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The Tenderness of Wolves

Stef Penney

3.76 · Rating details · 11,007 ratings · 1,585 reviews

A brilliant and breathtaking debut that captivated readers and garnered critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, The Tenderness of Wolves was long-listed for the Orange Prize in fiction and won the Costa Award (formerly Whitbread) Book of the Year.

The year is 1867. Winter has just tightened its grip on Dove River, a tiny isolated settlement in the Northern Terri A brilliant and breathtaking debut that captivated readers and garnered critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, The Tenderness of Wolves was long-listed for the Orange Prize in fiction and won the Costa Award (formerly Whitbread) Book of the Year.

The year is 1867. Winter has just tightened its grip on Dove River, a tiny isolated settlement in the Northern Territory, when a man is brutally murdered. Laurent Jammett had been a voyageur for the Hudson Bay Company before an accident lamed him four years earlier. The same accident afforded him the little parcel of land in Dove River, land that the locals called unlucky due to the untimely death of the previous owner.

A local woman, Mrs. Ross, stumbles upon the crime scene and sees the tracks leading from the dead man's cabin north toward the forest and the tundra beyond. It is Mrs. Ross's knock on the door of the largest house in Caulfield that launches the investigation. Within hours she will regret that knock with a mother's love -- for soon she makes another discovery: her seventeen-year-old son Francis has disappeared and is now considered a prime suspect.

In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the crime and to the township -- Andrew Knox, Dove River's elder statesman; Thomas Sturrock, a wily American itinerant trader; Donald Moody, the clumsy young Company representative; William Parker, a half-breed Native American and trapper who was briefly detained for Jammett's murder before becoming Mrs. Ross's guide. But the question remains: do these men want to solve the crime or exploit it?

One by one, the searchers set out from Dove River following the tracks across a desolate landscape -- home to only wild animals, madmen, and fugitives -- variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for seventeen years, and a forgotten Native American culture before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good.

In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humor into an exhilarating thriller; a panoramic historical romance; a gripping murder mystery; and, ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, an epic for the ages. ...more

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Hardcover, 384 pages

Published July 10th 2007 by Simon & Schuster (first published 2006)

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Aug 18, 2008 Paul Bryant rated it liked it

Shelves: novels

Sometimes insightful remarks are made which are so reductive they have the power to diminish life even as they explain it. In 1939 Alfred Hitchcock explained in a lecture at Columbia University: "We have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers." Wikipedia elaborates:

A MacGuffin is a plot device that motivates the characters or advanc/>A Sometimes insightful remarks are made which are so reductive they have the power to diminish life even as they explain it. In 1939 Alfred Hitchcock explained in a lecture at Columbia University: "We have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers." Wikipedia elaborates:

A MacGuffin is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise. The element that distinguishes a MacGuffin from other types of plot devices is that it is not important what the object specifically is. Anything that serves as a motivation will do.

This is one of the principal reasons why spy and "mystery" novels bore the living bejesus out of me, and alas, when I realised "The Tenderness of Wolves" was not, in fact, a cookery book as I had been led to believe, I found it was a "mystery" novel, a stone whodunnit in fact. The victim is murdered because of the big fat MacGuffin which in this book takes the form of a bone tablet which some guys think is valuable because it may indicate there once was a literate Indian society. So in this book people do a lot of following trails, which as this book takes place in the Frozen North are actual footprints in the snow. I won't give the ending away, but they do so much tracking they almost find the Woozle.

I liked the chaotic flailing about which takes up most of the plot, it reminded me of two great Coen Brothers movies, Blood Simple and Fargo. But enjoying the bafflement of others only takes you so far.
The other thing which bugged me about this book was The Historical Present. It's weird enough when authors write in the first person past tense but you can suspend enough disbelief and imagine (if the self-consciousness of reading imaginary narratives ever surfaces) that you are hearing a perfect recollection by the narrator. The Historical Present smashes this conceit. "I am not gentle but he makes no sound as I clean the wounds with rubbing alcohol. He has his eyes shut. From the corner of my eye Parker seems to be watching us..." That kind of thing. It's a strange idea - instead of the perfect recollection the perfect real-time self-description like you are on an advanced driving test - "Describe your observations Mr Bryant" "In my rear view mirror I see a black Fiat Punto with a blond male driver and a woman with a leopardskin coat, can't see if it's fake fur but I am assuming so; now I am making a left turn into Cold Potato Street, avoiding the cyclist who has large earrings and is weaving slightly as his panniers are overfilled".

