Sadie, Wolf, and Friends

by Lisa Crystal Carver

Sadie, Wolf, and Friends are conversations between Lisa Carver and her children. Wolf is a very sweet, Christian, mystical, mentally ill artist who loves rocks and sheep and being faithful. Sadie is a spitfire cheerleader wealth-plotting preteen who loves math because there's only right or wrong and hates social studies because it's an excuse for other students to say their opinions forever pretending it's a question. Both Wolf and Sadie are pretty hilarious. Appearances are made by guest stars like Neighbor Girl, Babysat Guy, and the football player. It's an unusual book because it's a peek directly into the minds of a mentally ill young man and variously aged children; it does not try to guide or change or fix or civilize any of their ideas. Instead their mother interact with them in a Socratic method with respect and humor. No subject is taboo.

160 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2015

About the author

Lisa Crystal Carver (born 1968[1]), also known as Lisa Suckdog, is an American writer known for her writing in Rollerderby.[2] Through her interviews, she introduced the work of Vaginal Davis, Dame Darcy, Cindy Dall, Boyd Rice, Costes (her ex-husband with whom she performed Suckdog), Nick Zedd, GG Allin, Kate Landau, Queen Itchie & Liz Armstrong to many. A collection of notable articles from the zine was published as Rollerderby: The Book.

She started touring with the performance art band Psycodrama when she was 18 years old.[3] It was also at this time that she became a prostitute, which has been a major theme in her writings over the years.[4] She began touring with Costes a year later, and would also tour without him when he was in France. She toured the U.S. and Europe six times, the last time in 1998. The noise music soap operas included audience interaction including dancing and mock-rape of audience members.[3]

Carver is the also the author of Dancing Queen: a Lusty Look at the American Dream, in which she expounds upon various relics of pop culture past, including Lawrence Welk, roller rinks, and Olivia Newton-John. In 2005, Soft Skull Press released her newest book, Drugs Are Nice, detailing her early childhood and later romantic relationships with Costes, Boyd Rice and Smog's Bill Callahan. In addition to writing her own 'zines and books, Carver has also written for various magazines (including Peter Bagge's comic book Hate) and kept a fictionalized journal about her sex life for the website Nerve. Although Carver no longer writes her journal for the site, she is still a semi-regular contributor. The online Journal at Nerve was subsequently published in book form as The Lisa Diaries: Four Years in the Sex Life of Lisa Carver and Company. (via Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lisa Carver’s book, SADIE, WOLF, AND FRIENDS, is like reading a newspaper comic strip without the drawings. I kept seeing the characters in my head as they talked and in short comedic spurts filled up four panels and sometimes an expended Sunday funny in my head. Not that everything is humorous. Much of it is weird. Life is like that, which is where Carver, the mother of Sadie and Wolf, excels. Her experiment reminds me of TALK, a novel in dialog by Linda Rosenkrantz, where the author literally recorded a summer in the Hamptons with her friends chatting in the late 1960s and then edited that into a narrative she called a novel, which it was and wasn’t. Nothing is less novel than people talking, but few are comfortable letting conversation free without putting some kind of constraint on it. Carver has a structure, there’s a form here, but she gives almost unheard of freedom to the art of conversation, and through that readers are introduced to people as unique as themselves. That’s the real prize, not that Carver has wonderful children, which she does, but that in fact any one of us could put a mic up in our room and likely come back with something equally as strange and beautiful. My only caveat is the title. Carver deserves top billing. She’s the hub that holds together this community.