Ordinary Wolves

Jun 22, 2012 Jessi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: wolves-jessi-s-wolf-shelf, baby-its-cold-outside

Ordinary Wolves is about a young blond boy,Cutuk who is growing up in the Alaskan wilderness. I found it a bit hard to get into the narrative but other then that this was a great read. Cutuk lives with his dad, brother and sister in an igloo in the forest, dirt floors,dirt walls and no other people except for the odd hunter passing by. In the beginning Cutuk is only five and everything has the sparkle a five year old puts on things, which I found so endearing ,it also makes it interesting to see...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, book-group, environmental-writing

OK, hang on... stop reading this review. Go to your "to read" shelf. Add this book. To the top of the list. Do it now. Got it on there? OK..... now I can tell you about it. This book is going to stay with me for a long time. This kind of writing is really like a gift. When you come across a book like this you just never want to be done reading it because it's just such a sheer pleasure to read such fine writing. Seth Katner creates dialogues and descriptions that instantly place you in the lands...more

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Oct 30, 2007 Alexandra.west rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is a stunningly honest and unsentimental look at contemporary life in Alaska. The book touches on big issues (racism, loss of wilderness, alcoholism), but it is fundamentally a coming of age story (semi-autobiographical, I think) about a white boy whose father drops out of the mainstream to raise his three children in a sod igloo in a remote part of Alaska. It is beautifully written, and will stay with you for a long time.

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May 28, 2008 Gwenn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found myself sort of slogging through the purple passages, but as anthropology this book was fascinating. (a very cool clerk lady at cody's in berkeley recommended it to me because I bought Deep Survival-not normally my kind of book, but it's good to get out of your ruts sometimes.) It worked on me the same way the little house books did-as insight into a world beyond imagining, that some people just live. Squeamish about meat? read about living in the arctic! everytime you see any creature, y...more

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Mar 10, 2009 Alison Looney rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Last year, in my quest to read 100 books, I wouldn't stop reading a book, no matter how bad it was. I chugged my way through some real train wrecks. So it's rather novel (ha) that I can give up on books halfway through this year.

That said, I feel a little bad casting this one aside, especially because it started so promisingly. It opens with a young white boy living with his father and older siblings in northern Alaska. Dad is an artist who's shunned the materialism of the lower 48. He values e...more

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Mar 07, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've thought about what differentiates an ordinary wolf from an extraordinary one and believe that the answer lies in Mr. Kantner's book. There are two ways of viewing pack animals - 1) as a group, acting and reacting in predictable group dynamics and 2) observing the actions and behaviors of one particular animal in a group setting or perhaps a wolf that has wandered away from his pack. This metaphor is used throughout the book to frame cultural beliefs and behaviors as opposed to the individua...more I've thought about what differentiates an ordinary wolf from an extraordinary one and believe that the answer lies in Mr. Kantner's book. There are two ways of viewing pack animals - 1) as a group, acting and reacting in predictable group dynamics and 2) observing the actions and behaviors of one particular animal in a group setting or perhaps a wolf that has wandered away from his pack. This metaphor is used throughout the book to frame cultural beliefs and behaviors as opposed to the individual who leaves his culture and finds himself lost and straddling two worlds.

I loved this book for so many reasons. For one, it is a grand capturing of a family living far removed from 'civilization' in a cabin without running water or electricity. An outhouse serves as a bathroom. The cabin is miles away from the nearest Native village. Most of the protein comes from hunting and trapping. Other food arrives rarely as the closest town is so far away and the family is living in dire economic conditions. As soon as the family (mother, father, two sons and a daughter) settle in to this less than subsistence lifestyle, the mother runs off, leaving the children in the care of their father who is an artist who still has not reached adult maturity. The children parent their father, providing him with emotional support and taking care of their day to day needs. Their father loves them but his capacity to parent is limited.

The youngest son is the protagonist of this novel. He vacillates between hating his isolated and isolating existence to appreciating the solitude, the vastness of the land, and his ability to hone his hunting and survival skills. He views the nearest rural village, populated primarily with Inupiat people in an idealized fashion. He is mentored by two adult Inupiat Eskimos who preserve the traditional ways and pass them on. On the other hand, he feels despair over what he sees as the demise of traditional ways. Inupiat people struggle with how to integrate modern technology, contemporary lifestyles and westernized education and into their indigenous heritage and belief system. He also grieves the loss of so many youth to alcoholism and drug addiction, violence, a welfare state and their leaving their homes as early as they can to make a life in the big city. Traditional ways and the values of the elders are no longer respected.

