Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves is just the sort of book I love. It's well written, carefully constructed plot-wise, and completely absorbing. A combination of historical novel, mystery and adventure story, she seemed to get all the elements just right, all the more impressive as this is her first novel. I was a little worried at first as the story is told from multiple viewpoints, and I wondered if it was going to be too confusing to follow so many characters, but once a rhythm was established I had no problem following the various threads through to their exciting conclusion.
The novel has garnered all sorts of acclaim, and it won the 2006 Costa award (formerly Whitbread), which I suppose is what initially drew me into buying it, but I was hesitant to actually start it as I'm not really drawn to adventure stories set in the frigid north country. I had this same feeling of hesitation when I read Jack London's The Call of the Wild earlier this year, but I was pleasantly surprised in that case as well. As a matter of fact there were even a few elements of the stories which overlapped.
I don't know if I can give you a very good plot summarization, and I'm not sure I even want to. Too much happens, and much of the pleasure of the book is the unraveling of the mystery and piecing together of the various elements of the puzzle. Some are surprising, some lead to nowhere, and others fit together perfectly. As a taste, however, imagine Canada in the mid-1800s. In a tiny community called Caulfied on the Dove River a French trapper, Laurent Jammett, is brutally murdered. The body is discovered by a local woman, Mrs. Ross, whose son has disappeared in the wake of the murder. He is, of course, the main suspect. Let's make things more difficult. Winter is nearly upon the residents. Two sets of tracks lead north from the murdered man's cottage.
The Hudson Bay Company, a British company which essentially controls all the fur trade in Canada, sends their men to investigate. Things get messier as more characters enter the picture. A former journalist from south of the border has interests of his own when it comes to the dead man. And a half-breed Native American trapper is caught in the area without a convincing alibi. But all clues lead north and that's where first Mrs. Ross goes in search of her son, and then others follow.
I can imagine cold. I can imagine frigidly cold, blustery winds and snowy weather, but I don't think anything in my experience can compare to what it must have been like traveling north in Canada on foot without any sort of modern convenience. The story was almost cinematic in it's telling (Penney's a screenwriter by the way). It was a very visual story and I found it easy to imagine it in my mind. I can't attest to the accuracy of all the details, apparently Penney has not only never been to Canada but she is agoraphobic, but it seemed convincingly told and well researched to me.
One other detail that I found really interesting. Mrs. Ross is the only character who speaks in first person. The reader gets the other versions of the story, but no one else gets to tell it in their own voice. For that reason there is an intimacy and immediacy with Mrs. Ross that I didn't quite feel with the others. She was my favorite character and had a curious past that I wish I could have known even more about. Apparently Penney's first screenplay is about Mrs. Ross and her husband during the Highland Clearances in 1850s Scotland. Perhaps someday it will be turned into a film and I can learn more about them.
I love being surprised by a book that I am not too sure about going into. In this case it was definitely the right book at the right time. Now I need to find some other books set in Canada. Perhaps it's time to pull out some of those Margaret Laurence books I bought earlier this year or pick up an unread Margaret Atwood. Or maybe there are some new authors to discover--I'll be keeping my eyes open for something good.