Ordinary Wolves FROM THE PUBLISHER
From the opening pages of Ordinary Wolves, the voice of Cutuk tells a story from Americaﾽs last frontier. He lives with his brother, sister, and father, Abe--"our best friend, no dad at all"--in an igloo in remote Alaska. Outside, caribou, bears, moose, and ravens move under frozen pastel skies. A dayﾽs journey away, in the Iﾽupiaq village, live Cutukﾽs adopted family, the Wolfgloves: Enuk, a legendary hunter; his son Melt, savaged by alcohol; Meltﾽs wife, Janet; and their daughter, Dawna, Eskimo princess and carrier of Sears catalog collages and hopes for the future. In the far distance, the grinding machine of America drones onland approaches.
FROM THE CRITICS
Mark Kamine - The New York Times
Seth Kantner's first novel, Ordinary Wolves, is a magnificently realized story about a boy's coming-of-age in a difficult, distant place … His novel comes across as smart and authentic. It's hard to imagine a better start.
Publishers Weekly
In the small but growing genre of ecological fiction, the great challenge is to balance political and environmental agendas with engrossing storytelling. This riveting first novel sets a new standard, offering a profound and beautiful account of a boy's attempt to reconcile his Alaskan wilderness experience with modern society. Abe Hawcly came to Alaska in search of his bush-pilot father, became enraptured with the wilderness, then moved there with his wife to live in a sod igloo and subsist on his hunting skills while he pursued his painting. Soon disenchanted with isolation and hardship, his wife abandoned him, leaving him to rear and educate their three children. Abe's youngest child, known by his I upiaq name, Cutuk, grows to manhood and learns to hunt, gaining an intimate knowledge of the frozen tundra. Eventually, Cutuk's brother, Jerry, escapes to Fairbanks, and his sister, Iris, attends college and becomes a teacher. Meanwhile, torn between two cultures, Cutuk chafes under discrimination as a white in the midst of Native Americans; he is deprived of both rights and respect by the locals. He also develops a profound curiosity about the city, but once he makes it to Anchorage, he is bewildered and confused by urban slang and modern mores. His attempts to reconcile himself to his own race fail dismally as he is drawn back to the north and the values inherent in the wilderness ("I shook my head, trying to align the years, the Taco Bells, exit ramps, rabid foxes, and this old pot"). Though Cutuk's gnawing angst occasionally grows tedious, this is a tenderly and often beautifully written first novel. As a revelation of the devastation modern America brings to a natural lifestyle, it's a tour de force and may be the best treatment of the Northwest and its people since Jack London's works. Agent. Sydelle Kramer at the Frances Goldin Agency. (May) Forecast: Early buzz-the novel has been selected for Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers Program and highly praised by Barbara Kingsolver ("exotic as a dream, acrid and beautiful and honest as life")-an author tour and BEA appearance should help put Kantner on the map. His own story, which is similar to Cutuk's, makes him an attractive interview prospect. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
VOYA - Kevin Beach
This astonishing debut novel follows the formative years of a white boy living in the Northern Alaska tundra among the Eskimos. His father, a former Chicago artist, gives up modern America with its cities, cars, and lawns and moves his family to an isolated igloo in the frozen frontier. Cutuk, born Calvin, through a beautifully fluid but sometimes difficult narrative, describes the exhausting, mundane routine that is the family's daily existence. He does not struggle with a desire for material things as do his older siblings because he does not remember the city. He only wants to be accepted as a native, but is rejected as "white" by the Inuit. He also deals with the fading memory of his mother who took flight, the local natives' embrace of encroaching modern culture, and a painful love affair with the daughter of a respected Eskimo hunter. Cutuk eventually returns to civilization, a misfit in a world where again he does not belong. He is awed by the material things that he never had but grateful for the passionate intimacy he shares with the wilderness. The work is based on the author's own childhood and will evoke comparisons with Jack London's prose. Kantner's observations about man's removal from nature in the modern world could only come from his own experience. Engrossing and rewarding, the book is destined to be a classic, but be aware that the dialect in much of the dialogue (a glossary is included) and the chapters told from the point of view of wolves could be confusing to young readers. Nevertheless it is recommended for all collections. VOYA CODES: 5Q 2P S A/YA (Hard to imagine it being any better written; For the YA with a special interest in the subject; Senior High,defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult-marketed book recommended for Young Adults). 2004, Milkweed Editions, 330p.; Glossary., $22. Ages 15 to Adult.
Library Journal
In poetic detail, first novelist Kantner captures the rhythms and textures of life out beyond civilization in northern Alaska. The narrative follows Cutuk Hawcly from the early 1970s, when he is five years old and living in the remote Alaskan outback, through his mid-twenties, as he travels to Anchorage for a brief and disorienting interlude, to his return to the far north. The plot is driven by Cutuk's hunt for a mysteriously vanished old hunter who had presented him with a talisman carved from mammoth ivory and his efforts to establish a relationship with a woman named Dawna, with whom he has been in love since they were children. Cutuk feels himself an outsider, distanced not only from modern civilization but also from his own society as a minority white person in the middle of Inupiak culture. The real depth of the novel is provided in the many scenes of a lone human out on his own in the frozen wilds, hunting caribou, stalking wolves, riding either a dog sled or a "snowgo," and dealing with an icy and forbidding environment that is nevertheless in many ways more amenable than contemporary urban America. Recommended for all collections.-Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. Lib. at Oneonta Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
School Library Journal
Adult/High School-This exciting story of a white boy growing up in a sod igloo in remote northern Alaska challenges any romantic ideas about life on the last American frontier. Cutuk and his older brother and sister are being raised by their father, who has totally rejected modern American society in favor of a culture of self-reliance in the wilderness. Cutuk wants desperately to be accepted by the village Inupiaks, who ridicule and harass him as an outsider. Village life is not a pretty picture with its alcohol abuse, rape, incest, and family violence, but Cutuk cherishes the old ways and respects the elders. His siblings grow up and leave for the cities, and in his early 20s he leaves for Anchorage. He comes to realize that he doesn't fit in there either and finally returns to the village to make a place for himself. The episodic novel has a connecting thread throughout as Cutuk continues to search for an old Eskimo hunter who befriended his family and then disappeared. There is an interesting contrast between the protagonist's preference for the indigenous lifestyle and the Inupiaks' adoption of American fast food, gadgets, and fads. Kantner gives readers many exciting and realistic views of everyday life in the igloo; hunting wolves, caribou, and bear; and traveling by dogsled and snowmobile in the dark northern tundra. A valuable story about a boy trying to find his place in the world.-Penny Stevens, Andover College, Portland, ME Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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