Kantner uses a writing technique that I really appreciate. One chapter is about the protagonist's family or the people in the village that he is close with. The next chapter is about a pack of wolves, anthropomorphized to some extent while the protagonist interprets their pack actions as a vehicle for understanding his own life. The alternation of these two types of chapters continues throughout the book.

Besides being beautifully written, the book is REAL. Having lived in Alaska for 40 years, I empathize with Kantner's portrayal of the protagonist's conflicts - his despair at seeing the Inupiat woman he loves living her life in a way that can only harm her and those around her. While she tries to emulate western ways, she will always be an outsider and she will feel a self-loathing and prejudice throughout her life that prevent her from fully integrating two such distinctly different cultures as the Inupiat traditions and contemporary western ways of the U.S.

It is very poignant to listen to Kantner's protagonist describe himself as the outsider, the blond one with light skin in a sea of darker skinned and darker haired people - people he reveres. This reverence is like a kick to the heart because we know that the traditional way of life will not last for long and that the protagonist, for all his respect and cherishing of Inupiat culture, will always be an outsider. Throughout this novel we see people trying to straddle two worlds, not being fully integrated or accepted in either.
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Aug 16, 2010 Micheal rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have read CALL OF THE WILD perhaps twenty times. It is one of my favorite books in the whole world. ORDINARY WOLVES has just entered that realm.

I loved this book!

A story about real life Alaska, conveying ice, caribou hair and wild meat, the dirt of a sod igloo floor littered with mouse turds, the smell and sound of sled dogs, and wolves in all their glory and tragedy. Told from the perspective of a little boy growing into a man in a vividly realized primitive environment, rife with the wonde...more I have read CALL OF THE WILD perhaps twenty times. It is one of my favorite books in the whole world. ORDINARY WOLVES has just entered that realm.

I loved this book!

A story about real life Alaska, conveying ice, caribou hair and wild meat, the dirt of a sod igloo floor littered with mouse turds, the smell and sound of sled dogs, and wolves in all their glory and tragedy. Told from the perspective of a little boy growing into a man in a vividly realized primitive environment, rife with the wonder, hope and insecurities of a human coming from a simple, sensible existence into the complex, often wasteful and illogical world of modern humans.

Cutuk is a blond haired, blue eyed five year old who longs for frostbite scars on his cheeks, a flat nose and dark features like the old eskimo hunter he idolizes. He has the barest memory of his mother, who has fled the hardships and prolonged darkness of winter. Raised by his somewhat eccentric and idealistic father
(a talented artist who doesn't like to kill and absolutely won't shoot wolves) along with his older brother and sister, they subsist almost entirely on the land, "....living in a way even eskimos would no longer live." Home schooled and exceptionally bright, their only contact with the outside world is a distant native village where they are ostracized and bullied for being white. They are witness to the dysfunction and decline of the indigenous population brought on by the influence of civilized culture in the form of rampant alcoholism, technology and materialism.

Cutuk's journey is like a reverse CALL OF THE WILD, experienced from a human perspective, as he eventually leaves the wilderness and has to learn the inexplicable ways of mankind in the urban environment. He is confronted with the choice of creature comforts, ease, and human companionship against the primitive, lonely, yet natural way he was bought up.

A great story can't translate without great writing, and Seth Kantner writes exceptionally in a style all his own. Writing from his own experience and similar upbringing I am reminded of James Galvins THE MEADOW, so real and thick with knowledge of the land and lifestyle that the reader is easily transported to another reality. I run out of words that adequately describe his prose and fall back on the same cliche terms, like beautiful, poetic, brilliant! A weaver of words and sentences, thought and emotion that moves me beyond the confines of myself, out to the Alaskan tundra and into the heart of Cutuk as he struggles within himself for a place in the world.

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Mar 31, 2013 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Maybe the best book with an environmental message I have read. I am turned off by strident, self righteous calls in books about the evils of people and the damages of consumerism but Kantner was able to tell a fascinating story that reveals the essence of how environmentally damaging our need to possess stuff is, not from the standpoint of waste and useless stuff (although he makes that point indirectly also), but from how it damages our relationship with the ecosystem and our innate ecology as...more

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Jan 14, 2009 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this book, first of all, because it is set in the arctic which always resonates for me. In this case, we are in Alaska in probably the 1970/1980s; but out in the wilderness (another theme I enjoy reading about).