And finally - this book was famously written by a woman who suffered so much from agrophobia that she did not leave a wooden box measuring three feet by six feet by ten feet for over two years. So the book was written entirely out of research and imagination (she would poke her arm out of the box and friends would place interesting articles about Ancient Canada into her open hand). I like this idea a lot because after all, fiction is made up, and I have little time for autobiographical coming of age novels (except for Edmund White). However - if I look at the author blurb and I see "John Weebblebeeble has been a lecturer at the Creative Writing School of the University of Do As You like, Minnesota for 37 years" or I see "John Weeblebeeble has been employed variously as a prizefighter, royal embroiderer, catamite, chef on board a nuclear submarine and private detective; John was born Stephanie MacGuffin and transgendered at the age of 31. He now lives in a community for the blind and limbless in Katmandu" - I kind of get the notion that the latter's interesting experiences will make the better writer. Literature proves this prejudice nonsense, but it lingers.

...more

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Feb 16, 2018 Peter rated it really liked it

Shelves: literary-fiction

Wilderness
What makes The Tenderness of Wolves a memorable story is the location – the desolate snow-covered wilds of Canada in the late 1860s. An unforgiving time when settlers and native Indians sought to live off the land, often suspicious of each other. The fur trappers and the Hudson Bay Company where at the heart of all trade and employment and their power and influence was extensive and decisive.

A trapper Laurent Jammet is murdered, and Francis Ross, a suspect, disappears into the ...more

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Nov 09, 2007 Mark rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mystery, historical-fiction

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 subplot 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.

...more

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Aug 01, 2008 Jeremy Baker rated it liked it

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 attri 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. ...more

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Sep 04, 2010 Hannah rated it it was ok

Shelves: mysteries, 2010-reads, historicals

This is a frustrating novel on so many levels. It's one of those books you read where it could and should be brilliant, but suffers from an excess of trying to be too clever, hip and cutting edge in character development and writing technique.

The POV changes constantly from first person to third person in a sometimes confusing, backtrack-several-paragraphs-to-figure-out-who-is-talking kind of way. There are far, far too many characters and storylines happening as well. This would be ok if each ...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Aoibhínn rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, historical, thrillers

Set in the small village of Caulfield in Ontario during the winter of 1867, The Tenderness of Wolves tells the story of a woman's journey into the Canadian wilderness to find her missing seventeen year old son Francis, who has disappeared after a man, who was a friend of her son's, was found brutally murdered.

First off, I don't know why the author gave the novel this title as wolves do not figure in the plot much at all. They are mentioned once or twice but that's about it!

The plot was engaging and Set in the small village of Caulfield in Ontario during the winter of 1867, The Tenderness of Wolves tells the story of a woman's journey into the Canadian wilderness to find her missing seventeen year old son Francis, who has disappeared after a man, who was a friend of her son's, was found brutally murdered.

First off, I don't know why the author gave the novel this title as wolves do not figure in the plot much at all. They are mentioned once or twice but that's about it!

The plot was engaging and compelling at the beginning of the novel, but for about 100 pages or so in the middle it suddenly got very slow and boring, but it did pick up again in the last quarter of the novel. I thought the location of the novel was interesting. I loved the setting and the vivid descriptions of pioneer life in the Canadian wilderness in the mid-nineteenth century.

At times, the novel got extremely confusing! I loved most of Penney's characters but there was simply too many of them. I found it hard to keep track of all of them. I wished Penney had thinned these out as a lot of these "extra" characters weren't vital to the plot. I don't know why she included so many of these characters! She should have spent more time developing the characters that were central to the plot!

Stef Penney wrote all of her characters in the first person so sometimes it wasn't clear which character was doing the talking! Because of this I had to go back and re-read multiple chapters to figure out what was happening in the story. Very annoying!

The ending of the novel was very abrupt. There were TOO MANY loose ends. I desperately wanted some romance in this novel to balance the story out! (view spoiler)

This novel wasn't as good as all the hype made it out to be. I think Ms Penney should fire her editor. Jane Wood did definitely not do a good job editing this book! Good editing would have fixed most of the problems with this novel. But overall, I felt it was a good attempt at a first novel by the author. It was an interesting and mostly enjoyable read but it's a shame the ending is very unsatisfying. However, I would read another novel by this author. I think she has potential.

Three stars!

