De komst van de wolven

by Sarah Hall, Wim Scherpenisse (Translator)

Rachel Caine woont ver weg van de rest van haar familie in een afgelegen deel van Idaho, waar ze wolven bestudeert. Als ze na een onenightstand zwanger blijkt, komt een telefoontje uit Engeland als geroepen. De excentrieke graaf van Annerdale biedt haar een baan aan: ze krijgt de leiding over een project waarmee de wolf in Cumbria geïntroduceerd moet worden door een wolvenpaar in een omheind gebied uit te zetten. Hoewel Rachel sceptisch is, reist ze terug naar het dorp waar ze is opgegroeid. En dan blijkt dat niet iedereen gecharmeerd is van de terugkeer van de wolf.

Genres: Fiction, Animals, Nature, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Book Club

405 pages, Paperback

First published March 24, 2015

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Sarah Hall took a degree in English and Art History at Aberystwyth University, and began to take writing seriously from the age of twenty, first as a poet, several of her poems appearing in poetry magazines, then as a fiction-writer. She took an M Litt in Creative Writing at St Andrew's University and stayed on for a year afterwards to teach on the undergraduate Creative Writing programme.

Her first novel, Haweswater, was published in 2002. It is set in the 1930s, focuses on one family - the Lightburns - and is a rural tragedy about the disintegration of a community of Cumbrian hill-framers, due to the building of a reservoir. It won several awards, including the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book).

Sarah Hall currently lives in North Carolina. Her second book, The Electric Michelangelo (2004), set in the turn-of-the-century seaside resorts of Morecambe Bay and Coney Island, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).

The Carhullan Army (2007), won the 2007 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction.

Her latest novel is How to Paint a Dead Man (2009).

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rachel Caine, a wildlife biologist returns home from the United States. to the Lowther Valley in England's Cumbria. Her mother is very ill but she and Rachel never got along. Rachel takes a job re-introducing wolves to England, in particular on the wealthy estate of a Lord.

Three of my children had the same teacher in fourth grade. This teacher had a incredible love for wolves and her classroom was filled with all sorts of items relating to her passion. She also gave talks to the children and as parents were also invited, I went. Hence, my ongoing passion for wolves. Loved this book which so fed my passion. But this book is not only about wolves. It is about and sister and brother trying to become closer, to thrive despite their less than normal upbringing. A brother trying to get over a personal crisis. A mother raising a child she is not sure she is fit to raise.

The sentences are simple but descriptive. A compelling look at man versus nature and the fears that lead to drastic action. Wonderful characters, even the secondary characters we come to know pretty well.
A book that slowly seduces the reader into reading on. A wonderful book whether you like wolves or not.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freedom/captivity; wild/ tame; fertile/barren; desire/indifference . . . it's rarely just one or the other in life, is it? We walk on the border between each, sometimes falling one way, sometimes another, ever in search of balance. In this extraordinary novel, Sarah Hall explores the borders nature creates, borders imposed by man, borders the heart transcends no matter how tightly we exert out control.

Rachel Caine, a wildlife biologist who specializes in Canis lupus, left her home on the border between England and Scotland ten years ago to work on a wolf restoration project on Idaho's Nez Perce reservation (another borderland to which I would love to see Hall return for a complete story). Elusive, guarded, solitary—yes, a lone wolf—Rachel seems at home in her work and in this rough and beautiful place, forming few attachments, until a wealthy and powerful aristocrat proposes that she lead his project to reintroduce wolves to Cumbria, the border county where she was raised.

The scheme seems one conceived in madness and arrogance—the Earl of Annerdale is known for his controversial, costly ecological passions—but the proportions of this venture are epic. His estate sprawls across the mountainous terrain of Cumbria that touches the border of Scotland, which is about to vote for independence from the United Kingdom. He has fenced in vast acres, creating a massive wildlife park in anticipation of the introduction of a male and a female wolf currently in rehabilitation in Romania. The hope is the pair will mate and eventually the pack will be released into the wild, resettling in land claimed by farmers nearly 500 years ago. This weaving together of the natural world and the machinations of politics becomes a vital and fascinating frame on which this novel is structured.

Rachel turns her back on the project until a drunken tryst with a trusted colleague and friend leaves her pregnant. She accepts the Earl’s offer and flees Idaho with a secret growing inside her. Settling into a cottage on his estate, Rachel commits herself to a quixotic mission. And the wild becomes the tamed, at least on the surface.

This is a novel where all the parts—the characters and their narrative arc, the plot and themes and the quality of the writing—unite in gorgeous concert. Hall takes time to develop and deepen her characters, no matter how minor, and the relationships that extend to each from Rachel’s psyche and her heart. Yet, the story moves every forward in surprising and breathtaking ways. Sarah Hall writes a nuanced, thickly-layered and fascinating story with stunning, masterful prose.

This image, of wolves being released into freedom, left me aching. It is emblematic of how this novel made me feel- story I could not put down, one I did not want to end:

Soon she is at full tilt, flooding across the moorland. Within moments there is a large white wolf alongside her. The pair veer away from the gorse-covered hillside, divide and make for the nearest cover – a gathering of thorn woods on the hill, spindled and bent by the wind.... They cover the open moor in less than a minute. One dark, one light, stellar and obverse, their hind muscles working sumptuously under their coats. The months of docile quarantine are shaken off in seconds; power always lay just underneath.... They climb the gradient of the hill opposite without slowing, then disappear from sight in the broken terrain.

I have discovered a new favorite author. Pardon me while I lose myself in her backlist.

[Jan-Maat]

oh well, this is contemporary novel set in an alternative but non-magical Britain, with a Alec Salmond-like politician still leading Scotland and a David Cameronish person still prime Minister of Britain and if you are not a fan of British politics, this is not important at all . This may be a Scottish independence novel, to sit alongside the current crop of Brexit novels, but because it is contemporary the time to read it is now or within the last five years, then it will have to be left for twenty years after which it may or may not still feel relevant.