A story of family and survival and what is community and living close to nature; how can we not? Also the themes around indigenous culture and how it relates to and changes in the face of the modern world. The author really has a beautiful way with words. This is one of...more

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Dec 28, 2008 Liz rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Liz by: Linda

After living in Alaska for 26 years, part of that time in Bush Alaska, I can say this is an excellent depiction of 'real' Alaska and the people and other animals who live there. I've never seen it done so well; this book made me homesick. It's a great reflection on what is real and what is important and what is not and how that all changes from person to person. I wish I could give six stars.

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Apr 10, 2009 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

A girlfriend of mine, who now lives in San Diego, grew up with the author of this book, playing together often as little children above the arctic circle. He wrote her into his book as the little blond female character in the novel. The book is based on the experiences they shared as they grew up in this extreme lifestyle and climate. This book is a must read.

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Oct 06, 2010 Rena Jane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the first Seth Kantner work I've read. It's an excellent representation of the coming of age angst of a teenager from the bush. I see many Native students fighting this battle of identity and meaning for themselves, but this was an interesting twist of a gussak seeking the same points of identity and meaning for his life.

Kantner ably describes the classism that can be encountered by someone from a rural area, anywhere in our country, when Cutuk finds himself broke and looking for a warm...more

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Mar 11, 2012 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: arctic, fiction, eskimos, animals, award-winner

This is a haunting, lyrical novel of a boy losing his grasp on the wilderness. Clayton (or Cutuk, his Eskimo name) is brought up in the wilds of Alaska by his reclusive, single father and the indigenous people and animals that surround him—the caribou, bears, and wolves, that have been there longer than anyone. Kantner juxtaposes the boy’s growing up and desire to attach himself to the wilderness with brief passages from the wolf’s perspective—threatened by approaching civilization.

At times I fe...more

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Nov 01, 2011 Talia Carner rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Great prose--lyrical and seamless and always beautifully descriptive. Seth Kantner's fiction rings autobiographical with the intimate knowledge of life in the wilderness of North Western Alaska, where the summer days are made of light chasing light, and the winter days of almost perpetual darkness. Living in the confines of the sod igloo, the Caucasian protagonist and his older sister and brother are home schooled by an artistic father gone native.

In reverse discrimination, the young boy suffer...more

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Apr 26, 2012 Lindsey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well, Jen K., you were right! This is an amazing book. I loved the descriptions of animals' movements, the land, and the characters' interactions with both and with other characters. The narrator's quest for identity is shaped by the changing landscape and shifting culture of rural Alaska. In the end, the change (or is it an acceptance of what always was?) in the narrator is beautiful, his connection to the wildlife and plants with whom he shares his world is beautiful, yet the fate of the world...more

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Feb 13, 2012 Jo Deurbrouck rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Put a seriously talented writer together with a lifetime of unique, powerful, disturbing material and you get, well, 'Ordinary Wolves.' There were things I wanted to be different - I'dve loved to see the wolf vignettes resonate more with the main story line, for starters - but I loved every minute I spent with that book, flaws and all. I especially respected the understatement with which a lot of the most sensational material was presented. I would have been tempted toward drumrolls and crashing...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Jules Frusher rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a remarkable novel detailing (from the author's personal experience) the harshness of life in rural Alaska and the loneliness of being an outsider.The protagonist, Cutuk, is a white boy being brought up by his father in a remote place in the style of the old native traditions. He longs to be an eskimo, even trying to flatten his nose with his finger and hunt like his 'hero' Enuk. The problem is, very few of the native population in the nearby town accept him and so he is bullied and laug...more

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May 11, 2009 Janet rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

It’s a bad sign when I’ve finished a book and don’t remember who the author is. I finished it only yesterday because I thought I’d try something new and read it during my daily ½ hour lunch breaks. In retrospect, that wasn’t the best idea. This is not the kind of story that you can dip into for short amounts of time. There are so many characters and different settings that it was very hard for me to remember who was who and which characters lived in what town. The writing is beautiful; but I nev...more

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Apr 27, 2009 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Seth Kantner's debut novel, Ordinary Wolves, relates a somewhat biographical tale of a young man's life growing up outside an Inuit village. Cutuk is the son of a white artist who takes his family out to the vast wilderness of Alaska to grow up "more Inuit than Inuit". It explores the encroachment of modern commercial society on the on both the landscape, Inuit culture, and ourselves as individuals.