PS: If you want to know what Mrs Ross's first name is it is on page 170 of the paperback version. It's in the paragraph where she describes Parker's dogs :) ...more

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Mar 03, 2019 Connie G rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-club, historical-fiction, mystery, canada, adventure

In a small Canadian town by the Georgian Bay, Mrs Ross finds the body of her murdered neighbor, trapper and fur trader Laurent Jammet. Her adopted 17 year old son is also missing, and there are several sets of footprints heading north. The Hudson Bay Company sends their men to investigate several suspects. Mrs Ross sets off with a half-Indian guide, William Parker, to find her son.

The book is full of atmospheric details so the reader can feel for the 1867 immigrant and Indian charact ...more

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Oct 04, 2014 BrokenTune rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

"And so while my husband sleeps upstairs we pack–and I prepare to go into the wilderness with a suspected killer. What’s worse, a man I haven’t been properly introduced to. I am too shocked to feel fear, too excited to care about the impropriety of it. I suppose if you have already lost what matters most, then little things like reputation and honour lose their lustre. (Besides, if the worst comes to the worst, I can remind myself that I have sold my honour far more cheaply than this. I can remi "And so while my husband sleeps upstairs we pack–and I prepare to go into the wilderness with a suspected killer. What’s worse, a man I haven’t been properly introduced to. I am too shocked to feel fear, too excited to care about the impropriety of it. I suppose if you have already lost what matters most, then little things like reputation and honour lose their lustre. (Besides, if the worst comes to the worst, I can remind myself that I have sold my honour far more cheaply than this. I can remind myself of that, if I have to.)"

As the nights are drawing in and the temperatures are dropping to the point that I needed to switch the heating on, this was the perfect book to get in the mood for the upcoming season.

There are a few things that I could criticize about this book - like the holes in some of the sub-plots, anachronisms, the use of 20th century expressions and attitudes that detract from the 1867 setting - but all in all these are minor flaws.

I loved this book. Not least for its writing:

"Sometimes, you find yourself looking at the forest in a different way. Sometimes it’s no more than the trees that provide houses and warmth, and hide the earth’s nakedness, and you’re glad of it. And then sometimes, like tonight, it is a vast dark presence that you can never see the end of; it might, for all you know, have not just length and breadth to lose yourself in, but also an immeasurable depth, or something else altogether. And sometimes, you find yourself looking at your husband and wondering: is he the straightforward man you think you know–provider, friend, teller of poor jokes that nonetheless make you smile–or does he too have depths that you have never seen? What might he not be capable of?"

So what that the language doesn't fit into 1867? The same concept worked for Marty McFly... Anyway, just to clarify, this book is not about time travel.

The Tenderness of Wolves is a mystery set in the wintry northeast of Canada between communities of immigrants and natives, where the murder of a local trapper and the disappearance of a local youth set in motion an unlikely turn of events.
But it is not just a murder mystery. What I loved about the book is what some other reviewers found distracting - that it a number of subplots.
There are stories of people looking for something they have lost, of people looking for their own way in life, of people trying to remember who they are, of people trying to make new starts. Some fail, some succeed.

The subplots add a great deal of depth to the characters and bring to life how in a largely isolated small community nearly everything is connected. Ironically, for a story set in the freezing north, there is a lot of warmth; and for a story largely set in the wilderness, there is a lot of humanity, even though the stoicism portrayed by characters and the brutality of some of the events ensure that this is by no means a cozy read.

This review was first posted on BookLikes: http://brokentune.booklikes.com/post/...
...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Moray Barclay rated it really liked it

The hero of this novel is only ever referred to by two names: Mrs Ross, and Mama. In their brief moments together at the beginning of the novel, Angus Ross never speaks to his wife, and she does not have a single good friend who knows her well enough to address her by her first name. She is reserved, polite and, as a married woman in these stifled Scottish, Presbyterian, conclaves in 19th Century Canada, almost invisible: when a self-important local figure demands, ‘Is you husband in?’, she note The hero of this novel is only ever referred to by two names: Mrs Ross, and Mama. In their brief moments together at the beginning of the novel, Angus Ross never speaks to his wife, and she does not have a single good friend who knows her well enough to address her by her first name. She is reserved, polite and, as a married woman in these stifled Scottish, Presbyterian, conclaves in 19th Century Canada, almost invisible: when a self-important local figure demands, ‘Is you husband in?’, she notes that “As a woman I’m obviously not supposed to know anything”. She appears to have little self-esteem, admitting that “in fact long ago gave up the notion that I have any remarkable qualities”. When her teenage son disappears in the aftermath of the murder of a local fur-trader, Laurent Jammet, she is for a while paralysed by indecision.

