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Wolfish: The stories we tell about fear, ferocity and freedom
Wolves abound through cultural folklore and through literature – vilified and venerated in equal measure. In Wolfish, Erica Berry examines these depictions, alongside her own research of the wolf for nearly a decade, to get to the heart of what our stories about the wolf reveal about our relationships with one another and ‘What does it mean to want to embody the same creature from which you are supposed to be running?’
The wolf is so often depicted as the male predator, preying on the vulnerable girl/woman who strays from the path; the she-wolf meanwhile depicts women who sit outside the accepted boundaries of feminine behaviour. Berry openly recounts her own uncomfortable and sometimes frightening experiences as a woman to try to understand how we navigate our fears when threat can seem constant.
Through it all, Berry finds new expressions for courage and how to be a brave human and animal member of our fragile, often dangerous world.
The wolf is so often depicted as the male predator, preying on the vulnerable girl/woman who strays from the path; the she-wolf meanwhile depicts women who sit outside the accepted boundaries of feminine behaviour. Berry openly recounts her own uncomfortable and sometimes frightening experiences as a woman to try to understand how we navigate our fears when threat can seem constant.
Through it all, Berry finds new expressions for courage and how to be a brave human and animal member of our fragile, often dangerous world.
422 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 21, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 284 reviews
May 3, 2023
very much not what I was expecting or hoping for from this. far too much (dull, meandering) memoir, far too little engaging nonfiction. there are a few interesting wolf facts woven in here and there, but I felt so listless at the prospect of returning to this even to write the review that I let my library loan expire before I got around to it, so they won't be featured here.
my loan expiring means I also don't have evidence to point to in talking about why this book didn't work for me and it was forgettable enough that two weeks later I'm not dredging up a lot from my memory, but what I do remember is that I disliked berry from her recounting of some frankly nasty and pointless cruelty—cruelty that for the most part remains in her head, but still—toward a man who sits next to her on the train and who is using, mentally ill, or both. berry ends up getting him thrown off the train because she thought he was...in some way dangerous? I get it, I wouldn't like a random man to sit next to me on a long train ride either, but there's really no evidence that he posed any danger to berry, who really could just have stopped after moving to a new car.
that guy had nothing to do with wolves, lady.
I know we have like intuition or whatever but man, there is just way too much navel-gazing here of a very specific and exhausting variety—I can gaze at my own navel just fine without having to pick up a book about it, thanks—and her positing of herself as the little red riding hood victim and this dude who was just trying to get from point a to point b as the big bad left a bad taste in my mouth. the book doesn't really improve from there. many times I thought about DNFing. not sure why I didn't. but then again, those few wolf facts. oh! the part where they accidentally poisoned themselves (when she's at like, an exclusive cooking retreat at a noblewoman's estate in the sicilian countryside???? this woman's life, I tell you) was fun.
oh, also, the way she opens by talking how she's going to focus on white/western/european perception of wolves because she's white so 🥺 that's all she can really DOOoo 🥺 (there's a difference between staying in your lane and simply washing your hands of doing the work, and I'm not sure how high I'd score her on sticking the landing) gave me a weary flashback to the tumblr days of the fabled #im white tag. but she and the audiobook narrator are donating some of the proceeds from this book to indigenous nations in the areas in which they live and/or grew up, so I guess that's something material.
my loan expiring means I also don't have evidence to point to in talking about why this book didn't work for me and it was forgettable enough that two weeks later I'm not dredging up a lot from my memory, but what I do remember is that I disliked berry from her recounting of some frankly nasty and pointless cruelty—cruelty that for the most part remains in her head, but still—toward a man who sits next to her on the train and who is using, mentally ill, or both. berry ends up getting him thrown off the train because she thought he was...in some way dangerous? I get it, I wouldn't like a random man to sit next to me on a long train ride either, but there's really no evidence that he posed any danger to berry, who really could just have stopped after moving to a new car.
that guy had nothing to do with wolves, lady.
I know we have like intuition or whatever but man, there is just way too much navel-gazing here of a very specific and exhausting variety—I can gaze at my own navel just fine without having to pick up a book about it, thanks—and her positing of herself as the little red riding hood victim and this dude who was just trying to get from point a to point b as the big bad left a bad taste in my mouth. the book doesn't really improve from there. many times I thought about DNFing. not sure why I didn't. but then again, those few wolf facts. oh! the part where they accidentally poisoned themselves (when she's at like, an exclusive cooking retreat at a noblewoman's estate in the sicilian countryside???? this woman's life, I tell you) was fun.
oh, also, the way she opens by talking how she's going to focus on white/western/european perception of wolves because she's white so 🥺 that's all she can really DOOoo 🥺 (there's a difference between staying in your lane and simply washing your hands of doing the work, and I'm not sure how high I'd score her on sticking the landing) gave me a weary flashback to the tumblr days of the fabled #im white tag. but she and the audiobook narrator are donating some of the proceeds from this book to indigenous nations in the areas in which they live and/or grew up, so I guess that's something material.