At various points I was reminded of Hall's collection of short stories Madame Zero, in a way the entire novel felt like a short story to me, I think because despite its length it felt modest in terms of its settings, constrained to one or two limited places and the subject matter tightened into two related knots of interest.

The most obvious knot was about boundaries and borders, and therefore conflicts, "He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’"was not far from my mind. Part of the backdrop to the story is a campaign and referendum on Scottish independence, the main story concerns two wolves flown into Britain and kept in a large fenced in estate in Cumbria -though the main story is also about the interpersonal boundaries between the main character Rachel, her family, and the people that she works with on this wolf project.

Another knot, close to the first was about nature, the cycles of the natural world, so here too Scottish independence, the return of wolves to the British Isles, Rachel's pregnancy and her relationships; growth, decay, renewal. Despite deaths and relationship breakdowns and tensions the tendency towards renewal through the novel, things coming right through growth and change gave the novel an optimistic feel - or maybe that was the coffee and pepper from breakfast meeting in my stomach.

Given the role of nature, I was starkly aware of the cycle of time through the novel, it begins in winter, it reaches its mid point in winter again, not winter as DEATH, but winter as a necessary pause that makes spring possible, then we lope into the conclusion of the novel, in this the novel reminded of the film "spring, summer, fall, winter and spring".

It is not a thriller, but it does have a pacy ending, I was glad to be reading it in the morning not struggling against my drooping eyelids to finish it at night.

I enjoyed it a lot, it felt densely woven and satisfying, each topic or element in the novel for me was as I said knotted together. It is not strictly a novel about wolves, except that it is consistently so because the most important boundaries between the wilderness and the controlled environment are within the human heart (or mind if you are feeling more prosaic) and the wolves symbolise the former throughout and the ambivalent relationships towards them illustrated in the story suggest the difficult relationship between nature (letting things be/acceptance) and control within ourselves. I wonder if Sarah Hall is a Buddhist.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"She would like to believe there will be a place, again, where the streetlights end and the wilderness begins. The wolf border."

In this evocative, metaphorically rich, and sensual tapestry of language and landscape, Sarah Hall explores the context of borders--physical, personal, and psychological--through one woman's pivotal journey toward redemption. Forty-year-old zoologist Rachel Caine is returning to her native Cumbria, England, after working for over a decade in a wolf recovery project in Idaho. The enigmatic Earl of Annerdale, Thomas Pennington, has hired her to lead a wolf re-wilding project on his large estate, in the Lake District region, close to the Scottish border. He aims to re-introduce the grey wolf to England after over 500 years. He has the means, the money, the cunning, and the land. Rachel, after initially turning him down, finds herself at a critical crossroads in her life, due to changes requiring mature and decisive action.

Rachel has been long estranged from her half-brother, Lawrence, and there's a fresh chance for reparation and connection. Their mother, Binny, with whom she's always had a difficult relationship, has just died, giving her space to return. Despite conflict, they shared a sex-only attitude toward men and a detached isolation from family. No love. No commitment. Boundaries were never to be crossed, the borders tight, the heart in exile. When her own rules of nature are breached, she leaves Idaho for home again, to face the ghosts of her past.

"Annerdale appears like a myth out of the haze, a holy land, artificially made but gloriously convincing."

Hall mines nature and nurture together, suffusing the narrative with ancient and fable-like imagery, and with birth, death, borderlines, breaches, liminal spaces, and frontiers. Rachel is likened to the wolves in the story, even the way she lures men, has sex on all fours in a hunter's truck, the smell of blood from a deer carcass scenting the air. The wolves are almost mystic in nature, "A dog before dogs were invented. The god of all dogs."

As the project progresses, the two wolves, Ra and Merle, move from a quarantined area to the expanded one, ready to mate. The public response to wolf reintegration is often one of hysteria, an "almost biblical paranoia," the collective imagination one of fear. Moreover, the Scottish referendum is on the table--more analogies to borders, independence, interdependence-- and Hall invites more myth here as an alternate history plays out and braids poignantly into the story.

The seasons are splendid in their descriptions, the setting made visceral. "Buds and blossom; there's a sweet, spermy fragrance in the air, a scent both exquisite and intolerable." There's a sense of the primitive, "The snow begins to melt and the ice beneath reveals itself like broken glass, the weapons in a Saxon hoard, instruments of havoc." Shifts in the earth, "When the weather lifts, it feels as if a dire, convulsive event has passed: miscarriage or seizure." And other-worldly: "A fine rind of moon is cut out of the sky...above the horizon is the pale, near-derelict sun...She would not be surprised to see another set of moons studding the heavens...they have entered mythology, or a memory of religion."

The wolves, and Rachel, symbolize reclamation, restoration and the healing process that has begun. However, if you are seeking a wolf story, you may be disappointed. The predators form a framework for the larger story, which is one of family, forging intimacies, and the nature of borders. The wolves appear at the beginning, and the end, but in the body of the story, they serve as mostly background and symbolism.

The plot is thin and secondary to theme, the conflicts quickly resolved along the way. The action is passive, and meanders, like the characters, but the tension mounts thrillingly toward the end. This is a book you gently chew, in small moments, and not devour, and the latency is part of its design. When I finished the last chapter, I felt I had crossed a threshold with Rachel, the reckoning complete. I won't say who the moral center is, even though it is only a minor spoiler to reveal a later character, but it's someone who compels Rachel to evolve. The old borders dissolve into junctures, the enclosures open, and the dark ghosts are liberated from final captivity.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wildness, Wilderness

She would like to believe there will be a place, again, where the streetlights ends and wilderness begins. The wolf border. And if this is where it has to begin in England, she thinks, this rich, disqualifying plot, with its private sponsorship and antiquated hierarchy, so be it.