Yet, from this unpromising start, she demonstrates that she is in fact quite remarkable: she shows enormous physical strength to drag herself through the barren Canadian landscape, not once but three times; greater mental strength to embark on the subsequent quests and to stand up to those trying to advise her against this. And towards the end, as the Cat & Mouse game to find Jammet’s murderer reaches its conclusion, she puts her life at risk. But most revealing of all, it turns out she is not shy, just quiet. She does not lack self-esteem, she is in fact very funny and self-deprecating. She may still appear to be almost invisible but she misses nothing, particularly in the hubris of the numerous self-important men that she meets. She is deeply passionate, stifled through her current circumstances. Had she not been denied educational opportunity because she was subjected to a 19th Century version of “sectioning”, she would have certainly achieved more in life – and yet she does not dwell on this or feel any self-pity. Perhaps this is for the best: beyond the end of the book, we know that she must go back to her husband, who will remain unaware that he is married to such a wonderful woman. ...more

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Mar 10, 2008 Chris rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book received the Costa (Whitbred)Award which I find totally surprising. Certainly the book has all the makings of a great novel. But it is not.

A host of interesting characters, a dramatic environment, a historical setting, even a murder mystery. Lots of interesting characters and criss-crossing paths. Yet it feels more like a soap opera at times than anything else.

I think the choice of the author to give a first person voice to one character and then use third person all the r ...more

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Apr 18, 2008 Krista rated it really liked it

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 th ...more

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Nov 19, 2007 Trin rated it it was ok

Shelves: historicalfiction, mystery, canadian-lit, queerlit

A historical mystery set in Canada, and featuring what are essentially the precursors to Mounties and gay characters. I really thought I was going to like this book. Instead, I struggled to keep up with its meandering pace and mostly unsympathetic characters, only to be confronted by a conclusion that just cuts out like the end of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” I know that sort of thing is supposed to be arty and true-to-life, but is a little bit of closure so much to ask? Several plot threads are comple ...more

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Aug 05, 2016 Jeanette rated it it was amazing

Whew! Is this book perfect? It does have flaws but minor. Yet it was hard to put down- blew the others I was reading at the start out of the water. And at points it reminded me of a John Wayne movie for the soap opera dilemma aspects of reoccurring crisis. Especially the movie "Stagecoach" when John Wayne becomes encumbered by a happenstance rescue of ladies and other dumb innocents within and from an unforgiving environment. So why the 5 stars?

The 5 stars are for complete and gallop ...more

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Aug 22, 2011 Judy rated it liked it

Shelves: 2011-reads, fiction, canada

Jacket blurb: "Stef Penney is from Edinburgh and claims never to have visited Canada - IMPRESSIVE, then, that the land of her imagination convinces."

I wish I had never read that. During the entire reading of this book that revelation rattled around in my head. Why didn't she visit the place where her story was set? In all fairness, Penney's portrayal was believable. But in my mind there is a lack of integrity to a book (fiction or otherwise) when the author doesn't experience what they are writing about. I likblurb: ...more

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Mar 02, 2012 Ben Kane rated it it was amazing

It staggers me to see poor reviews of this novel. I suppose that it just shows the difference between people! I was given this book about three years ago, and such is my "To Be Read" pile that I've only got around it reading it now. Well, it was worth the wait. Although it took me some time to become absorbed by the story, I soon couldn't put it down. Penney's writing kept me interested. She can definitely weave words, and her recreation of 19th C. backwoods Canada has a really authentic feel to ...more

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Apr 24, 2009 Susan rated it liked it

My interest in this novel was heighted by two outside pieces of information: that the author was a screenwriter and that she had never been to the area north of Georgian Bay where the novel is set (and had been criticized for it). The first interested me because the novel is “cinematic” and written in scenes—and moves forward at a compelling pace; the second, because I’ve been decrying the place that research has assumed in novel writing these days and completely accept the author’s counter that My interest in this novel was heighted by two outside pieces of information: that the author was a screenwriter and that she had never been to the area north of Georgian Bay where the novel is set (and had been criticized for it). The first interested me because the novel is “cinematic” and written in scenes—and moves forward at a compelling pace; the second, because I’ve been decrying the place that research has assumed in novel writing these days and completely accept the author’s counter that this is, after all, a work of the imagination. The setting is tangible and immediate; whether it is “real” doesn’t matter as far as I can tell.

