Late Review: Tell the Wolves I'm Home

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“I used to think maybe I wanted to become a falconer, and now I'm sure of it, because I need to figure out the secret. I need to work out how to keep things flying back to me instead of always flying away.” --Tell the Wolves I'm Home

When I finished this novel, I didn't know what to say. I loved it. It crushed me. It elated me. It took the top of my head off in the very best way possible. It shocked me to no end it was a first novel. It reminded me of the death of my mother's closest friend to AIDS in 1992, and how his death shattered me into tiny pieces in ways I didn't understand for years and years.

The narrator feels very real to me, and she takes me back to a time that AIDS was on the nightly news every night. On the cover of Time magazine, complete with a story that speculated that AIDS was mutating so fast that it could become airborne, and then we'd really be screwed. I read that issue at the allergist's office at age 9 or so (I was a weird kid), and eyed everyone in the waiting room suspiciously until they called me to get my bimonthly shot. This book perfectly captures what it's like to be a kid during that time in the late 80s when the adults were all going crazy and no one knew what to think.

I know it's not for everyone. I would have said it wasn't for me either. I love sad songs, but I like my books to have happy endings. This book, by its nature, must end in some measure of tears, but I found myself coming back to it again and again. Finally, I opened it to get an idea of the prose, and I never put it down willingly again.

Try it. Even if it's not your thing. It might just transport you to your own childhood, and a time that you were figuring out who you were and who you loved.

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