January 9, 2023
As wide-ranging as the wolves she writes about, Berry's book is clearly the result of years of work and thought. It is a carefully woven spiral, taking in wolf science, history, folklore, and mythology.
Berry explores for us how wolves have been seen, how they have symbolized fear, care, and fierceness over time, and she allows us to see how personal this is for her. Her own preoccupation, as it becomes this book, mirrors the wolf's journey, in that it echoes the way they set off for independence, only later to establish that the true strength of the wolf lies in the pack.
Truly compelling are the lessons we learn here about how wolves give us clues as to how we can survive the coming years of climate emergency. Ecological awareness is not a luxury, but a necessity, and this book brings it home that we and the wolves are not separate. This book is a magnificent achievement, one that will enthrall and illuminate.
Berry explores for us how wolves have been seen, how they have symbolized fear, care, and fierceness over time, and she allows us to see how personal this is for her. Her own preoccupation, as it becomes this book, mirrors the wolf's journey, in that it echoes the way they set off for independence, only later to establish that the true strength of the wolf lies in the pack.
Truly compelling are the lessons we learn here about how wolves give us clues as to how we can survive the coming years of climate emergency. Ecological awareness is not a luxury, but a necessity, and this book brings it home that we and the wolves are not separate. This book is a magnificent achievement, one that will enthrall and illuminate.
May 1, 2023
DNF at 44%. I'm finding this too dull and meandering, while at the same time upsetting because of so much wolf harm and death interspersed in the less-memoiry passages. I understand the metaphor behind the train seatmate anecdote, unlike some other reviewers - but overall I found this uncomfortable and not attention-retaining.
March 5, 2023
Not enough about actual wolves. Too much of the author’s personal life. Some connections to wolves in literature but nothing very compelling.
March 12, 2023
I really struggled with this one. Or, at least, I really struggled with the first half. The second half was great. The stories became very personal, the literary allusions alluring and interesting, the tracking of OR7 grew more intense, and I loved following Berry's journey through adolescent through to adulthood, and the ways womanhood affecting her. Basically, from the Italian greens story onwards, I was hooked.
But prior to that, it was a slog. The stories were not personal, but about other women, and how Berry's anxiety would grow around the stories of these real life women who had become victims, usually of men, rarely of wolves. She calls it out, at one point, that she had to be careful not to appropriate these stories, to act as if they were her own, and yet I felt she never succeeded in that aim, and in fact personalised them to the point of making them about her own anxiety rather than the reality of fear that these women faced. I think this was made worse by the fact that, while the encounters Berry had sound intimidating and scary, they were not really violent and were very brief. The contrast between feeling intimidated because a group of men on campus surrounded her for a few seconds before they wondered off, against that of a murdered woman, and later the victim of a brutal rape and murder, does not make Berry seem empathetic, but naive and self-absorbed. And I feel awful saying that, as someone who has many times been intimidated and felt that fear linger. But to juxtapose it in such a way that gives it as much power as these women who were murdered and/or raped, made it feel like it cheapened what these women in these new stories went through--made worse by the fact that Berry only ever loosely held any connection to them.
Having said that, it is hard to know how to talk about these every day fears without accidentally superseding these stories of extreme terror, so I'm not sure how Berry should have approached it; only that it didn't work for me.
That is not to say that these chapters held nothing; some of the quotes she pulls from other stories were very profound, as were some of the ways that she weaves her analogies into experiences of womanhood. On Beauty & the Beast, she writes: "Gaston, that arrogant hunter with oiled manbun, shouts those same words as his incites the townspeople to raise their pitchforks and enter the woods. Their mission, ostensibly, is to save their beauty, but it is clear that their red-eyed giddiness bubbles more from loyalty to one another than to her. It is a familiar story of white womanhood, with Belle's body a terrain for killing the Other.", as she draws the comparison with the way white women's bodies have been used by the patriarchy to incite the deaths and incarcerations of Black men and other men of colour in the real world. The patriarchy isn't actually trying to protect white women, because it is aims to protect no women, but to use white women as an excuse to enact the violence they seek. That felt like a very important angle that I had not previously considered.
The second half, on the other hand, very much was about stories personal to Berry, and she also successfully pulled of the literary analogies throughout. We also got more history into the culture of humans and wolves, and it was fascinating. Her family history was rich, as were her interaction with ranchers. It was actually a great comfort, as a vegan, to hear the ways these cattle-herders loved their animals, even if I wish that the slaughter did not take place. I also loved learning the ways biodiversity is able to proliferate on Indigenous land, especially as another angle in which to argue for the returning of land to their peoples. And there was the discussion of motherhood, the similarities in it between humans and wolves, and the way it shapes womanhood. There were so many interesting things throughout.