The Tenderness of Wolves is essentially a mystery which takes place 1860s Ontario, on Georgian Bay, a large bay to the northeast of Lake Huron. The action takes place in Caulfield on Dove River, a small settlement with no buildings over 13 years old, in a Norwegian religious colony and on a trading post of the Hudson Bay Company—and in the snow-covered plains and forests lying between. A trader and ex-Company man is murdered in his house on the edge of Dove River and found by a neighboring farmer’s wife. The plot is complex with many characters and basically follows the actions of those who want to find out who murdered Laurent Jammet. The only first person voice is that of Mrs. Ross, who woman who discovers the body and whose son is suspected of the murder, but most of the novel it not first person narration.

The structure is interesting. There are four main sections, corresponding to the different settings and to the stages in the investigation. Within each section are subsections, using focusing on different characters. Mrs. Ross actually narrates the sections where she’s the main focus, but you see her from the outside when she appears in the other sections. The other sections use a sort of Jamesian center of consciousness, with the narrator getting into the head of another character. One can easily see the influence of film.

It’s a complex plot with lots of characters and no real interest in the man who was killed except that the wrong persons are being accused. I found this a page turner until maybe two-thirds of the way through where it suddenly occurred to me I didn’t really care about any of the characters. Nor did I care who killed the trapper since it was clear it wasn’t the two sympathetic characters who were accused. Nor were they in any real danger of punishment for a crime they didn't commit.

The role of “The Company” that controlled the fur trade in British North America, in the novel and in the community, is interesting and Company men are generally bad guys, except Moody who “figures it out” during the course of the novel. But that theme is generally ancillary and not really developed. (I was astounded when I first went shopping in Calgary years ago to find the main department store, referred to by initiates as “the Bay”, was that same company which Wikipedia describes as the “oldest commercial corporation in North America”.

My assessment of this novel: the structure is near perfect, the setting is powerful, the plot is OK, and the characters are skillfully imagined but ultimately bloodless. Mrs. Ross, for example, narrates bits of her past in an insane asylum where she evidently was the favorite of a nutty doctor (made me think of the main character in Atwood’s Alias Grace) but the background generates questions that are never answered. That’s true with other characters as well. Perhaps the difference is that the characterization in film, which of necessity relies on snippets, isn’t really enough for a really effective novel. ...more

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Nov 01, 2007 Mike rated it really liked it

This is easily one of the most beautifully written books I have read in a long time. The prose, particularly when used in the first person perspective of Mrs. Ross, really drew me in. This combined with the very human nature of both the story and characters made them human. Being from areas near and similar to the setting in the book I was surprised at the author’s ability to craft the feeling of the Northwood’s in winter, and particularly the feelings I had as a child during my first experience ...more

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Oct 09, 2009 ·Karen· rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canada

The cold snows of Canada seemed like a suitable place to be when the weather here is so wintry. Stef Penney's smoothly written debut novel is an engaging and pacy mystery set in mid nineteenth century Northern Territory. The solution to the crime is satisfying, but my main criticism is that the novel is over-loaded: there are too many minor characters, there's at least one sub-plot too many and there are motifs that Ms Penney seemed to get bored with: the tablet with the mysterious signs just go ...more

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Oct 05, 2018 Joy D rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, north-america, favorites, zck, mystery, journeys, 2018-top-25, reviewed, extreme-cold

In this historical fiction set in the Canadian wilderness in the mid-19th century, a French-Canadian trapper living near an isolated village is found murdered in his bed. Our protagonist, Mrs. Ross, discovers the body and alerts the authorities. Upon returning home she finds that her seventeen-year-old son, Francis, a friend of the murdered man, has disappeared. Suspicion falls upon her son and a mixed-race tracker. After her husband searches, but fails to find Francis, she and the tracker set o In this historical fiction set in the Canadian wilderness in the mid-19th century, a French-Canadian trapper living near an isolated village is found murdered in his bed. Our protagonist, Mrs. Ross, discovers the body and alerts the authorities. Upon returning home she finds that her seventeen-year-old son, Francis, a friend of the murdered man, has disappeared. Suspicion falls upon her son and a mixed-race tracker. After her husband searches, but fails to find Francis, she and the tracker set off to locate him and determine what happened. This book contains an intricately woven mystery, with several subordinate mysteries embedded into the main storyline. The Canadian legacy of fur-trapping and the Hudson Bay Company play an important role in the narrative.

This book is filled with striking characters, such as the ambitious and ruthless company-man in charge of the investigation, his inexperienced assistant whose heart is in the right place but makes questionable decisions, two daughters of the town magistrate that engender romantic feelings in the assistant, and a Native American guide serving as a personal protector. The author offers insight into human motivations, complexities and incongruities of character, and the yearning for answers, sometimes at the cost of inventing a solution.

