Tell The Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt will be published in June 2012 by MacMillan, after they were successful in winning a competitive five-way auction for it.This book is an extraordinary debut from a novelist who is skilled in her craft, her characters are created perfectly and leap from the page to take a part of your own life whilst you are reading.
Junie Elbus, fourteen-years old and a little quirky, she could even be called a geek if you like. Nobody understands her except for her Uncle Finn. Uncle Finn, a talented artist, a man who treats Junie as if she were a queen, who takes her places, shows her new things and lets her be herself. Uncle Finn, who is dying of AIDS and wants his final gift to Junie to be an extra special portrait of her and her sister.
It is not until Finn dies that Junie discovers that she wasn't in fact, the centre of his world. Junie discovers that Finn had a 'special friend', Toby, and that according to her Mom and Dad, Toby murdered Finn.
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| Carol Rifka Brunt |
Junie's older sister Greta has always been the successful sister, the actress, the singer. Junie knows however, that Greta's best piece of acting is the way she appears to others, underneath is a struggling, sad girl who hates herself and most things around her.
Tell the Wolves I'm Home is a story of people, there is no fast-paced plot line, it is a gentle unpeeling of a family and it's secrets. Each character plays their own part with Junie and Finn at the centre. Yet the author never really 'meets' Finn, he dies almost before the story begins, yet it is his influence and his character that forms the rest of the novel.
Gentle, beautiful, captivating and quite brlliant.
You certainly know how to pick them Anne. Another one for the wishlist!
ReplyDeleteJoan x
I have just read this book too Anne, and also thought it was brilliant. Lovely review.
ReplyDeleteI read this one recently and enjoyed it, I think because I found June such an engaging narrator. I agree that some parts were fairly repetitive and other parts were explored without being fully explained, but for a debut I thought the language was just lovely.
ReplyDeleteYour cover is pretty, too!
Hi, thanks for dropping by. June was a great character wasn't she? So looking forward to reading her next book
ReplyDelete"I love that Brunt wrote a character like that because it makes all my own daydreaming about living in more romantic and interesting time periods seem totally normal." Seriously? In which case I've got to read this book!
ReplyDeleteMarlene Detierro (Renton's River Adventures, Inc.)