Alba, The Last Wolf

by David Stephen

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 1985

About the author

David Stephen (1911 - 1989) was a Scottish naturalist, author and journalist. In 1947 he became nature writer with the Daily Record, then nine years later moved to The Scotsman, where worked for a number of years. He was the first director of Palacerigg Country Park, near Cumbernauld, Lanarkshire.

Reviews

[WolfLover · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the (fictional) story of the last wolf pack in Scotland. There is no real plot – the narrative consists mostly of the wolves wandering around, hunting, and wandering around some more. The endless descriptions of the landscape are rather boring to read about, as are the clumsy insertions of events from human history. It really felt like the author was trying to say: “Look how much I know about Scotland!” Random Scottish terms are scattered throughout the text as well, the meaning of which are not always clear (though some are obvious from context).

Whilst I appreciated the portrayal of wolves as family-orientated animals that avoid humans, there were some factual errors that bothered me, such as wolves jumping on to the backs of their prey and carrying meat in their mouths rather than their stomachs. The author makes the common mistake of assuming the biggest wolf is the most dominant, when in fact personality is more important than size in determining dominance.

There is some inaccurate terminology used – male and female wolves are referred to as dogs and bitches, which is not technically correct. The author uses “slots” (deer tracks) to mean wolf tracks, and “trotters” (pig hooves) to mean deer hooves. He also mentions the “bay and tray” tines of a stag’s antlers – whilst this is how the words are pronounced, they are actually written “bez” and “trez.”

[Sarah Findlay · Rating 4 out of 5]

😭🐕 very well written loved it but left me sad.

[Casimir Laski · Rating 3 out of 5]

A harrowing, if somewhat meandering fictionalized account of the last wolves in Scotland, set against the backdrop of the final Jacobite Rising, Stephen’s narrative manages a fairly impactful reflection on human destructiveness while occasionally getting bogged down in interesting, if clumsily integrated, tangents into the suppression of Scottish culture by the English. [6/10]