It is divided into four sections with many short chapters using different narrative perspectives. The setting becomes a significant part of the story. The writing style is eloquent. The atmospheric descriptions of the harsh landscape of the Canadian winter deliver an almost palpable feeling of icy desolation. Like the titular wolf, people can be misunderstood or judged by their appearance. The author deftly explores this theme in subtle ways throughout the story, showing we are often wrong about that which we do not understand.

An amazing amalgamation of history, adventure, betrayal, tragic loss, and forbidden love, it is not solely a riveting mystery but also an impressive literary achievement. Highly recommended.
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Jul 30, 2012 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, ontario, historical-fiction, native-american, fiction, animals

I appreciated the imagination it took for a British writer to convey the hardscrabble existence of life in remote northern Ontario in the late 1860�s without ever having been there. The murder of a trapper and disappearance of Mrs. Ross� teenage son sets her, friends of the trapper, town officials, and representative of Hudson�s Bay Company on various paths to resolve the mystery, leading different parties to carry out dangerous treks to distant settlements in the middle of winter. We get a nice ...more

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Apr 02, 2008 Shana rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I picked this up at Penn Station one evening when I was unexpectedly stuck in NYC. I couldn't decide which book to buy, and my boyfriend made the decision for me. (I think he picked it because his last name means wolves.)

I started to read, and I was immediately struck by the interesting choice of having only one character in first person. The other chapters, though not in first person, are for the most part closely aligned with a single character. I could see why Penney chose Mrs. Ro I picked this up at Penn Station one evening when I was unexpectedly stuck in NYC. I couldn't decide which book to buy, and my boyfriend made the decision for me. (I think he picked it because his last name means wolves.)

I started to read, and I was immediately struck by the interesting choice of having only one character in first person. The other chapters, though not in first person, are for the most part closely aligned with a single character. I could see why Penney chose Mrs. Ross for her first person voice. I found her interesting and very easy to like and sympathize with.

That said, I never fell for this book, but even then, it is more complicated. I've read a few other reviews, and one said that though the reader never connected with the novel, she kept picking it up. A similar thing happened to me. In so many ways, I felt like the novel fell short. Like some other readers, I was quite surprised that the novel was a Costa award-winner. I just didn't feel it was award-winning good. However, I kept coming back to it. I mostly read it on the train to and from work, and I would be disappointed when I arrived.

In the end, though, I was just disappointed. The characters and story were interesting, as were some of the creative choices like the episodic structure and the choice to have one first person voice mixed in with the third person voices. Unfortunately, the writing was not on the same level as the the other elements, and in fact, the quality of the writing was a bit erratic. Some parts were far superior to others. Furthermore, as the novel went on and each chapter had its own mini-cliffhangers, I got a little annoyed. It felt like I was watching a TV show (Another reviewer mentioned a soap opera.) instead of reading a book, and the cliffhangers weren't all that exciting, either. Most elements of the mystery were way too transparent. Another big problem for me was the loose ends Penney left. I have no problem with loose ends on principle, but I just felt like she was leaving something open for a sequel. I don't want to feel that way about a book.

Even with my reservations and my disappointments, I don't think that reading this book was a waste of time. I'm confident that most readers will not be sorry.

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Feb 22, 2010 Tara Chevrestt rated it it was ok

Shelves: historical-fiction, canada, library, mystery

First of all, let me make it clear.. I read the whole thing and I am still scratching my head in confusion. What begins as a mystery in a trapper's cabin in 1867 ends with me wrinkling my nose in distaste in 2010.

Laurent Jammett is found dead in his cabin. His throat is slashed. A few things are missing. Whodunit and why? It takes 300 some pages and around 25 characters with their entire life stories, thoughts, and desires to answer that question. And the answer left me rather disappointed. I s ...more

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Oct 22, 2016 MomToKippy marked it as abandoned-or-try-again-later

I am putting this aside for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that I get no sense of place and time! This story takes place in the 1860s in the Northern Territory. That appeals to me. But numerous times I had to flip back to the beginning of the book to verify the time period and location. I did not get a feel for either! Also, I was not thrilled with the short chapters each told from a different viewpoint or with numerous different characters. Again, I had to keep flipping back to get som ...more

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Jun 22, 2008 Julie Christine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, mystery-crime-thriller, canada-theme-setting

Outstanding debut novel from this Scottish author. Penney captures the voices, terrain, and myriad of cultures of the remote and vast Hudson Bay territory. The bitter chill of winter 1867 matches the chill of murder and suspicion that invades a tiny town. An excellent read!