What this book did lack, however, was a deep dive on wolves themselves, which was disappointing. Once I let go of the expectation that I was to learn much about the creatures themselves, I did enjoy myself more, but I sort of wish the subtitle made it clearly how much wolves are the framing narrative, rather than the point, and that is womanhood and fear that Berry is really examining in her memoir.
But prior to that, it was a slog. The stories were not personal, but about other women, and how Berry's anxiety would grow around the stories of these real life women who had become victims, usually of men, rarely of wolves. She calls it out, at one point, that she had to be careful not to appropriate these stories, to act as if they were her own, and yet I felt she never succeeded in that aim, and in fact personalised them to the point of making them about her own anxiety rather than the reality of fear that these women faced. I think this was made worse by the fact that, while the encounters Berry had sound intimidating and scary, they were not really violent and were very brief. The contrast between feeling intimidated because a group of men on campus surrounded her for a few seconds before they wondered off, against that of a murdered woman, and later the victim of a brutal rape and murder, does not make Berry seem empathetic, but naive and self-absorbed. And I feel awful saying that, as someone who has many times been intimidated and felt that fear linger. But to juxtapose it in such a way that gives it as much power as these women who were murdered and/or raped, made it feel like it cheapened what these women in these new stories went through--made worse by the fact that Berry only ever loosely held any connection to them.
Having said that, it is hard to know how to talk about these every day fears without accidentally superseding these stories of extreme terror, so I'm not sure how Berry should have approached it; only that it didn't work for me.
That is not to say that these chapters held nothing; some of the quotes she pulls from other stories were very profound, as were some of the ways that she weaves her analogies into experiences of womanhood. On Beauty & the Beast, she writes: "Gaston, that arrogant hunter with oiled manbun, shouts those same words as his incites the townspeople to raise their pitchforks and enter the woods. Their mission, ostensibly, is to save their beauty, but it is clear that their red-eyed giddiness bubbles more from loyalty to one another than to her. It is a familiar story of white womanhood, with Belle's body a terrain for killing the Other.", as she draws the comparison with the way white women's bodies have been used by the patriarchy to incite the deaths and incarcerations of Black men and other men of colour in the real world. The patriarchy isn't actually trying to protect white women, because it is aims to protect no women, but to use white women as an excuse to enact the violence they seek. That felt like a very important angle that I had not previously considered.
The second half, on the other hand, very much was about stories personal to Berry, and she also successfully pulled of the literary analogies throughout. We also got more history into the culture of humans and wolves, and it was fascinating. Her family history was rich, as were her interaction with ranchers. It was actually a great comfort, as a vegan, to hear the ways these cattle-herders loved their animals, even if I wish that the slaughter did not take place. I also loved learning the ways biodiversity is able to proliferate on Indigenous land, especially as another angle in which to argue for the returning of land to their peoples. And there was the discussion of motherhood, the similarities in it between humans and wolves, and the way it shapes womanhood. There were so many interesting things throughout.
What this book did lack, however, was a deep dive on wolves themselves, which was disappointing. Once I let go of the expectation that I was to learn much about the creatures themselves, I did enjoy myself more, but I sort of wish the subtitle made it clearly how much wolves are the framing narrative, rather than the point, and that is womanhood and fear that Berry is really examining in her memoir.
March 10, 2023
I swore after I started Wolfish (et al) that it was going to be one of those rare books I would not finish. First, the Introduction read like the intro to a master's thesis ... wordy, oh so erudite, and hard to navigate (like knee deep mud). I thought the book would recount OR-7's epic journey in search of a mate. It did, but it kept switching away to myths surrounding wolves like Little Red Riding Hood and The Boy Who Cried Wolf and others. Then, the author, Erica Berry, kept inserting herself and her fears into the narrative equating man as the wolf figure in the myths. I thought this was too odd and distracting.
I finally decided to "go with the flow" and be less judgmental. This was when I realized that the book was not a serious study of wolves but a memoir of Erica Berry and her cathartic search for herself. The book made sense. The narrative became insightful, entertaining, and even touching. Too bad I got off to a bad start, but it's a good thing I discovered the right viewing lens.
I finally decided to "go with the flow" and be less judgmental. This was when I realized that the book was not a serious study of wolves but a memoir of Erica Berry and her cathartic search for herself. The book made sense. The narrative became insightful, entertaining, and even touching. Too bad I got off to a bad start, but it's a good thing I discovered the right viewing lens.
May 16, 2023
Dripping with self-importance, drama and privilege. Unfortunately, only a drop or two of wolves are present.
May 7, 2024
It’s 1/3 memoir, 1/3 societal/history/media analysis (in relation to wolves), 1/3 actually about wolves. I would’ve enjoyed this without the memoir sections, her life was interesting enough to be its own book, not squeezed in this one where she's already juggling a lot of different topics.
