By Kerryn Goldsworthy
History of Wolves
Emily Fridlund
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $29.99
The main character of this impressive debut novel is Madeline, a teenager more usually addressed as Linda. Her peers at school, however, call her Commie or Freak, for the couple who have raised her, and who may not be her biological parents, are the last vestige of a commune in northern Minnesota. Here the houses are sparsely scattered, winter is bitter, and water in its various forms is everywhere: snow, ice, river and lake form the visual, atmospheric and metaphorical background to this chilling story. We learn in the first few pages that a small child is dead, and that there has been a trial. The rest is the story of how and why the child came to be dead and what part Linda has played in this tragedy. Emily Fridlund has superb control of her first-person narrator and of the "show, don't tell" rule, so the reader must listen carefully, looking for clues.