Wilding

by Melanie Tem

Eyes of the wolf. Eyes of the woman.

On a moonlit night in Denver a young girl runs--half transformed, half starving, half innocent. Behind her stretches a legacy of strong women, each possessed by the girl and the terror of the changing.

Save her. Or consume her.

Four sisters lived in four houses. Now their female descendants, steeped in blood and sacrifice and rage, cling to their essence and their ancient rituals while Deborah, runaway, uninvited, threatens their survival.

The family of hunters hunts her down--racing on all fours through the streets of the city and the canyons, gripped by their own quarrels and regrets and their desperate, essential love for one another. They are driven by the need to run, to hunt, driven by the insistent itching of the hair that lies hidden between the flesh and the skin.

Genres: Horror, Werewolves, Fantasy, Fiction, Paranormal, LGBT, Supernatural

332 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 3, 1992

About the author

Melanie Kubachko was born and raised in rural northwestern Pennsylvania. She received a degree at Allegheny College and went on to earn a master's degree in social work from the University of Denver. Apart from a varied career in social work she has published short fiction in numerous publications, including Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Skin of the Soul, and Final Shadows. Her work has also been included in such anthologies as Women of Darkness and Women of the West.

Married to Steve Rasnic Tem.

Reviews

[s · Rating 5 out of 5]

a sickeningly violent exploration of urban ennui, self-loathing, and melancholy among a brutal clan of matriarchal werewolves is not the kind of horror writing most ppl are not looking to read when they want to read horror - it’s too cruel & feminine & violent - and is impossible to recommend to most people - it’s too cruel & feminine & violent - but for anyone on its narrow, unaccommodating wavelength i hope it will strike like lightning. horror shouldn’t be an exercise in cliche or insular, self-satisfied mimicry but something so idiosyncratic and visceral that it overwhelms the reader. it’s about incandescent emotion - love, lust, hate, fear - as much as it is moments of awful loss or mutilation or terror. or it should be. i don’t think a lot of writers understand this, not on an instinctive level, not in a way that guides their work, because most horror is cliche mimicry for horror fans. but some of these dell abyss books got there and ppl still read them - so somewhere, someone is still writing like this.

[Briar Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

If BLACK AMBROSIA (which I read and reviewed back in November) is the vampire novel to beat, this is the werewolf novel to beat. Like BLACK AMBROSIA, WILDING covers incredibly potent emotional territory and explores gender, trauma, sexuality, mental illness, poverty, and outsider status in nuanced and intriguing ways beneath its veneer of late 80s/early 90s pulp paperback splatter horror. Both novels also imagine their chosen archetypal monster as a sexually abused and exploited, homeless teenage girl, albeit one who can devour her tormentors and innocent people alike.

However, where BLACK AMBROSIA's vampire, Angelina, is such a solitary creature that she's never sure if there are *any* other vampires in the world, anywhere, WILDING's Deborah is a runaway from a whole family of matriarchal lycanthropes. Her mother Lydia, grandmother Ruth, and great-grandmother Mary all have their own story arcs and alternating point of view chapters, and it's here, in its messy, uncomfortable excavation of abuse cycles and twisted family/cult dynamics that WILDING really shines. In this, it reminds me more of another favorite horror novel from November 2019, EGO HOMINI LUPUS. Both books refuse to allow their reader access to the interior life of any comfortably innocent, likable character, while simultaneously refusing to let even their worst villains be without recognizable, sympathetic loyalties, emotions, hurts, and moments of tenderness. They plunge us into snarling, multi-generational webs of characters who are both abuser and abused, murderer and victim, rapist and raped, traumatized survivor and serious threat to others' survival.

Unlike EGO HOMINI LUPUS, though, WILDING takes a very cautiously optimistic stance on the possibility of breaking these cycles and potentially redeeming oneself. It is hard, Tem suggests, and thankless, and most people cannot or will not do it. But there is always a narrow sliver of a chance to be better, and to protect others from suffering in the same way all over again.