The memoir sections is what let the book down for me the most but the writing was also strange. It tip toes between being factual and profound...:
'When a human refers to himself as a “lone wolf,” as an ex-boyfriend once muttered in the moments after we broke up, he seems to be suggesting it as a static state of identity. That he will walk alone, eat alone, sustain himself on the back of himself. While it is true a wolf who is alone has left his pack, he often does it in search for companionship. He goes it alone so he might find another. His period of aloneness is not only liminal, but a period of increased danger.'
...To really heavy-handed prose that felt unnecessary:
'I was born on October 11, and because of the place and time—just around 8:30 a.m., right in time for the school I later loved so much, my parents would say my star chart is a cascade of Libras. Libra sun, Libra moon. That balancing scale tattooed across my character if you believe it, which I do. My indecision is as much a part of me as my teeth. Both a bit too big for size. In northern German tradition, my birthday week was marked by the feast of St. Gallus on October 16, which signified the passage between fall and winter. Legend dictated children born during that week would arrive in a state of liminality, as if every child was thrown between two seasons of being. These mid-October baby girls were said to grow into “nightmares.”'
(There was also a weird paragraph where she starts talking about the game Wolf Quest, and instead of talking about how the game was made or if it helped educate people on wolves, she just analyses some random video made by a kid 10 years ago who she publicly names. You can find the exact video she talks about. She purple-proses about unnecessary details like the sound of the child’s voice and how they don’t understand the biological reasons behind the gameplay of marking your territory: 'He was recording himself playing a game called Wolf Quest, and his voice was lisped and nasally, the sheepish cute of someone’s little brother hunched over a computer in flannel pajamas. “Pshh—” he said, his childhood laughs reverberating through the background of the game. “I just keep peeing all over the place … How much does she have liquids in her?”' Like HUH? Why are we talking about this? This added nothing to the book. Wolf Quest is actually a big part of a lot of wolf-kid childhoods, there could have been a lot of interesting stuff written about it but we got none of that. This was only a tiny section but I’m still thinking about it because of how weird it was.)
I was so excited about this book when I heard about it, the topic is so up my alley, but the writing really let it down despite how good some of the research was. I found the sections to do with wolves really interesting and if it was just that this book would be so much better. I don't want to rate it low because I can tell the author put a lot of work and love into this but I was so relieved when this book was over I gotta be real with myself
The memoir sections is what let the book down for me the most but the writing was also strange. It tip toes between being factual and profound...:
'When a human refers to himself as a “lone wolf,” as an ex-boyfriend once muttered in the moments after we broke up, he seems to be suggesting it as a static state of identity. That he will walk alone, eat alone, sustain himself on the back of himself. While it is true a wolf who is alone has left his pack, he often does it in search for companionship. He goes it alone so he might find another. His period of aloneness is not only liminal, but a period of increased danger.'
...To really heavy-handed prose that felt unnecessary:
'I was born on October 11, and because of the place and time—just around 8:30 a.m., right in time for the school I later loved so much, my parents would say my star chart is a cascade of Libras. Libra sun, Libra moon. That balancing scale tattooed across my character if you believe it, which I do. My indecision is as much a part of me as my teeth. Both a bit too big for size. In northern German tradition, my birthday week was marked by the feast of St. Gallus on October 16, which signified the passage between fall and winter. Legend dictated children born during that week would arrive in a state of liminality, as if every child was thrown between two seasons of being. These mid-October baby girls were said to grow into “nightmares.”'
(There was also a weird paragraph where she starts talking about the game Wolf Quest, and instead of talking about how the game was made or if it helped educate people on wolves, she just analyses some random video made by a kid 10 years ago who she publicly names. You can find the exact video she talks about. She purple-proses about unnecessary details like the sound of the child’s voice and how they don’t understand the biological reasons behind the gameplay of marking your territory: 'He was recording himself playing a game called Wolf Quest, and his voice was lisped and nasally, the sheepish cute of someone’s little brother hunched over a computer in flannel pajamas. “Pshh—” he said, his childhood laughs reverberating through the background of the game. “I just keep peeing all over the place … How much does she have liquids in her?”' Like HUH? Why are we talking about this? This added nothing to the book. Wolf Quest is actually a big part of a lot of wolf-kid childhoods, there could have been a lot of interesting stuff written about it but we got none of that. This was only a tiny section but I’m still thinking about it because of how weird it was.)
I was so excited about this book when I heard about it, the topic is so up my alley, but the writing really let it down despite how good some of the research was. I found the sections to do with wolves really interesting and if it was just that this book would be so much better. I don't want to rate it low because I can tell the author put a lot of work and love into this but I was so relieved when this book was over I gotta be real with myself
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April 15, 2023I see what Berry was trying to do with this piece, but it NEEDS MORE WOLF.