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Jul 28, 2011 Shoma Patnaik rated it it was ok

Shelves: canada, rural, adventure, 2011

It was the setting that drew me to this novel, but no matter how beautiful Stef Penney's depiction of the frozen wilderness of 19th century Canada, it couldn't salvage the book.

From the beginning, this book read like the middling novelization of a possibly interesting movie. I found out later that the author is a scriptwriter so that might have something to do with it. The problem is basically indifferent writing and incomplete characters. The protagonist, Mrs. Ross could have been i It was the setting that drew me to this novel, but no matter how beautiful Stef Penney's depiction of the frozen wilderness of 19th century Canada, it couldn't salvage the book.

From the beginning, this book read like the middling novelization of a possibly interesting movie. I found out later that the author is a scriptwriter so that might have something to do with it. The problem is basically indifferent writing and incomplete characters. The protagonist, Mrs. Ross could have been interesting but I just couldn't see her at all. Her narrations in first-person couldn't merge very well with the rest of the book, in third person. There were far too many storylines fighting to be heard within the book and since they had more or less bland characters, you can't really get involved with any of them. The subplot with Line and the one with Francis and Jammet could have been done away with, or at least written better. Randomly inserting token homosexual characters is very tiresome. Is it so difficult to create a character who's both gay and well-thought out? Unfortunately Penney isn't alone in this.

The Native American characters are equally uni-dimensional; you're just repeatedly told of the "half-breeds" and how alien and savage they are without attempting to give them real personalities. Kahon'wes had promise but he barely saunters into the story, and as little other than an alcoholic. Alcoholism was and is a serious concern in Indian communities, but Penney handles it clumsily - in her story alcohol seems to only induce Indians into making an Olympic sport out of knifing white settlers. Perhaps the author had good intentions but they just don't translate well into writing. I don't know if the author wanted to make Parker "mysterious" but the attempt has instead resulted in a potentially interesting character becoming yet another bland element in the story. Who is Parker? What moves him? What does he fear and what does he like? You get nothing. The ending was just plain lazy, as if the author couldn't wait to be done with the book and just added something vaguely philosophical to wrap it up.

All in all, this would have been a better movie than a book. At least the nature scenes would be good. ...more

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Nov 21, 2017 Stef Rozitis rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2001-2010, read-around-the-world, set-canada, read-women-2017, historical

This was a very interesting book, sensitively written and complex and managed to have elements of romance in it without putting me off too much (anyone who follows my reviews will be surprised by this). It's a tad on the bleak and tragic side, although at least it constantly humanises and rehumanises characters.

Two of my gripes were the overall negativity of it (everything has to be shit, fall apart, result in disconnection and loss. All desires must remain unfulfilled). I suppose in This was a very interesting book, sensitively written and complex and managed to have elements of romance in it without putting me off too much (anyone who follows my reviews will be surprised by this). It's a tad on the bleak and tragic side, although at least it constantly humanises and rehumanises characters.

Two of my gripes were the overall negativity of it (everything has to be shit, fall apart, result in disconnection and loss. All desires must remain unfulfilled). I suppose in some ways that is better than fluffy positivity, but not everyone will have the stamina to read it and at the end (after persisting so long) I was left feeling vaguely disappointed (less so than with for example "Burial rites" by Hannah Kent but still). I don't like it when the main message of a book seems to be that suffering and disappointment are inevitable and that there is nothing much else to the human condition.

The other gripe was that even though there was a sprinkling of strong and relateable female characters, I don't actually think this book passes the Bechdel test. That is it was a book about men relating to men and women relating to men and there was no female relationship developed ANYWHERE in the book, each woman seemed to be an island surrounded only by men or unwilling to reach other to each other. I don't accept this as believable AND I don't enjoy reading it. I'm not saying every book needs to throw in a lesbian romance (though I would enjoy reading that) but something...a friendship, a mother daughter relationship, sisters that actually get along, allies, ANYTHING!

I didn't like the constant shifting between first and third person, I have heard it suggested that only having first person from one character can be considered "boring" by some readers. I find it interferes with my "suspended disbelief" to have the shifts in POV this radical and abrupt and I thought that was a weakness in otherwise very strong writing. Perhaps then, there were also too many "main" characters.

Ok so I have said what I didn't like. What I did like was the humanity of the diverse characters (male, female, white, "Indian", shifting ethnic boundaries (and other types of boundaries), mad, gay, sexually transgressive etc). The story gave us just enough information without making everything too clear (and it unfolded masterfully). I've critiqued the negativity but I suppose there were traces of hope and meaning within it. Love is a complex thing and connection is difficult. Loyalties shift, people don't fully know themselves. The character of Susannah was a stereotype but I would have wanted to see more of Maria. She is left on the outskirts of the story to some degree.