Also reminiscent of EGO HOMINI LUPUS, and appropriately for a werewolf novel, WILDING revels in detailed descriptions of bodies, bodily fluids, bodily transformation, sex, violence, and death. This isn't a book for the squeamish. I love Tem's evocations of the physical, visceral ways emotions like anxiety, rage, and love can manifest, though, and I love her gorgeous digression about deep time, evolution, and the changing landscape of the Colorado Rockies in the last chapter. A love for nature shines through this novel; the multiple graphic disembowelments and scenes of werewolf fighting or predation are only a facet of that. Tem has a clear respect for, and knowledge of, the mountains where she's chosen to set her story, and for the city of Denver as well.

As a final note, I'll remark that, while I adore many monster novels in which the reality/literal-ness of the supernatural elements is left ambiguous, I also find it refreshing that for all its thematic and psychological depth, the were-women of WILDING definitely, actually, no-kidding turn into giant wolves that eat people. It is not a shared delusion. They are not a clan of cannibals who just *think* they can turn into wolves (although this concept is briefly, subtly toyed with towards the beginning of the novel). It *is* a metaphor for uncontrollable rage, passion, and trauma reactions, but it is also meant to be taken at face value as-read: in the world of this story, there are werewolves. Women who are angry and hurt enough, and/or who come from a line of werewolves, can turn into beasts if they put on a wolfskin at the full moon. Or, if they're particularly powerful, any time they want to do it. There are plenty of scenes where people turn into wolves in this novel; don't worry. (And I enjoyed the focus on more ancient werewolf lore-- spells, unguents, magic wolfskins-- over the contemporary Universal Studios derived stuff about silver bullets, being turned into a werewolf by the bite of a werewolf, etc.)

[Melissa Helwig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wilding is a saga about a family of female werewolves, focusing on the family living in present-day Colorado. The clan has been split in two: the city family, living in a quartet of brick houses built by their ancestors, with matriarch Mary, her daughter Ruth, Ruth's daughter Lydia and Lydia's pregnant teen daughter Deborah; and the country family, living in a cave in the mountains, controlled by Mary's sister Hannah, and her several daughters (there are no sons because if a boy is born, they kill him, no husbands because they are only used to make babies and then killed). Deborah runs away when the family decides she isn't ready for the initiation, prompting them to search for her.

The plot focuses more on the dysfunctional family and subplots (Deborah living on the streets with a homeless man, Ruth and her cousin Marguerite attempting to take over the family, Lydia's new friendship/lesbian relationship with a co-worker) than it does on the werewolf aspect. It felt as if the werewolf plot was incidental and a few kills were described in passing.

The story of each woman is told in alternating chapters, making it a quick read when you want to find out what happens to a particular character and have to read through three chapters to return to her. And the mountain clan is barely mentioned. It would be more interesting if the main characters featured a few from the city and a few from the country, instead of all of them being from the city.

The description of Colorado and the houses, caves, mountains and werewolves, is very well-written, making me feel like I'm there and witnessing a person turn into a wolf. But at times the story gets bogged down with description. For instance, Tem will be writing about a major event - like Mary finding Deborah - and stop in the middle to write pages of description about a memory Mary has about that particular place. It becomes very distracting and irritating.

The characters are interesting, but being werewolves, they seem like they have no emotions. Most of the minor characters are so nice to them, but it's like they can't comprehend the kindness and lash out at them instead, making it difficult to like the characters. But I guess I'm just used to the werewolves being the villains instead of the protagonists.

Wilding is okay as a family saga, not-so-great as a werewolf novel. But I enjoy family sagas, so I'm giving it a 3. If you want to read a good werewolf novel, try The Howling by Gary Brandner, The Wolfen by Whitley Strieber or Ravenous by Ray Garton.

Read more of my reviews at http://littlemisszombie.blogspot.com.

[Judah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this when it was first published, about 20 years ago and I seem to recall liking it....I'll see if that recollection is correct!