January 15, 2024
I don’t think I understand what Berry was wanting to say with this one. The book shifted strangely between following the path of a lone wolf through the northwestern coast of the United States, to wolf facts of the Western lens, to some of the most uninteresting anecdotal pieces of the author’s life that I’m actually shocked she put it to the page. I’m not offering a commentary on the pieces in which the author endured harassment or what I think a lot of us would deem to be assault — as a woman myself with similar experiences to hers, I feel that kinship with her and understand there is a place in discussions of fear to bring that up. Rather, I want to critique the very loose connections between the study of the wolf as animal and as figure, with the moments of her personal history that fall short of a meaning.
There were a lot of “so what?”s that popped into my head throughout this book. One that comes to mind is Berry’s experience with a long-distance college aged sweetheart that she met at a party while she was still a minor. Berry muses on this connection for some time, drawing an eventual thread to a young woman from Vancouver that was kidnapped and murdered. Her connection to this woman is not the strongest, as the deceased was a friend of her long-term sweetheart, who would share his heartbreak over her murder. Although I think there is something to be found in the way that women who face abject violence, even as strangers, feel close and familiar, I didn’t quite understand Berry’s recounting of the event. She slipped in and out of her narrative with somewhat of a jilted prose, drawing lines through the paths of others, herself, and in case you forgot…wolves. What a wolf had to do with this section was beyond me.
One section I did like somewhat was when she recalled accidentally ingesting mandrake and the effect this had on her body and mind. She drew a parallel between the “transformation” of someone poisoned with the mystical transformations of werewolves in western lore. This was her strongest connection by far. However, I am sad to report that she also butchered this a bit when she meandered for much too long, after this experience had already been wrung of all meaningful reflection and metaphor. Something that at first began to colour her work slowly began to wash it out.
I have a lot of respect for Berry for her inclusion of actions and thoughts in this work that many of us would feel scared to admit to. She unabashedly calls herself out for feelings of superiority over others, critiques her reliance on systems of violence as a white woman, and continuously promotes reflection on the ways that she and others have reacted to fear. I do think Berry has some good things to say. Unfortunately, they’re lost in a sea of meanderings that make up this work.
There were a lot of “so what?”s that popped into my head throughout this book. One that comes to mind is Berry’s experience with a long-distance college aged sweetheart that she met at a party while she was still a minor. Berry muses on this connection for some time, drawing an eventual thread to a young woman from Vancouver that was kidnapped and murdered. Her connection to this woman is not the strongest, as the deceased was a friend of her long-term sweetheart, who would share his heartbreak over her murder. Although I think there is something to be found in the way that women who face abject violence, even as strangers, feel close and familiar, I didn’t quite understand Berry’s recounting of the event. She slipped in and out of her narrative with somewhat of a jilted prose, drawing lines through the paths of others, herself, and in case you forgot…wolves. What a wolf had to do with this section was beyond me.
One section I did like somewhat was when she recalled accidentally ingesting mandrake and the effect this had on her body and mind. She drew a parallel between the “transformation” of someone poisoned with the mystical transformations of werewolves in western lore. This was her strongest connection by far. However, I am sad to report that she also butchered this a bit when she meandered for much too long, after this experience had already been wrung of all meaningful reflection and metaphor. Something that at first began to colour her work slowly began to wash it out.
I have a lot of respect for Berry for her inclusion of actions and thoughts in this work that many of us would feel scared to admit to. She unabashedly calls herself out for feelings of superiority over others, critiques her reliance on systems of violence as a white woman, and continuously promotes reflection on the ways that she and others have reacted to fear. I do think Berry has some good things to say. Unfortunately, they’re lost in a sea of meanderings that make up this work.
June 8, 2023
The whole book sounds like a small talk happened in a party: when a person heard someone talking about wolf, so this person squeezed him/herself in the conversation by starting to talk about the 1-2 cliche of wolf, and then awkwardly drag the whole conversation circle into this person's own self-centered life stories that are barely related to the wolf. I felt I was reading a college application essay from a child brought up in a welloff family. He/She needed to connect everything bad that he/she heard over the radios to make him/her look miserable in the essay. Although due to the superfacial investigation and general satisfying but limited life experience in his/her life, the connection is extremely weak and annoying to me. I agree that the unpleasant experiences that the author went through are rooted from the systematic bias in the society, but the author doesn't have the ability to make a good empathetic narration. She keeps repeating the 2-3 well-known stories/fables about wolves and forced to separate a simple journey of a wolf in Oregon into different sections of the book-- which seems like a method to cover her inability to investigate the whole thing in detail. The author must be a really sensitive person, but it's funny to see her trying to bring more people to hear her cry over her own pity-tiny itches.