Rachel Caine is a world expert on wolves, working on an Indian reservation in northern Idaho. She returns to her birthplace, Cumbria in the north-west of England, partly to visit her dying mother, partly as a consultant to a wealthy Earl, Thomas Pennington, who wants to reintroduce wolves to his vast estate at Annerdale, on the edges of the Lake District. Although she refuses at first, we of course know that she will eventually take the job, and that the reintroduction of a breeding wolf pair into the northern landscape will be the continuing thread that will hold this novel together. Without ever being dry—her writing is always evocative and often superb—Sarah Hall will develop this with impressive scientific and organizational detail, including dealing with the various protesters and cranks who attack the project on the ground, and the Earl's cronies from the Prime Minister down who smooth its progress from their distant seats of power.

But wolves are not the only theme. The story of bringing in the animals from Romania, supervising their quarantine, and waiting for the female to give birth is paralleled by Rachel's own pregnancy, that she discovers only on her return to England. The agonies of her eventual decision to have the baby, followed by the first year of motherhood—as described by a writer who clearly knows this blissful maddening time at first-hand—becomes almost as strong a theme as the fate of the wolves. I could imagine some readers thinking that Hall is diluting her truly extraordinary story by detailed description of an experience that, however cataclysmic it may feel to the mother in the middle of it, is after all an everyday happening. Yet her great achievement, it seems to me, is to tie the two together, finding and facing the wildness in ordinary life. Here is Rachel on the operating table during her caesarean: "There is no wound. The only wound is life, recklessly creating it, knowing that it will never be safe, it will never last; it will only ever be real."

Rachel is a single mother, and also the daughter of one. Her mother, it seems, was an earth-spirit living a Bohemian existence with a series of men. She also has a half-brother, Lawrence, who has stayed fairly close to home, marrying and leading the life of a provincial solicitor. But he and Rachel are virtually estranged, and Lawrence will turn out to have his own inner wolves wilding his domestic existence. As Hall builds up the small cast of characters around the Annerdale estate, you can almost see her setting up the widest possible range of family exemplars: the groomed harmony of the Earl and his debutante daughter Sylvia, the rough charm of the local vet with his awkward preteen daughter Claire, the desperation of Lawrence's childless wife Emily, the surly gamekeeper with his stay-at-home wife, and the South African Buddhist loner whom Rachel hires as her principal assistant. All the possibilities also play out in the life of Rachel herself, who must discover whether and how she may give up part of her own inner wilderness, and settle into some form of domesticity.

Sarah Hall grew up in or near the Lake District, an area I happen to know well and she knows far better, but she gives it a curiously shape-shifting portrait. Her feel for the special atmosphere of the fells is uncannily good in its finer details, from the bite of the air and the smell and texture of the ground underfoot to descriptions of several familiar ascents. But she is deliberately vague on topography. I got the feeling that the Annerdale estate was on the north-west fringes of the national park, but later references seem to move it south or east then back again. Straight-line journeys pass through villages wildly scattered on the map. The rugged but relatively low hills of 3,000 feet or less can be described as almost alpine landscapes when the story demands. Rather as in the works of that Lakeland author of books for children, Arthur Ransome, Hall's Cumbria is a totally real place where, nonetheless, quite strange things happen.

The action appears to take place around the time of the Scottish referendum on independence in 2014. But here again, Hall adjusts the facts: in her novel, the independents win, and Scotland becomes a separate country. I wondered about it at the time; it seemed a curious deviation from history. But I gradually realized that she needed that split in the British family, she needed the wildness of that strange country to the north, she needed the wolf border.

[João Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lobos cinzentos - Fotografia Bernhardt Reiner/Alamy

”O Regresso dos Lobos” é o quinto romance da escritora inglesa Sarah Hall, nascida em 1974, em Carlisle, Cúmbria.
A zoóloga Rachel Caine nasceu em Cúmbria, um condado no norte de Inglaterra que faz fronteira com a Escócia, mas trabalha na reserva Chief Joseph, no Idaho, Estados Unidos da América, na gestão de uma alcateia de lobos.
O Conde Thomas Pennington, um rico aristocrata, detentor de uma extensa propriedade na zona de Annerdale, desafia Rachel Caine a regressar a “casa”, para liderar um controverso e ambicioso projecto de reintrodução do lobo cinzento na Cúmbria.
Rachel Caine é uma mulher inteligente, independente, uma verdadeira líder, que prefere o sexo aos relacionamentos amorosos, que mantém uma relação distante e conflituosa com a sua mãe, Binny, e uma convivência problemática com o seu irmão, Lawrence, e a sua cunhada, Emily; que se afastou das disputas familiares e que regressa, decorridos dez anos, para se envolver e liderar um complexo projecto ambiental, a reintrodução de um animal, o lobo cinzento, num processo alvo de alguma contestação pública mas de inúmeros elogios políticos, em que se questiona e avalia os conflitos territoriais entre o animal e o homem, fronteiras ténues e, por vezes, imperceptíveis, mas determinantes para a coexistência “física” e geográfica de duas “espécies”, num tempo moderno.
”O Regresso dos Lobos” é um excelente romance, ambientado às deslumbrantes paisagens da zona de Cúmbria, em que se destacam as admiráveis descrições com que Sarah Hall nos presenteia, com especial relevância para as decorrentes da componente geográfica, ecológica e climatérica, e as que se relacionam com os detalhes das sequências de sexo -
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015... - sobre uma mulher que pretende encontrar respostas para as suas indecisões e para as suas ansiedades; um livro feminista, sobre o amor e o sexo, sobre o trabalho, a gravidez e a maternidade – as dúvidas, os anseios e as incertezas -, mas que se preocupa com a preservação ambiental e animal, com destaque para a investigação e a etologia do comportamento dos lobos, numa interacção entre a natureza e os humanos.
”O Regresso dos Lobos” é um livro profundamente metafórico…


Sarah Hall (n. 1974) - Fotografia Richard Thwaites

"Quando nos impõem alguma coisa na infância, é difícil voltar atrás, podemos passar uma vida inteira a tentar." (Pág. 207)

"O mundo das mulheres divide-se entre aquelas que perdoam e as que não perdoam. Mesmo as que estão dispostas a fazê-lo, por vezes não são capazes. Os homens, embora adotem a duplicidade feminina, salvam-se muitas vezes por se enquadrarem numa ou noutra categoria." (Pág. 225)

[Raven Haired Girl]

I was expecting a plot focusing on wolves, needless to say that’s not what was delivered. The plot focuses on Rachel, her pregnancy and dysfunctional family along with a myriad of other personal challenges. The wolves aspect serves as a minimal secondary narrative, what was introduced was fascinating only leaving me hankering for much more.

