to see the terrible warning signals, which have such devastating consequences.
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History of Wolves Synopsis
**A New York Times Editors Choice and Notable Book of the Year; An O magazine Book to Pick Up; A USA Today Notable Book; An Amazon.com Best Book of the Month; A People Best New Book** Garnering rave reviews from around the world, History of Wolves is novelist Emily Fridlunds darkly shimmering debut Literary fictions newest golden girl. National PostFourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as the last vestige of a lost counterculture world. Isolated at home and an outsider at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and the new history teacher, Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of his arrest deeply affect Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong.And then the young Gardner family moves in across the lake and Linda finds herself welcomed into their home as a babysitter for their little boy, Paul. It seems that her life finally has purpose but with this new sense of belonging come expectations and secrets she doesnt understand. Over the course of a summer, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life. As she struggles to find a way out of the sequestered world into which she was born, Linda confronts the life-and-death consequences of the things people doand fail to dofor the people they love.A compelling portrait of a troubled adolescent trying to find her way in a new and frightening world (People), Emily Fridlunds propulsive and gorgeously written History of Wolves introduces a new writer of enormous range and talent.
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