November 29, 2023
2.5
ambitious and wide-ranging, but felt in need of more critical editing. while berry comments frequently on the limitations of her positionality, she liberally quotes authors like claudia rankine, sara ahmed, yi-fu tuan, donna harraway, ruby hamad, etc, in ways that decontextualise and neutralise the political heft of these writers. she spends a lot of time beating around the bushes of racialised violence and colonialism, making references and cherry-picking quotes that only tenuously relate to the crux of the book. ultimately this results in literary hand flapping which doesn’t sufficiently get into the meat of wolves or their cultural and symbolic meanings. the prose is often well-executed but the overall lack of critical self-reflection makes some of the socio-political commentary feel trite and clumsy, even insensitive and self-gratifying at times.
ambitious and wide-ranging, but felt in need of more critical editing. while berry comments frequently on the limitations of her positionality, she liberally quotes authors like claudia rankine, sara ahmed, yi-fu tuan, donna harraway, ruby hamad, etc, in ways that decontextualise and neutralise the political heft of these writers. she spends a lot of time beating around the bushes of racialised violence and colonialism, making references and cherry-picking quotes that only tenuously relate to the crux of the book. ultimately this results in literary hand flapping which doesn’t sufficiently get into the meat of wolves or their cultural and symbolic meanings. the prose is often well-executed but the overall lack of critical self-reflection makes some of the socio-political commentary feel trite and clumsy, even insensitive and self-gratifying at times.
December 13, 2022
This book was well written and kept my interest. It prompted me to think about and contemplate the human condition as well as the bind we as humankind (sarcasm?) have put on the natural world.
October 18, 2023
I loved this book, but it's probably not for everyone. I have always found wolves beautiful and fascinating and unfairly maligned. A college paper I wrote was about reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone. I also love books that are a mashup of many disciplines and this book certainly is. History, memoir, natural history, biology, sociology.... so many fascinating topics, and Berry does a stellar job of weaving all the threads together. I also liked that she had a good dose of feminism (?) here, clearly articulating the ways in which women have to move through a predatory world, and the thoughts and calculations we need to make that men would never dream of.
Lastly, I am impressed at the depth of reading the author did in order to write this book. From scientific papers and the works of Indigenous people and fairytale scholars, as well as feminist literature and poetry - she read far and wide in order to understand various perspectives.
Lastly, I am impressed at the depth of reading the author did in order to write this book. From scientific papers and the works of Indigenous people and fairytale scholars, as well as feminist literature and poetry - she read far and wide in order to understand various perspectives.
September 4, 2024
i have not had a whole lot of time to read lately so this took me a while to finish but this is a very interesting combination of memoir and scientific exploration? berry states often that her background is not based in science, but the research and care that was put into this text was very clear. super unique, being obsessed with wolves and struggling with feminine experiences is so relatable.
February 20, 2023
Thanks to Flatiron for the advance copy of Wolfish, as soon as I saw the description I was really excited to get into this book. I loved this collection of essays by Erica Berry. I've always connected with wolves, the lore, the beauty, I even just got a wolf tattoo to mark myself with the love I feel for them. Each piece, exquisitely researched and interspersed with her own life experiences is beautifully written. I found her approach to be very unique and engaging. As someone who feels very connected to nature and spending time by myself as she does, the book spoke to me in many different ways.
February 16, 2025
4.5
very good very valuable very important
(also a bit dense at times it really required my full brain but absolutely worth it)
very good very valuable very important
(also a bit dense at times it really required my full brain but absolutely worth it)
June 18, 2023
really really enjoyed this! almost surprised by how much I enjoyed it tbh. I suspect that this would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I found the book really engaging. this is a book about wolves yes but really it’s about what wolves MEAN and I thought that the exploration fear was such an interesting framework. I thought it was a great mix of actual wolf conservation and history, wolves in folklore/stories, and the personal stories. as a pnw girlie I do love to read about it what can I say! additionally I liked how the different sources were weaved into the narrative. this was kind of exciting for me as I’ve actually read a handful of the books that were quoted, which I don’t think has happened to me before.
the most liked review of this book at this time is critical of the anecdote of the author getting someone kicked off of an amtrak train by security/police, and there is also another story of the author calling the police herself on another person who was confused or/mistakenly trying to get into her home. I think it’s fair to be critical of these actions, but I’m not against their inclusion in this book idk. if you’re going to talk about fear you’re going to talk about how a person responds to fear. and that brings up the question of what does fear give you the right to do to another person? what does fear give you the right to do animals? to the land? who fears who? who is allowed to be the victim? what purpose does fear/shame/guilt serve? imo the author addresses these topics well enough within the narrative, and I think these are the questions we should all be considering when we think about what we want our world to like. I feel like this book is asking us how we can reimagine our relationships (to nature, to each other) to be less adversarial.
anyways, it’s a book about wolves(ish) and i liked it.