Rachel is a peculiar character – intricate, aloof, loner, incredibly private, fiercely independent and a commitment phobic. She possesses a keen eye for observation which creates her interaction with others enlightening. I found her lukewarm in the beginning, came to understand her more in the middle and felt a warmth towards her in the later part of the story. Her passion and softer side is exposed when she is immersed in the world of her beloved wolves. She grows as a woman managing to slough off her rough untouchable exterior, her heart softens, she’s less rigid.

I must say the pace was lethargic, unbearable at times. Don’t expect this to be a fast pace read by any means, the snail wins the race here. Hall’s fluid graceful prose kept me from calling it quits.

Despite being let down by the summary, Hall’s stellar writing kept my attention. Her manipulation of language more than compensated for flaws. Vivid depictions of the surrounding areas, wolves were quite stunning.

For this and other reviews visit http://ravenhairedgirl.com

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rachel Caine has run Idaho’s Chief Joseph wolf preserve for nearly a decade, but her roots are in England’s Lake District. Her two worlds unexpectedly collide when an earl asks for her help reintroducing wolves near the Scottish border. As in The Animals by Christian Kiefer, with which this novel shares some incidentals of plot and setting, the question of what we owe to other creatures is a strong and haunting one. Alongside the story of the wolves’ release runs Rachel’s decision to become a mother.

The twin plot strands – the one environmental and the other personal – ask what can be salvaged from the past. However, especially in the third or so of the novel, some of the subplots and sidetracks start to take over. A shorter, tighter novel might have maintained a better pace.

See my full review at Nudge.

[Bonnie]

DNF

Having read and loved The Beautiful Indifference: Stories, a collection of short stories by this author, I was willing to take a chance on this one despite my hesitation. The subject matter definitely had potential but I read so very little of what is considered 'literary fiction' these days and clearly for good reason.

The concept is interesting: Rachel Caine, a zoologist that grew up in the UK now lives in rural Idaho monitoring wolves. She has been asked to come back to the UK in hopes of hiring her for a project a local Earl has set his sights on: the reintegration wolves to the English countryside. Interested in how long exactly it had been since wolves were common in England, I did a little research myself. Apparently around 1281, the complete destruction of wolves in England was ordered by the current ruler, Edward I and while there were a few mentions of wolves in subsequent years, most appeared to have been exterminated. So despite the modern disadvantages, this Earl wants to bring that park of medieval England back to life and he believes Rachel would be the best bet for this project to be a success. Interesting, but not fascinating enough to capture my complete interest.

Rachel herself was a strange character, seemingly as wild as the wolves she watches, but I struggled with the balance between the topic of the wolves with the overpowering focus on her uninspiring personal life. Then there was the stereotypical Earl, Pennington, and his determination towards this project that was ultimately left unexplained. Emphasis was constantly placed on the fact that he had money and power and he always got what he want without any real meaning behind his actions. The side characters weren't much better and I would have preferred more of a focus on the wolves themselves, alas despite the assumption that they were they definitely took the back burner of the story even with the clear attempt to parallel their story with Rachel's. It just didn't work for me.

The prose is lovely, as I knew she was capable of from her short story collection, but being confronted with another literary story where the quotation marks are experiencing a severe shortage is tiresome. Having to constantly reread passages because I can't determine whether it was something that was actually said out loud or was merely internal dialogue isn't something a reader should have to struggle with. It's a literary style that I will never be on board with.

[RitaSkeeter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be a novel about wolves. It's never very fair to judge a book by what you think it's going to be rather than what it is, but in this case I don't think it's entirely my fault. The book has 'wolf' in the title, the cover art has a wolf, the blurb is all about wolves. But this isn't really a book about the wolves, they just provide the backdrop to the story of Rachel. The wolves being an analogy for Rachel.

Like wild animals, we never really get to know Rachel. We're held at a distance, unable to really understand what makes her tick. What we see of her is fairly cold, logical, lacking emotion and attachment. We never truly see that change, even with the birth of her child. We see care and warmth for him, but again we're held at a distance. This isn't really a book with character development; the characters are all archetypes we never really get to know. Rachel, the emotionally unavailable protagonist; the troubled brother; the gentle older lover; the calm co-worker; and so on.

It's odd really. A book that really is focused on Rachel and her story, but we never get to know her. Or anyone else. I can see that some may dislike Rachel as a character. I feel only ambivalence for her, and the rest of the cast. I felt no particular emotion for anyone, and didn't care what happened to them. Likewise, and very sadly, the author failed to exact any emotion, interest, passion in me for the wolves in the book. The wolves were the draw card for me; that is the story I wanted. Sadly, I found their story as sterile as the rest of the book.

I can appreciate the author's intentions with the book, with having the 'wild' within Rachel echoed in the wolves. It didn't work for me though. The book was just too cold. There was nothing for me to grab onto emotionally. It didn't particularly work for me on an intellectual level either. The themes were poorly developed. I don't usually complain about the lack of speech marks in text, but I found it distracting in this particular book.

All in all, not my cup of tea.

