Gretchen read and liked Krista's review of The Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel:

"Well it's 1:20 AM and I just finished this well written page turner. Would probably give it 4 1/2 for capturing my interest. When my book club chose this I didn't think I would like it because I usually don't read murder mysteries. However, I was ...more Well it's 1:20 AM and I just finished this well written page turner. Would probably give it 4 1/2 for capturing my interest. When my book club chose this I didn't think I would like it because I usually don't read murder mysteries. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I liked the weaving storylines and plots and the way the characters were connected in what I was imagining to be a vast wintery wilderness. I also enjoyed the contrast of the first and third person narratives. I'm not sure I get the title.

Although it took me a while to warm up to Mrs. Ross (in the beginning she seemed kind of simple and mousey) but as the story went on I really admired her. I was pulling for her all the way. And...cuddling with Parker in the cabin for warmth...much better than...you know. I could feel it!

I got a little confused with some of the characters and keeping them straight and I still don't get the Seton girls - can't wait to talk about this at book club. Were they both alive or only one of them??? I don't get it!?

I was mildly disappointed in the ending. I wanted a little more. I didn't feel that everything got wrapped up well enough, but that could be because I'm always one for the fairytale endings, girl gets the guy, conflicts are resolved, etc. AND what the hell is her first name??

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Gretchen read and liked Jeremy Baker's review of The Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel:

"This book is directed at readers rather than thinkers. I can understand why people like it because there are plenty of wonderfully crafted moments, but the novel lacks focus and depth. I've read a few reviews that ooh and aah over the fact that it'...more This book is directed at readers rather than thinkers. I can understand why people like it because there are plenty of wonderfully crafted moments, but the novel lacks focus and depth. I've read a few reviews that ooh and aah over the fact that it's a murder mystery wrapped in a love story hog-tied to a western deep fried in good ol fashioned wilderness tale, but I've always felt that genre divisions are a crutch for people who need the books they read to conform to a series of prearranged attributes.

However, what people take away from a novel (or any work of art), as well as the baggage they bring, isn't something the author can be held accountable for. Though Stef Penney was obviously writing for a target audience based on her experience as a screenwriter (I don't like it when I can see the machinery turning), nearly every other review I've read drags in aspects of her personal life, giving them a disproportionate weight that colors one's appreciation of the narrative. The kind of gossip useless to any serious literary discussion.

Aside from the pockets of wonderful writing scattered throughout, what I liked about this novel was the title. Wolves generally rank above snakes but below mice on the Wheel of Tenderness, but I liked the attempt to turn our thinking around. Those of you with access to the discovery channel know that wolves mate for life (awww...), but that their lives are determined mainly by a constant struggle for physical dominance within the pack. Food is always scarce; most packs can only support one litter of cubs and any youngsters that don't belong to the pair at the top are killed out of hand, and even for mature wolves their main predators remain other wolf packs. If there is a tenderness of wolves it is characterized by a vicious, selective intensity focused ultimately on survival. Draw whatever parallels you please between the previous statement and people you know and love, or substitute wilderness for wolves.

Where the novel runs aground is the arbitrarily neat division into four sections. Not only do they break the flow of the story, they feel forced, as if Penney was already thinking about where to insert the commercial breaks. At the beginning of 'Fields of Heaven' Penney introduces a number of minor characters that, while well-drawn, don't add anything to the novel, or contribute to it's resolution. Everyone in Himmelvanger is background noise except for Line, who didn't serve any real purpose aside from informing Angus at the end about his wife and son (simultaneously robbing the reader of a scene where Angus comes across his wife with Parker ). At the same time, all of the conflict built up in the first section between Knox, McKinley, and Sturrock is set aside and ultimately left unexplored like so many other plot threads. Sturrock and Marie in particular get robbed in this book; after building them up in the beginning, they spend the rest of the novel literally sitting around.

Overall this book confused me, and not in a tantalizing way. I felt jerked around, as though Penney had started to say something, changed her mind, and then sprung mid-sentence in a completely different direction.(less) "

Gretchen read and liked Mark's review of The Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel:

"For what it's worth, this is the first book I've read since I joined Goodreads to which I've given five stars. So, at the risk of gushing, I'm telling you to run, don't walk, to reserve this at your local library or buy it.

The setting is ...more For what it's worth, this is the first book I've read since I joined Goodreads to which I've given five stars. So, at the risk of gushing, I'm telling you to run, don't walk, to reserve this at your local library or buy it.

The setting is the 1860s in Canada, where the small community of Caulfield and cabins strung along the Dove River sit at the edge of the great North Woods. The book opens with the murder of French-Canadian trapper, and that event unlocks several intertwined subplots among the people who live in this wintry landscape, dominated by the Hudson Bay Company.

The sharp description of the landscape and lives of European settlers and Indians alike is all the more remarkable because Stef Penney was agoraphobic when she wrote this and was unable to visit the scene of her novel, instead doing all of her research from the safe womb of the British Library.

This is also much more than a mystery, with finely drawn human portraits, stories of forbidden love and heartbreaking loss, all set in a time and place that is vividly evoked. If it were possible, I'd coin the term histery for this amalgam.

When the trapper is found dead in his cabin, a young man, Francis Ross, also disappears and is the first suspect. His father hunts for him briefly, but after he returns home empty-handed, Francis' mother is determined to search for him herself, and to her own surprise, she ends up going off secretly with a man named William Parker who is half-Indian and who has just escaped from official custody as a suspect in the murder.

The killing is the biggest sensation in the community since the disapperance several years earlier of two girls, who some feel died in the woods and were eaten by wolves, a story none of the experienced woodspeople believe, and a chapter of history that will make an eerie reappearance as the novel progresses.

Penney is a screenwriter by trade, and part of the sheer enjoyment of this book is the movie-like pacing, with short chapters weaving expertly back and forth between three and four subplots (I'd be surprised if this isn't made into a movie at some point). Mixed into this cast of characters is a venal and paranoid Hudson Bay official, a utopian settlement of Norwegian Christians deep in the woods, a charismatic but troubled Hudson Bay officer who lives deep in the forest, a new Company employee who is trying to prove himself and trying to decide which woman he loves, and the mysterious man that young Francis Ross saw and followed after the murder.

Penney's gift for language also elevates this above many a plot-driven mystery. At one point, she describes a narrow-minded resident of the village this way: "She considers herself a well-traveled woman, and from each place she has been to, she has brought away a prejudice as a souvenir."

Or this landscape description: "As suddenly as a smile, the sun causes beauty to break out on this sullen plain. Beyond the pallisade lies a perfect landscape, like a sculpture carved in salt, crystalline and pure. Meanwhile we trudge through roiled slush and dirt, trampled and stained with the effluent of dogs."

And near the end of the book, a description of the son's recuperation: "It has been weeks that he has lain up in the white room, his muscles softening and his skin growing pale like rhubarb under a pot."

A page turner with bonuses. You can't ask for more.

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