If my life was a film, I’d have walked out by now.
Title: Tell The Wolves I’m home
Author: Carol Rifka Brunt
First Published: 2012
My Rating: 3 of 5 stars (average rating on Goodreads: 4.04)
Tell The Wolves I’m Home is a cute story, verging on the sickly sweet. I actually caught myself rolling my eyes more than once. Perhaps that was partly due to the narrator who read aloud in this sugar coated cutesy voice that made me want to hurl. And then I felt shameful, because the book was about a serious subject: A young shy and insecure teenage girl feels alienated from her family. Her only real friend is her uncle whom she has a shameful crush on and who dies of AIDS. Grief-stricken she befriends her uncle’s secret gay lover and projects her feelings for her uncle on to him.
I know all about love that’s too big to stay in a tiny bucket. Splashing out all over the place in the most embarrassing way possible.
This could be a kind of cool and twisted plot. I mean, we have weird and shameful desires of an awkward teenage girl who falls in love with gay family members. That’s a brave subject to write about. But it was merely touched upon. Most of the novel was about sisters fighting and a protagonist headshakingly blind towards what’s going on right under her nose. I wanted to shake her. And by shake her I mean slap her hard across the face.
On top of that, it was one of those novels where you’re always four steps ahead of the story – and I’m slow at figuring these things out, so that says a lot. But it was OK for entertainment and there were some touching scenes that didn’t make me lose my lunch.
Watching people is a good hobby, but you have to be careful about it. You can’t let people catch you staring at them. If people catch you, they treat you like a first-class criminal. And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe it should be a crime to try to see things about people they don’t want you to see.
Wow that is a serious subject indeed, poor girl. I hadn’t heard of this book, but it does sound interesting 🙂
Lipstick and Mocha
Yes, very serious indeed! I’ve read many reviews praising this novel, so give it a go!