[Imi · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I'd known this novel was mostly about motherhood, I probably wouldn't have picked this up. I have nothing against that as a theme, but reading about every single detail on raising a baby doesn't really interest me personally. I liked the symbolism between the wolves being reintroduced to Cumbria and the protagonist Rachel's personal life; borders, the wilderness, freedom... It also helped that this is set very close to where my family lives so I got a bit of a thrill reading about very familiar places! The strongest parts of the novel were Hall's beautiful and vivid descriptions of the wolves and the wilderness, along with a few very touching moments between Rachel and her family. Unfortunately, I really wish the plot had been tighter and better paced. Too often it felt like Hall was simply rambling or getting side-tracked. A shorter, more focussed novel might have kept my interest a little longer.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

The noble wolf figures prominently in the mythology of just about every Native American tribe, embodying courage, strength, fierceness, and ruthlessness. So it is no accident that Sarah Hall’s luminous novel begins with Rachel Caine’s self-exile from the American-Indian reservation in Idaho in which she has been working.

Emerging from the American wilderness, pregnant with her Native American friend Kyle’s child, she heads home to the Lake District, where she is hired by an eccentric earl, Thomas Pennington, to reintroduce the grey wolf into the protected confines of his verdant estate.

Yet at the same time she reintroduces the wolves in a “rewilding” plan, Rachel is undergoing her own reintroduction to her home territory and face her own worse demons. These include coming to grips with a neglectful and promiscuous recently deceased mother, an estranged half-brother, and her own fear of being tamed through love.

“She would like to believe there will be a place, again, where the streetlights end and the wilderness begins. The wolf border,” Sarah Hall writes. The parallelisms between her Earl of Annerdale wolf project and her own animal/human border abound. Her job is to keep the wolves from becoming too domesticated; simultaneously, with motherhood, she is experiencing precisely the opposite.

“It will not take them long to be restored,” Rachel muses about the wolves. “Their unbelonging, reversed. Nothing of history will mater to them; land is land, articulate, informative; soon they will dominate.” As Rachel navigates the border of her own unbelonging and her own family history – the story shifts more and more to Rachel’s own connection to what makes her human

There is true beauty in this book: in the glorious prose, in the organic structure, and in the poignant story. The emphasis of the book is on borders: the border between the past and the present, human and animal, civilization and wilderness, work and personal passions, security and freedom. I loved this visceral book and wanted to linger in its world.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Hall's books are always enjoyable, and this one is probably her best yet. It is a visceral, sensual and compulsive story of a woman brought in as an expert from a reservation in Idaho to help a maverick aristocrat to implement his project to reintroduce wolves on his Lake District estate, which encompasses wider issues on Scottish independence, environmental policy, the nature of wildness and motherhood, while leaving centre stage to descriptions of the wolves. It is slightly flawed, but only in the plausibility of its setting - for those of us who know the Lake District, Hall's geography is a little slippery, with recognisably real places where it suits her, but stretched and modified to meet the demands of the plot. The politicians who have cameo roles could also be said to be based on real figures.

[Susana · Rating 3 out of 5]

(review in English below)

Fiquei desapontada, pois esta é muito mais a história pessoal da protagonista, Rachel, dos seus problemas nas relações amorosas e com a família, dos seus traumas e redenções, do que propriamente a história da reintrodução do lobo em Inglaterra.

Aborreci-me também com as questões relativas à política britânica.

Gostei, ainda assim, e a partir de certa altura dei por mim a ler sem querer parar, o que é sempre um ponto positivo.

Infelizmente, a tradução é desleixada, dando ideia que a tradutora a fez directamente, sem depois se dar ao trabalho de reler as frases resultantes que, muitas vezes, não faziam sentido em português. A revisão não está creditada e não deve ter mesmo existido.

A edição é da Jacarandá, que é uma chancela da Brilho das Letras, que por sua vez é uma empresa da Editorial Presença. Não percebo a finalidade desta desmultiplicação das editoras em diferentes empresas e chancelas, suponho que haverá razões comerciais acima de tudo, mas se é para apresentar estes pobres resultados mais valia estarem quietos...

I was disappointed, as this is in fact much more about the life of the protagonist, Rachel, about the problems in her romantic and family relationships, about her traumas and redemptions, than a real story about the reintroduction of wolves in Britain.

I was also bored by the issues related with the British politics.

Anyway, I liked it and from a certain moment on I found myself not wanting to stop reading, which is always a positive note.

Unfortunately, the translation is sloppy, as if the translator did it word by word and didn't bother to read the resulting phrases which, in many cases, didn't make sense in Portuguese...

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

BABT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05v7tmb

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...

Description: Sarah Hall's new novel is a compelling story about personal and political borders - about power, land, family and love. At its heart is Rachel Caine, tough, untouchable, an expert on wolves, and long estranged from her home county of Cumbria and her fiery mother and lost brother. Like the wolves she protects and champions, she is wary of humanity, happy in the untamed wilderness.

Set against the dramatic and artfully drawn backdrops of the Lakeland fells and the towering ranges of Idaho, The Wolf Border explores issues of ownership and vested power, of re-wilding and of family as Rachel reaches a turning point in her life and learns that choice and change are possible.

1/10: The offer of a job from an eccentric Earl, whose plan is to reintroduce the Grey Wolf to England coincides with the chance to see her dying mother but is that enough to lure Rachel home?

2/10: Back in Idaho, Rachel faces a new and life-changing dilemma, which a message from home might help to resolve.

3/10: now employed on the Earl of Annerdale's estate, it is time for Rachel to meet the staff, make up her team and reconnect with her brother. And she needs to make a fateful decision.

4/10: As the project gets underway, word reaches the local community and unleashes a backlash. Meanwhile Rachel has a lifechanging first encounter.

5/10: with the wolves bonding, the time is approaching for their release into the estate where they must mate to guarantee the success of the project. And Rachel has a new surprise.