In any case I would recommend this book as a lot better than average. I will read more from Stef Penney (with the fantastic first name) especially if it is more recently written than this. I hope she does more with female characters in future works. Mrs Ross is a damn good start. ...more

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Mar 04, 2014 Linda rated it it was amazing

My sister recommended this during a Sunday afternoon phone chat. My husband found it for me at Sequoya Library just before they closed for the day. Finished it Monday night. Impossible to go slow — esp. being sick and doing nothing but reading. Penney is a screenwriter and lives in Edinburgh, the locale where many of the people in this story lived before they went to Canada where the story is set.

Late in the 1860s in a small town in Canada, a semi-disabled trapper is murdered. A loca My sister recommended this during a Sunday afternoon phone chat. My husband found it for me at Sequoya Library just before they closed for the day. Finished it Monday night. Impossible to go slow — esp. being sick and doing nothing but reading. Penney is a screenwriter and lives in Edinburgh, the locale where many of the people in this story lived before they went to Canada where the story is set.

Late in the 1860s in a small town in Canada, a semi-disabled trapper is murdered. A local woman finds the body and alerts the town magistrate who sends for representatives of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the man’s former employer, to investigate. Not long after, the woman realizes her 17-year-old son — a friend of the dead man — has disappeared, making him the prime suspect. Until an Indian acquaintance of the dead man is discovered at the murder site.

Thus is set in motion an adventure that might have come from Jack London with its evocation of the struggle to survive out in the wilderness in winter. Who committed the murder and why is only one thread in Penney’s tale of tangled lives. Dozens of characters weave in and out of the chapters, revealing new facets of themselves and deepening the mystery. Every character is a fully-drawn, nuanced portrait. It’s noteworthy in a book with a number of female characters — white and Indian — that Penney never plays down their strengths, yet they don’t feel like modern feminists thrown into a 19th C. setting.

The young man goes in search of his friend’s murderer. His mother and the Indian suspect take off after the boy. The Company men follow them. I must say there is nothing more perfect than reading about people searching, tracking, camping, getting lost, and bobbing and weaving in the winter in Canada as we wait for our own cold, endless winter to end. Unbelievable as it seems, Penney apparently has never been to Canada but I found her descriptions of the landscape and the weather formidable. Penney also had the right tone for every scene: She ranged from a dry, self-deprecating humor that one of the characters uses to describe her life in an insane asylum in Edinburgh, to an eloquent appraisal of the lives of the Indians after white men arrive and begin the big business of fur trading.

A wonderful book that I hated to finish, especially since it appears Penney has only written one other.
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Jul 18, 2010 Merty rated it it was amazing

I LOVED this book, one of the best books I've read this year. If only more books were written like this!!! This was the best book to read while there is a heatwave outside, as this story tells the tale of an isolated settlement at Dove River during a snowy wasteland with wolves. This book was a thriller/mystery and historical romance set in a less populated backwood of Canada. Told from different points of view that kept me reading late into the night. Since there where a constant change of poin ...more

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Nov 06, 2018 Anna rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I’m a little undecided on this rating, two or three. I’d prefer two and a half. It is well written the characters are developed and the environment well described.

There’s an awful lot of characters in the book, all with their own story. There’s also an great deal of mystery, either in the characters’ back story or in their current one. Their stories are all in the third person, except one, who is written in the first person. Not really sure why, doesn’t add anything.

With ...more

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Sep 19, 2018 Silver rated it it was amazing

Shelves: lgbt, best-books, historical-fiction, mystery, survival

This book was fantastic from the first page. Brilliantly written, I was hooked from the start and it never let me go to the very end. I loved the complexity of the characters and all the interweaving storylines. A very well developed book with many layers to it.

I also very much enjoyed how the book told the story from multiple points of view. It was as if each chapter was a piece of the puzzle slowly coming together but in addition to dropping more clues it also raised more questions. Mysteries ...more

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Play Book Tag: The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney - 5 stars	10	35	Oct 12, 2018 01:37PM
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About Stef Penney

Stef Penney

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Stef Penney grew up in the Scottish capital and turned to film-making after a degree in Philosophy and Theology from Bristol University. She made three short films before studying Film and TV at Bournemouth College of Art, and on graduation was selected for the Carlton Television New Writers Scheme. She has also written and directed two short films; a BBC 10 x 10 starring Anna Friel and a Film Cou ...more