the most liked review of this book at this time is critical of the anecdote of the author getting someone kicked off of an amtrak train by security/police, and there is also another story of the author calling the police herself on another person who was confused or/mistakenly trying to get into her home. I think it’s fair to be critical of these actions, but I’m not against their inclusion in this book idk. if you’re going to talk about fear you’re going to talk about how a person responds to fear. and that brings up the question of what does fear give you the right to do to another person? what does fear give you the right to do animals? to the land? who fears who? who is allowed to be the victim? what purpose does fear/shame/guilt serve? imo the author addresses these topics well enough within the narrative, and I think these are the questions we should all be considering when we think about what we want our world to like. I feel like this book is asking us how we can reimagine our relationships (to nature, to each other) to be less adversarial.
anyways, it’s a book about wolves(ish) and i liked it.
October 16, 2023
It has taken me four and a half months to finish this book, which is almost a review in itself - but if not obvious, this was hard work pretty much from start to finish.
When a book takes such a distinct line towards the very real threat men represent women, and the many situations that are alien to me, but all too familiar to anyone female, I hesitate before criticizing - but I do feel my thoughts are valid.
Whereas Berry tries arduously to tie a link between marauding males and their unfair depiction as wolves, or having their behavior described as wolf like, these links seem weak, strained, and tenuous on many cases.
It is hard not to see Berry’s reflections on personal experiences as over reactions of a very scared young woman in many of the accounts she tells. And all seem to take us further from the intended subject matter, which apparently is and was wolves.
Berry skips from being a nervous lone female traveler to someone who apparently quite arrogantly poisons her colleagues at an Italian cooking school, shrugging off blame and consequences like it is a fated part of the spiritual journey she is dragging us along. The real link is clear though - a failure to take personal responsibility.
The wolves in the book that have Berry’s spotlight fall upon them - OR-106 and OR-7 in particular are owed a story - but this isn’t it. In fact, the amount of material relating to the misleading title ‘Wolfish - the stories we tell about fear, ferocity, and freedom’ seems like it would barely fill 30 pages.
This isn’t nature writing, and other than hard work, I’m not sure what it is. Clearly a work I was not able to ‘get’ - but you may have better luck!
When a book takes such a distinct line towards the very real threat men represent women, and the many situations that are alien to me, but all too familiar to anyone female, I hesitate before criticizing - but I do feel my thoughts are valid.
Whereas Berry tries arduously to tie a link between marauding males and their unfair depiction as wolves, or having their behavior described as wolf like, these links seem weak, strained, and tenuous on many cases.
It is hard not to see Berry’s reflections on personal experiences as over reactions of a very scared young woman in many of the accounts she tells. And all seem to take us further from the intended subject matter, which apparently is and was wolves.
Berry skips from being a nervous lone female traveler to someone who apparently quite arrogantly poisons her colleagues at an Italian cooking school, shrugging off blame and consequences like it is a fated part of the spiritual journey she is dragging us along. The real link is clear though - a failure to take personal responsibility.
The wolves in the book that have Berry’s spotlight fall upon them - OR-106 and OR-7 in particular are owed a story - but this isn’t it. In fact, the amount of material relating to the misleading title ‘Wolfish - the stories we tell about fear, ferocity, and freedom’ seems like it would barely fill 30 pages.
This isn’t nature writing, and other than hard work, I’m not sure what it is. Clearly a work I was not able to ‘get’ - but you may have better luck!
October 25, 2023
Another book I read so you don't have to! Don't be fooled by this book's title, subtitle, and summary (as I was) - this is not a book about wolves! It is a memoir that the author tricks you into reading by saying it is about wolves! I would not be as upset about this fraud if it were a more compelling memoir, but the author, unfortunately, is much, much, much less interesting than she thinks she is. I would have preferred a book about wolves.
Every single interesting thing in this book is actually just a quotation of a different author. This reads like an academic paper written by a marginally precocious student at a second-rate liberal arts school. The YA language is jarring in a pseudo-academic arena. Way too many uses of the word "I" for a work meant to be about an entirely different species. The only good thing is the author does reference other books that are actually about wolves, and the human-wolf relationship through the ages, as this book was meant to be about. So at least we are put on the right track to find books that do not have this kind of false advertising.
TL:DR: Don't read this book, it is boring and also not about wolves.
Every single interesting thing in this book is actually just a quotation of a different author. This reads like an academic paper written by a marginally precocious student at a second-rate liberal arts school. The YA language is jarring in a pseudo-academic arena. Way too many uses of the word "I" for a work meant to be about an entirely different species. The only good thing is the author does reference other books that are actually about wolves, and the human-wolf relationship through the ages, as this book was meant to be about. So at least we are put on the right track to find books that do not have this kind of false advertising.
TL:DR: Don't read this book, it is boring and also not about wolves.