6/10: the wolves are ready for their release into the enclosure on the Earl's estate and Rachel is about to give birth.

7/10: As the wolves settle into their new home, Rachel is adjusting to new demands and relationships too.

8/10: Crisis and Success- Rachel's brother reaches rock bottom while the birth of the pups ensures the survival of the wolf pack.

9/10: there are tensions in the air - and then comes the news that Rachel has feared and she must risk all

10/10: in the final episode, the chase extends northwards and a new future beckons.

Hall's writing style is studiously perfect, self conscious even, yet sometimes, that aspect combined with a good storyline brings a great result, as with The Wolf Border. I loved the Scottish Referendum snippets.

3* Daughters of the North
3* Haweswater
4* The Wolf Border
4* Mrs Fox
2* The Strangers' Will

[Wastrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engaging, highly readable novel that sadly fails to surprise. I read this out of a feeling that I should at least attempt to read some literary fiction now and then, outside of my usual diet of SF&F and the occasional classic; and for that purpose, it was probably a good choice. It's an enjoyable book; I can understand why many people like it. But it's also very much as you'd expect a literary fiction book to be, with all the limitations that entails.

The novel focuses on - and spends most of the time rummaging through the head of - Rachel, a woman approaching middle age, as she endeavours to return wolves to an aristocrat's estate. Needless to say, she is emotionally detached - few friends, estranged family - and haunted by the past, her issues churned up by the double punch of her mother's illness and her own change of job.

Rachel's head is not exactly a comfortable place to be - she's clearly suffering from serious, undiagnosed depression, which is effectively the subject of the novel. Although I genuinely can't tell if she's consciously written as 'suffering from serious depression', or if she's just written that way because she's a character in a lit-fic novel. Nonetheless, she's portrayed in a realistic, sympathetic and engaging manner, and the novel does't get too bogged down in misery; this is "waggling a loose tooth on purpose" hurt/comfort fiction, rather than outright miseryporn. While it's not a comfortable viewpoint, it is, in its own way, rather cozy, and certainly readable.

Unfortunately, all the characters around her are clichés, and thin clichés at that. The writing is good enough that they don't seem unreal on a scene-to-scene basis, but they are all far-larger-than-life, all extremely familiar, and all lacking in complexity. Similarly, the plot - which, to be honest, barely exists - indulges in extremely predictable 'twists' that every reader will have seen coming for... well, right from the beginning of the book, in some cases.

Nor, in the final analysis, is Rachel's perspective, while engaging, all that revelatory. She runs through all the classic tropes regarding boyfriends, mothers, siblings, jobs that you'd expect from a novel in this genre; at times, it phrases things well, but it never offers any new insight, or any strange perspective. That is, of course, entirely realistic - most people struggling through depression, or even just a difficult time in their life - will indeed not have any searing moments of clarity, life-changing revelations or perfectly apposite summations of things so notable that they demand to be shared with the world. At best they may, as Rachel finally does, come through a period of reflection and unease with some hard-won, vague but real sense of new hope. In that sense - if not in the mechanics of plot, character or setting - Rachel's narrative is relatable and real, and vividly depicted. But in that sense, it is also, frankly, rather unnecessary. If you've read one of these novels before, or if you've met other human beings and talked to them, or if you've lived any length of time yourself, then probably already know all this; you've probably seen the world from this perspective already. If there were more to the novel than this, then that familiarity would be no problem - but when the entire novel is built on the value of a single story, it would be nice if that story didn't feel like an uninspired remake of countless other stories.

And along the way, there is the prose. The prose is largely unobjectionable. And I mean that almost literally: the prose is polished to a point where nobody could object to it. It is dense and viscous in its painstaking, laboured art and care. It is anonymous in its obedience to the rules of 'good' prose; it is anxious, fussy, in its flawlessness, its stylised cramming of interest into every subclause. It reads as though it has been processed through a workshop, to the point where no helpful colleague could ever point at a plain, undecorated sentence and suggest "maybe you could make that sentence stand out more!" Every sentence struggles to stand out from the crowd - even if that means that none of them do. There are relatively few outright bad sentences here - one gets the sense that if the author thought that even 10% of critics or awards judges might dislike a given sentence, she has pre-emptively coppiced it into something more conventional, more unobjectionable...

...until from time to time the preciousness, the attention-grabbing, anxious catachresis and the prose-poetical adjectives pass the threshold into outright silliness. Unsurprisingly, I found my suspension of disbelief lapsing most frequently in the sex scenes, as when she describes a man's penis as "fine and silken […] almost artisan, like mediaeval machinery". But it happens at other times, too, as when she describes a wolf as "a true grey - tawny as the landscape". I found myself yearning at times for a language-world in which words had meanings - where grey, for example, could not be described as 'tawny'.

But these lapses were only occasional; after a while, I came to wish they were more frequent. If you want to write poetry, I thought, at least write your own poetry; and if you write your own poetry, then occasionally you should write lines that other writers might not have written, that at least some readers might not enjoy. For the most part, however, the prose was very carefully reasonably 'good' - in an interchangeable, unmemorable, way. I want to know what you would write, not what your workshop or your creative writing teacher might tell you to write! And if I laugh, it at least shows you have surprised me; all too much in this novel - in its themes, its characters, its plot, its setting, its prose - I was unsurprised.

And yet, of course, there's a virtue in anonymity. Being unobjectionable is... hard to object to. I probably would recommend this novel to many people, if the circumstance arose - after all, how could they hate it?

Because, of course, its written to a genre. The genre has its demands, because its readers have their desires. Most genre readers don't like to be surprised too much. If you like this genre, this is probably a good fun read for you.

Myself, I mostly enjoyed the process of reading it; I was willing to go along with it. And yet throughout, I kept holding out hope that, at some point, something would happen - something shocking, something powerful, something new, or just something I didn't see coming. Something that would explain why the author had to write this novel, and why I, and everyone I would meet from then on, had to read it. And it never really came. Leaving me with the sense that in some way Rachel was a character left waiting for a plot; that Hall was a writer of some ability, still waiting for something to write about.