With strong characters and absolutely gorgeous writing, it is a fascinating glimpse into a world...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Mattpfeff rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

More about a time and a place than about telling a story, this book is (I think) full of truth, much of it hard, much of it cold. It's a good antidote to the temptation to romanticize the idea of living in the Alaskan wilderness, and is rich with detail and effortless authenticity and authority. At times it feels more like it wants to be an essay than it wants to tell a story, though, and the story development isn't completely matured; I can't really recommend it as a novel, though the writing i...more

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Apr 07, 2008 Molly Eness rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Molly by: my parents

I think this is the most realistic, romantic and unromantic depiction of Alaska that I have ever read.

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Jul 02, 2011 Laura Avellaneda-Cruz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

"White people--everything talked to pieces until all the pieces had numbers. 'I get wolves,' Enuk would have said, 'back by mountains.' It would have been someone else's duty to fill in the story and any heroism."

"...Takunak, a speck in the wilderness, modern as microwaves, yet hissing with voices from a brand-new ten-thousand-year-old past: Kill every animal possible, every fur. Share. Avoid taboos. Don't get ahead. Never stand out. Live now. Takunak: generous and jealous, petty and cruel and s...more "White people--everything talked to pieces until all the pieces had numbers. 'I get wolves,' Enuk would have said, 'back by mountains.' It would have been someone else's duty to fill in the story and any heroism."

"...Takunak, a speck in the wilderness, modern as microwaves, yet hissing with voices from a brand-new ten-thousand-year-old past: Kill every animal possible, every fur. Share. Avoid taboos. Don't get ahead. Never stand out. Live now. Takunak: generous and jealous, petty and cruel and somehow owning us; owning our decisions; calling us home to assassinate our ambitions. How strange my past, even farther back into the earth--the caribou skin entrance, flickering lamplight, dreams and the conviction to hunt the land for them..."

Such is the gritty and complicated reality of Alaska narrated by a white boy named Cutuk Hawckly from the rural NW Arctic in this novel. The book paints unsparing portraits of colonized and quickly-modernized Native village life--including, importantly, the kinds of half-glimpses that a young person might realistically get of the boarding school history and other reasons behind the problems so prevalent today. It also paints incredibly insightful and incisive portraits of modern consumeristic culture and of white Alaskan culture and anti-Native racism (as well as Native-worshipping white people). Some of the most devastating scenes that made me squirm were of white sport hunters from Anchorage and Fairbanks. But so uncomfortable too were the scenes of boys in the village drinking hairspray and Lysol, young girls getting pregnant. And observing it all, participating in parts of it from fear and insecurity, this white boy who constantly pushes down his nose to look Eskimo, to will himself into becoming Iñupiaq, who loves his family and loves the land, who desperately wants friends and acceptance and a purpose in life.

Perhaps most startling about this book was how it made me experience my own city. Cutuk, having never left the very rural Northwest Arctic, Cutuk who had to travel 2 days on dog sled to get to the village from the sod igloo he shared with his family, Cutuk arrives first in Kotzebue and then Anchorage. Running down the slushy snow in his winter muluks and soaking them through, trying to trap a lynx to eat where he is camped by the railroad tracks, wandering around Anchorage confused by cars and where all these white people are in such a hurry to go to, later navigating the social dynamic of car mechanics and astounded by how rude and stupid these white men are, confused as to why anyone would buy a dog in a mall...it's a fascinating view of my city, urban culture, etc. It is an important view for anyone working with youth or families from the villages who arrive in Anchorage disoriented and culture-shocked.

This is a novel of a boy who is stuck "crawling the crevasses in between" the Native Northwest Arctic and the culture he identifies with and yet is excluded from, and the white culture that is supposed to be his but bears no resemblance to his values or way of life. He ultimately finds peace and growth back in his connection to the land, but the troubling social dynamic never disappears. One of the best scenes was of a meeting at the tribal council in the village where outside presenters come to talk about online cultural preservation and grants. They, like so many other well-intentioned but removed people, talk in big words and without connection to the people, and therefore achieve nothing:

"The man glanced around quizzically, shuffled papers, and retreated into a forest of overgrown words and Accountant English. The meeting trailed into whispers and tittering. Back on the metal chairs, we chuckled at the man's pronunciation of Joe Smith's Eskimo name. We heard "my dick." We laughed, not because we were mean, but because laughing was traditional, it was something we were good at, and tonight we still remembered how."