July 25, 2023
very chaotic and unstructured (what was the point of those chapters, pls enlighten me). so many topics so many different ideas were mentioned and yet none were actually discussed properly.
TOO FUCKING PERSONAL. i really hate when amateurs try to write about something and the book ends up being all about them and not the thing they tried to write about. if i wanted to read a memoir of another white straight lady i have SO MANY to choose from. leave the wolves alone. thank u. i did not learn anything really, every time it started to get interesting it got interrupted by another oh so crazy anecdote from author's life and i DONT CARE!!! i learned more about her than i learned about wolves and the only conclusion i can draw here is : i really wouldnt like to be her friend, i'd rather get eaten by a wolf or sit by that stranger in a train that she got arrested.
TOO FUCKING PERSONAL. i really hate when amateurs try to write about something and the book ends up being all about them and not the thing they tried to write about. if i wanted to read a memoir of another white straight lady i have SO MANY to choose from. leave the wolves alone. thank u. i did not learn anything really, every time it started to get interesting it got interrupted by another oh so crazy anecdote from author's life and i DONT CARE!!! i learned more about her than i learned about wolves and the only conclusion i can draw here is : i really wouldnt like to be her friend, i'd rather get eaten by a wolf or sit by that stranger in a train that she got arrested.
April 30, 2023
I was predisposed to enjoy this, and there were nuggets of interesting creative nonfiction in here. It was also structurally messy and the prose was often much too florid. Ymmv
April 27, 2024
This was an incredibly disappointing read. With descriptions promising that the author would bring "her own research of the wolf and experience as a woman", I expected a very different book than what I got.
While Erica Berry does, minimally, weave the story of a wolf into historical events, I would not categorise this work as a piece of non-fiction. Instead, I find it is very much focused on the structure of a memoir.
I admit that I struggled to finish this book, I found the prose meandering, pushing unnecessarily for an academic style in some places that left it feeling disjointed and difficult to navigate.
It is possible that the author was attempting to juggle so much at once that it became convoluted, and I am still not entirely sure what it is that I was supposed to take away from it.
The greatest disservice to this work, however, is the lack of what was promised: the wolf. There was a much needed intensive dive into the wolves, far greater than what was attempted here for this to be suitable to the connection of the title and premise.
My thanks go to the publisher for kindly sending me a copy to review.
While Erica Berry does, minimally, weave the story of a wolf into historical events, I would not categorise this work as a piece of non-fiction. Instead, I find it is very much focused on the structure of a memoir.
I admit that I struggled to finish this book, I found the prose meandering, pushing unnecessarily for an academic style in some places that left it feeling disjointed and difficult to navigate.
It is possible that the author was attempting to juggle so much at once that it became convoluted, and I am still not entirely sure what it is that I was supposed to take away from it.
The greatest disservice to this work, however, is the lack of what was promised: the wolf. There was a much needed intensive dive into the wolves, far greater than what was attempted here for this to be suitable to the connection of the title and premise.
My thanks go to the publisher for kindly sending me a copy to review.
July 19, 2023
If you want to learn about wolves this is not the book for you. The author weaves her own story, that of a wolf, and random historical events in a disorganized way. The only reason I finished the book was because I wanted the credit for my reading challenge this year.
The author does list a lot of other books that are way better if you care about learning more about other animals, like ‘Animals Strike Curious Poses’.
NOT WORTH THE TIME
The author does list a lot of other books that are way better if you care about learning more about other animals, like ‘Animals Strike Curious Poses’.
NOT WORTH THE TIME
May 15, 2023
It's not what I'd expected it to be but I guess, I should have known better?
It's a memoir about wolves, self, and stories we tell about fear, but just not what I thought of from a title like that.
It's a memoir about wolves, self, and stories we tell about fear, but just not what I thought of from a title like that.
Read
December 20, 2024DNF 🥱🥱🥱
July 14, 2023
I found this one really interesting and I liked following the author as she explores wolves and how we live with fear more generally, as a woman especially. I had read less favourable reviews and wasn't sure what to expect, but I enjoyed it and liked the tone and the approach, although I understand the disappointment if someone wanted to read about wolves as they are mostly used as a metaphor here or seem through beliefs and folklore. Erica Berry did a great job in that respect and I admire the effort and research to include representations from many cultures and communities.
November 10, 2023
This book was so beautifully written! Such an amazing combination of so many different topics and genres and philosophies and heart-felt words! I loved the way this was written and will definitely be looking for more books by this author. I haven't read a book that made me ask so many questions both internally and externally in a very long time.
July 16, 2024
Wow. I really, really loved this book. Meticulously researched, honest, beautiful.
Read
July 30, 2024Some of this was interesting but too much of it was boring. I enjoyed the wolf lore and that she did her masters at UofM but I did not enjoy the amount of animal death mentioned.
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