If you'd like to see me explain my thoughts on the novel, and on the cultural clash between genres, at far greater length (but sadly I suspect no greater clarity, and with longer paragraphs), my full review is up on my blog.

[Moreninha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta novela ha sido una gratísima sorpresa. Me guié por la temática y por alguna reseña positiva y fue un acierto total. Muy orgánica en cuanto a la relación de la trama con el entorno, la sutileza de la diferencia de clases sociales, trazada sin maniqueísmo. Suscita muchas cuestiones respecto de la relación entre lo salvaje y lo artificial y todos sus puntos intermedios: en especial lo artificialmente salvaje. Seguimos a la vez la formación de una manada de lobos y, paralelamente, la protagonista va organizando su propia tribu, basada en lazos familiares pero también en los de la afinidad y el afecto. Buenos personajes, no hay villanos ni santos. Hay política e intereses, hay algo de acción, aunque no mucha e incluso una pizca de intriga. Y mucha vida. Qué buen rato.

[Liisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5
I feel like I should start this review by writing about my relationship with wolves, as it affected my reading of The Wolf Border. I live in Finland and have grown up in the countryside, a habitat of wolves, where I still spend most of my weekends. I have never seen one myself, but the packs inhabit large areas and are wary of people. Nonetheless, the hysteria around wolves is real. My mom is still worried when I go into the woods alone, and as children we were escorted to the bus stop, as wolves were sighted in the bus stop of our neighbours. In school kids talked about sighting wolves from the windows of their rooms and attacks on farm animals always raised fury. The question of wolves in Finnish nature is difficult and causes conflicts. I won't go any deeper into this, but I also want to mention that as a biology student I've gotten another pespective on the wolf issue, one regarding their ecology. Even though I may have been scared in the forests as a child, I'm not anymore. My voice goes for the wolves - they belong to Finnish nature.

Here we get to the actual book. It centers around Rachel Caine, a wolf expert who initially works in America, but starts overseeing a project in England. A project of reintroducing wolves to English countryside. The area is strictly limited, but it's still a huge step that not everyone takes kindly to. The land is in the Earl of Annerdale's private ownership and a central theme in the novel is the aristocracy, their immense and perhaps outdated wealth and power.

I must say that I was slightly disappointed realizing how the focus is actually on Rachel's personal life instead of the wolves. Although they are always part of the story, sometimes I felt like they were merely used as a metaphor. But then again, the character development of Rachel is so suberb I really shouldn't complain. Something else that's suberb is the prose. It flows so beautifully that it was hard to put the book down and I finished the last two hundred pages in one sitting. And the ending is very satisfying, leaving the reader with no loose ends. I was also impressed with how many different themes Hall manages to fit into this.

Still, the wolves are what I loved about this the most. I became shamefully aware of how limited to Finland my knowledge of wolves, and attitudes towards them, is. It seemed that Hall did a lot of research and everything felt very real. Like this could actually happen. The outcome is interesting, offering some social and political commentary as well as a vision for the wolves.

It's probably clear by now that I'm fascinated by wolves and if you are too, this is definitely worth a try. The Wolf Border doesn't go deeply into the biology side of things, but focuses on the social aspect and especially Rachel's personal life. So even if you don't mind wolves, this offers so much just in form of personal growth.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

huge expectations - especially after I read the excerpted pages in the Granta spotlight of last year (young British authors issue 123) and the book delivered and more; not only that but despite my intentions to the contrary, once I opened the book the moment I could get a copy last evening, I couldn't put it down until 2 am when I finished it though the last 20-30 pages were a bit of a blur due to the hour so I definitely need a reread;

while contemporary (as per the blurb which is fairly accurate as storyline goes) with a whiff of alternate history as Scotland passes last year's independence referendum in the book's universe - though that is not really crucial for its storyline - and with mostly personal stuff following Rachel Caine's family, friends, colleagues, as well as how her human interactions intertwine with her passion for wolves and her managing them on an Idaho reservation and then on an earl's estate in the English countryside - but a page turner nonetheless and an awesome novel which for once veers close to the cliche about the best books being about the human condition regardless of their storyline/timeline

superb writing and overall a brilliant novel and the best of 2015 so far

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been having a tough time lately finding original literary novels that do not remind me of others I've read before. Thanks to a GR friend, I picked this up and was immediately transported. There are familiar elements, to be sure. When you read a lot, that's bound to happen, But the writing here is so beautiful, and the analogy of borders between civilization and the wild, between a brother and a sister, between a past and a present are given compassionate treatment with a satisfactory outcome.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book languished on my tbr shelf for a few years. I'm not quite sure why, perhaps I just thought I wouldn't be that interested in a story about wolves. But this novel is so much more than that: it's about strained family relationships, a woman doing things her way, motherhood (although this was the only part I was unsure about - it all seemed too easy), and the beautifully described landscape of Cumbria through all the seasons. (And yes, I suppose, it was a bit about wolves.) I'll definitely be looking up more of Hall's novels and short stories.

[Genevieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a mesmerizing read. I feel like the wolves that take the stage in this novel. My senses are heightened. The world is more vivid for having read this. Details to come...

[Pilar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ha sido un libro extraño, no había guiones para los diálogos y eso me ha vuelto un poco loca. Supongo que no se un fallo, porque no había un solo guion en todo el libro, y es algo de la autora, pero que a mí me ha hecho difícil su lectura. Por otro lado, me atraía el argumento, sin embargo, algo me ha fallado, no he terminado de ponerme en la piel de la protagonista, y al estar narrado en primera persona...

[Tod Wodicka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review originally published in The National March 19t 2015.)

