When There Are Wolves Again

Our Review

"For a long time, no one wanted to tell this tale. No one wanted to acknowledge the links between private land ownership and climate breakdown and our native species dying out one by one. But until it was remembered - until we had the chance to recommon - we would never get our wolves back."

When There Are Wolves Again by E.J.Swift is one of the finest pieces of speculative fiction I have ever read. It was an easy decision to chose to read this book because enviromental fiction is one of my favourite genres and I love anything to do with wolves. I started When There Are Wolves Again early in the morning and was finished early the next morning because I didn't want to put it down. 

When There Are Wolves Again seamlessly weaves real life events with fictional events in a not-so-distant future and the result is masterful, and not a little scary. There are moments of the book that took my breath away - the jay and the birds falling from the sky to name just a few - but there is also a message of hope and unity that weaves throughout. 

The book begins with two female characters sitting beside a campfire and reflecting on their life stories. Following on from that the book alternates betwen Lucy and Hester's stories. Hester's chapters are written in third person making it easier to distinguish between the two. I found this a little jarring initially but soon got used to it and learnt to appreciate the distinction. The setting vary from Chornobyl to the Scottish Highlands to London and each settting brings its own lessons. 

Each timeline blends seamlessly into another and carries the message that we are responsible for our actions, that we are responsible for the disconnect between man and nature...but we can also take action to bring it back from the brink. We need not be despondent. At no point does the novel feel preachy, rather it is like an awakening, a gentle nudge to be and do better to the creatures we share our planet with and to the earth itself. 

Lucy's story begins with her being sent to live with her grandparents to be part of their bubble during the covid-19 epidemic. There is a palpable sense of relief from her parents to be sending her away. A sense that they are glad to be free of her endless questioning nature. This was the first point in the novel where I felt angry but it wouldn't be the last. 

"More than anything  - and quite apart from the virus - they wished for me to grow up and become an asset they could flaunt...They had no time for me." 

When Lucy goes to live with her grandparents her grandad Ben encourages her curiousity and her endless questions, whereas he gran is a little more aloof and seems to prefer birds to people. However, they each in their own encourage the lifelong love of nature that is part of her character arc throughout the book. 

Hester's life began on the same day as the Chernobl explosion, an event which touched her life massively. Hester grew up feeling very much an outsider and felt more of a kinship with Chernobyl then with the family farm she grew up on. As an adult she finds work filming vets vaccinating the wild dogs of Chernobyl. 

"The dogs in the Exclusion Zone are feral descendents of the pets who were left behind. The ones who ran after the evacuation buses. The ones who escaped the culls. They disappeared into the forest and bred, and now they number hundreds. The dogs remember human, despite the sentence inflicted upon them. They still seek you out."

It is in this place that Hester finds the sense of belonging she craves, this comes in the form of a wolf-dog named Lux. 

It is via Hester and Lux and the example of Chernobyl that When There Are Wolves Again introduces the central concept: wilderness is a construct and a more natural way of being is to be closer to naure and work as one. 

"You see that Chernobyl has been your cypher a nexus for processing damage, a form of clarity in catastrophe. You had thought that something was broken within you. The truth is, it is the ties between humans and other beings which are broken. A disconnect, a severing of kinship, so huge it can only be seen when you step sideways, away from binocular vision."

Hester decides in that moment, in the place, that she will be a cypher and share the stories of those who cannot share it themselves. 

Quite apart from the environmental message is a political one about a political party who hijacks other people's causes to create a division in society. A political party who a discerning reader will surely recognise from their real life counterpart. The Albion party.

"They secured representation in the rainbow parliament for the first time in 2037, scooping up the disaffected, the left behind...the marshalnds are an insult, a travesty. An assault on British heritage. Rewilding is taking away good and honest jobs, it is letting green and pleasant land go to ruin. Keep the land pure. Kepp the land for people - the right kind of people. Their cabal of three MPs are trying to turn back the clock by a century. "

One of the things that spoke to me most about When There Are Wolves Again was the passage on the creation of wolves as villains to suit our own ends. No creature is good or bad it is us who frames them that way. It is pointed out that we used to have a much closer relationship with wolves, we were wary and respectful of them but that was it. 

"Until a lot of people made a lof ot money from exporting wool, and with the transaction the wolf's fate on this island was sealed. We recast them as villain in language and in deed. We hunted them. We tortured them. We wore their skins and we nailed their paws to our door. We clubbed their cubs to death in their dens. We took their tails as trophies. It didn't matter, because the wolves were cruel and evil at heart, they deserved this persecution."

I loved the ending of When There Are Wolves Again and felt that it fitted with the rest of the book. I will defintely by keeping an eye out for more work by this author and I have laready started recommending this book to people I know will love it. 

 

 

Our Final Rating...

2 Days Ago