I only wish that the character of Cutuk, and the author, Seth Kantner, could have met and included in the novel Native characters who managed multiple worlds skillfully, who reached back into tradition and worked modern jobs, or non-elder Native folks who were heroes like Enuk. Enuk, the old hunter who Cutuk idolizes, and Janet, the very good and loving mothering character, are not the only such Native men or women. I wished for the sake of showing Alaska's social dynamic that the character could have come across some more healthy and self-actualized Alaska Native individuals, such as the many I have met, to show not only a white Hawckly family hybrid, but show that there are many Alaska Native people who have found ways to balance tradition and modernity. (less)

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Oct 20, 2011 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I started reading this book years ago after I picked it up on an Alaskan cruise. I put it down and finally picked it back up again and I'm glad I did. This book speaks out to the part of every person who wishes they could escape from modern day life and the consumerism of America, however it also offers a realistic, gritty portrayal of what for some people is real life and not an escapist fantasy. I finished the book feeling both impressed and saddened by the people in the book. Kanter's love fo...more

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Jun 14, 2009 Lindsay rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ordinary Wolves won a Milkweed Prize (Milkweed is an independent publisher in Minnesota. I didn't love this book just because I was reading it while on vacation in Alaska, but because it was an interesting take on waste and materialism due to the cross-sections of characters and places. I felt the the story became a little repetitive in theme mid-way through the book, but perhaps this was intentional on the author's part since it was narrated by a teen with an identity crisis.

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Oct 06, 2011 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I really liked this book in a masochistic way – I felt conscious of, and embarrassed by, our North American rabid consumer society, our materialistic values, our disrespectful throw-away culture. Kantner’s language is beautiful – so evocative, and as his main character, Cutuk, matures he often turns inward, grappling with the big questions of life. In the first part I felt like I was reading about an exotically primitive faraway land with lives lived so differently from our norm; yet it’s virtua...more

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Jun 25, 2009 Fran Prather rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book, which I basically accidentally picked up from one of our new library orders, sat beneath a pile on my bedstand for a year. Noticing it a few days ago, I began reading and could not put it down (when I'm supposed to be writing a paper, no less). It is beautifully written, a haunting story of culture clash, love of the land, coming of age, you name it. Barbara Kingsolver called it an "astonishing book," and I'd have to agree. Highly recommended!

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May 15, 2012 Cathy Scholtens rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh my, do I love this author! This is a fictionalized account of a young boy growing up in the far northern reaches of Alaska. A white boy, wanting to be Eskimo, not accepted by either race as he is part way in between. The struggles of daily life, plus the struggles of coming of age as Alaska comes of age is troublesome, heart breaking and eye opening! A great read. I recommend you read this first, as his biography is even better!

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Aug 16, 2009 Judy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone

Recommended to Judy by: n/a

Shelves: my-2009-books, desert-island

This book provides a rare view into life in the far reaches of Alaska.

Seth Kantner tells the story of a boy growing into a young man on the northwestern Alaskan plains, in the boy's own words. The prose is very vivid and evocative -- you can almost feel the unforgiving cold, can almost taste the caribou stew, can nearly feel the cozy, dimly-lit and claustrophobic interior of the sod igloo. Cutuk is a rare white inhabitant of northwestern Alaska, living on the tundra with his dad and two siblings...more

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Jun 26, 2008 Suzie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ick. It really and truly took me too long to read this book. I feel asleep. I had to sit next to my hubby while reading so he could check to make sure I hadn't passed out. Perhaps a memoir about Alaskan life I might have gotten into. For although Seth Kantner DID grow up in Alaska and was trying to write acurately about its land and its people, I feel like there was not enough going on in this book. Had it been a memoir however, perhaps with more details emotional appeal, I may have connected be...more

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Jul 27, 2009 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: lit-cultural-ethnic, favorite-books, to-read-again

Put this at the top of your night-stand pile! Kantner writes extraordinarily beautiful, sensitive prose, successfully grappling with enormous themes -- cultural conflicts between natives and whites, traditional ways of living versus new, the struggle for dominance between nature and civilization -- from the viewpoint of one boy coming of age in contemporary Alaska.

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