Before Britain became the United Kingdom, there were wolves. By all accounts, there were once a tremendous number of them: great packs of wolves feasting on livestock and the occasional traveller. Through a combination of bounty-hunting, trapping and deforestation, wolves became extinct in England sometime during the reign of Henry the VII (1485-1509). In Scotland, the last wolf was reportedly killed in 1680, 27 years before the founding of the UK. In The Wolf Border, Sarah Hall’s weather-haunted fifth novel set in an alternative present-day England, an expectant mother is tasked with overseeing the reintroduction of the Grey Wolf at the very moment that the UK ceases to exist.

As far as alternative histories go, this is a subtle one – Scottish independence isn’t exactly Hitler invading Britain. Hall, who finished the novel before Scotland’s No vote last September, uses secession as a backdrop against which she explores the nature of independence.

Twice nominated for the Booker, Hall is among the finest writers of her generation. She was born in Cumbria, the setting for The Wolf Border, and it shows. “Wolf border” is the translation of the Finish word susiraja, which Hall calls “the boundary between the capital region and the rest of the country”, suggesting that “everything outside the border is wilderness”. Hall is a poet of those outer regions.

In fact, you might be forgiven for thinking that the novel’s main character is the land itself, and that the weather, “that most English of subjects”, is the plot. Oftentimes, returning to a novel means returning to a story, to characters, but picking up The Wolf Border always felt like returning to an inhabited environment: Hall’s evocation of the natural world is that good. And whenever the wolves stalk the page, their alien intelligence delivers an uncanny jolt.

The Wolf Border’s human protagonist, Rachel Caine, is herself something of a lone wolf: mildly estranged from her family and her British homeland, she lives at the Chief Joseph reservation in the United States, monitoring wolves. She is content, in her late 30s, attached only to her work. Enter the inscrutable Thomas Pennington, the 11th Earl of Annerdale, who wants to turn a great portion of this huge Cumbrian estate into a reservation for the reintroduction of the Grey Wolf into the English countryside. He wants Rachel to help him realise this dream. “The prerogative of wealth and wilful eccentricity,” it is an offer she initially refuses, until an unplanned pregnancy brings her home.

Rachel quickly becomes embroiled in the Cumbrian politics and practical intricacies of reintroducing wolves. Once we’re introduced to the Jurassic Park-like foolproof computerised gate keeping the wolves from the outside world, you know there’s going to be trouble. The threat of the wolves escaping looms over everything. In the meantime, Rachel becomes romantically involved with the local veterinarian and begins to reconcile with her half-brother, Laurence, whose troubles bring them together in unexpected ways. The burgeoning and nuanced familial love between a sister and brother essentially meeting each other for the first time is deeply affecting.

The Wolf Border is least successful when at its most conventional. Hall half-heartedly sets up a mystery within the Earl’s family, for example, and then half-heartedly solves it. It feels as if both author and character shrug this plot off. It’s almost unseemly, as if belonging to another book entirely.

In fact, much of the plot begins to pale beside the internal drama of Rachel’s pregnancy, and the birth of her son. The Wolf Border ranks among the finest meditations on motherhood that I have ever read. Here is where Hall’s themes of nature and freedom find their most potent outlet. Rachel describes and observes her own changing body and temperament as she would the wolves in her care or the seasons outside her cottage. She experiences love on a magnitude that both terrifies her and makes her whole. “To be so out of control emotionally, to have so much and so little control over another living thing.” She is new in her own skin, intoxicatingly animal in a way that she can do little to combat. What is true independence in the face of such nature? It must be found within it. She finally submits.

If Hall gives us the wolf as an archetype of intuition and pure nature, then one could almost read The Wolf Border as a modern werewolf myth. It is the story of a human transforming and connecting with something terrifying, animal and true. Motherhood as the ultimate full moon.

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifest...

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime:
Sarah Hall's new novel is a compelling story about personal and political borders - about power, land, family and love. At its heart is Rachel Caine, tough, untouchable, an expert on wolves, and long estranged from her home county of Cumbria and her fiery mother and lost brother. Like the wolves she protects and champions, she is wary of humanity, happy in the untamed wilderness.

Set against the dramatic and artfully drawn backdrops of the Lakeland fells and the towering ranges of Idaho, The Wolf Border explores issues of ownership and vested power, of re-wilding and of family as Rachel reaches a turning point in her life and learns that choice and change are possible.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really good story about the reintroduction of wolves in England and a sister and brother who struggle with issues from a very unorthodox upbringing. The book flows very well and the writing flows so easily with vivid descriptions. Thank you Jill once again.

[Michele · Rating 1 out of 5]

it's telling that I could skip large chunks of this novel and yet never feel like I had missed some important plot point or character development. it is up for debate whether that was because there was nothing to miss or because 70% of it could have easily been deleted. I'm leaning towards the latter. I liked the wolves. I didn't really like most of the other characters and honestly kept forgetting their names. it would mention one and I'd have to read a little further sometimes to find context and remember who Thomas or Lawrence was. that's sad. overall, boring and over written.

[Maria Espadinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Dança dos Opostos


A Vida é uma Eterna Luta entre Contrários, ou optando por eufemizar um pouco, uma contínua Dança de Opostos:

Autenticidade vs Hipocrisia

Natural vs Artificial

Alegria vs Tristeza

Liberdade vs Cativeiro

Paz vs Conflito
.
.
.
São múltiplos e numerosos os Pares participantes neste Baile da Vida!

Rachel, uma mulher independente e aficionada da Liberdade está numa fase de novos desafios que a levarão a aprender novos e melhores passos desta bela Dança Desafiante...

[Moira Macfarlane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goed geschreven, fijn verhaal met een mooi onderwerp -wolven- , maar ook over vrijheid en gevangenschap mooi gespiegeld aan het leven van Rachel, de wildlife onderzoekster. Met veel plezier gelezen, een dikke 3 sterren.

[Niall Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Best book I've read in 2015 so far. Stay tuned for the full review.