by Deborah Rogers –
Once There Were Wolves provided plenty of discussion points for our October meeting. The action of Charlotte McConaghy’s third novel takes place in the Scottish Highlands, with flashback sections set in Australia and British Columbia. Inti has arrived in Scotland as part of a rewilding project, to reintroduce wolves to a place where they’ve been extinct for hundreds of years. The locals are skeptical and scared, and Inti struggles to reassure them.
There are several mysteries to propel the novel forward. In Scotland, a man is missing and Inti knows where his body lies, but the bigger mystery is Inti’s motivation and what exactly is driving her. We know that she is an identical twin, but McConaghy keeps us in the dark as she hints at a trauma that’s affected her sister Aggie. The writing deliberately puzzles the reader, keeping us questioning what’s reality and what’s in Inti’s head, until the end.
McConaghy’s writing about the natural world is beautiful. She takes the reader out on the hills, where we can almost feel the misty rain and see the landscape and animals she describes. Inti’s worldview has been shaped by her environmentalist father and experiences in the forest of B.C., and when the book focuses on those aspects it comes alive. But layered into the story are many other hot topics and the novel sometimes feels overwhelmed by the plot.
For our group of readers, the mirroring of Inti’s story and behaviour with that of the wolves she works with provided the most interest. McConaghy draws parallels between the violence of people and the wildness of animals. Inti’s love affair with her work was very moving, and her compassion for the wolves was contrasted with her feelings about people. Her sister’s past trauma provides a backdrop to the present day drama, with the final revelation adding a level of violence to the book that some found very difficult to read. We discussed whether the violence was necessary, or if it added one thread too many to the story. Several of our group were interested to read McConaghy’s other works based on the writing of this novel.
November’s meeting will be the last Seaside Magazine Book Club. It has been a wonderful experience running the group alongside Virginia from the Sidney/North Saanich Library for the past eight years. We’ve explored a real variety of books and I’ve learned so much from the intelligent discussions at our monthly meetings. For November we will be reading Songs for the Broken Hearted by Ayelet Tsabari, I welcome anyone to join us for our final meeting on Tuesday November 12, at 6:30 p.m., in the Nell Horth Room of the library.