**Later**

I feel like I *should* have liked this better. It has a lot of things I like...werewolves, matriarchal lines, pretty dark. Okay, maybe three doesn't qualify as "a lot," but whatever. While I liked it enough to keep reading till the end, I was left feeling somewhat let-down by it. Maybe it was the fact that NONE of the characters are likeable or all that sympathetic. I love a troubled/conflicted/etc character, but if they're simply unlikeable? Not so much.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Families and werewolves. Separately, either can cause pain, suffering, grief...even death. But combined, indescribable horrors, under the guise of love and family perpetuity, occur. The author's social worker past is reflected in the plot, via her knowledge of cruelty, love/hate, and dysfunction. Scattered throughout the book, her writing style switches to short staccatos of jabbing, insanity-laced descriptive bursts. Very few warm-fuzzies to be found in this tale, as the majority of characters operate in a kill or be killed mode...yet even the most vicious ones reveal occasional glimmers of caring/empathy. A mentally challenging read.

[Mely · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feminist take on werewolf myth I've always regretted selling off; glad to find another copy. Gory, violent, not particularly kind to its werewolf matriarchs or the men they're involved with: in Tem's world, familial ties aren't necessarily familial love, and love doesn't mean a happy ending. If biology's destiny, destiny's a monster, or maybe just a mother, red in tooth and claw.

[Zade · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book looking for a werewolf book for my daughter. I won't be passing it on to her--far too many disturbing images and a lot of graphic sexual violence. It is, of course, a horror novel, so a certain amount of, well, horror, is to be expected. If that is your cup of tea, this might be a more enjoyable book for you.

While this is, at the most basic level, a novel about werewolves, it is really about a multigenerational family of women who also happen to be werewolves. The family dynamics are the focus of the book, so in a sense, it is really a book about child abuse, the damaged adults abusive families create, and how the cycle of violence gets passed from one generation to the next. This is the context in which the story is most interesting.

Tem has a poetic, fluid style of writing that verges on the hallucinogenic. Descriptions of events from multiple points of view, one of which suffers from dementia, make the plot (of which there is little) hard to follow. The story comes together more as a series of impressions than a coherent narrative. While this style echoes the experiences of the characters and gives the novel a dream-like, nightmarish feeling, it also detracts at times from the reading experience. There were several points at which I merely skimmed. There wasn't enough connection to any character to make me care enough to read long descriptive passages about the river bottoms in Denver, for example.

None of this is to suggest that Ms. Tem is not a skilled writer. She clearly knows her way around language and has a good idea of how to blend story and ethos. This is simply not a book to my taste, either in style or content. Others will likely get more from it.

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not your typical horror novel. Yes, it is gruesome and quite scary. But if you're expecting something like Stephen King or Lovecraft or even Anne Rice, you will be very disappointed and confused. Melanie Tem's book are all dreamy and strange and her scares are harder earned.

This book is an allegory about familial relationships, being female, cycles of abuse, tradition, sexuality, loss and the point when one becomes so broken their is absolutely no chance of being healed. I think it's hard to really "get" this book unless you know about the author's history as a social worker and foster mom. She really captures the sad and peculiar part of our culture that allows the perpetual mastication of young woman, who give give birth to children that grow up to do the same things. However, Tem takes the biggest swipes at families--the dysfunction, abuse and grotesqueries families perpetuate, either from mental illness, lack of understanding or just a plain old mean streak.

You might not love or even like this book, but it's one that tells a story no one wants to hear. There are no heroes and the villians are legion, and though not blameless, they are the natural consequence of how we willfully chose to allow our society to function the way it does. The end does a great job of tying everything together, but it's a book that makes you work.

[Debra]

Stephen King endorsed the entire Dell Abyss Horror line. Here is his blurb:

"Thank you for introducing me to the remarkable line of novels currently being issued under Dell's Abyss imprint. I have given a great many blurbs over the last twelve years or so, but this one marks two firsts: first unsolicited blurb (I called you) and the first time I have blurbed a whole line of books. In terms of quality, production, and plain old story-telling reliability (that's the bottom line, isn't it), Dell's new line is amazingly satisfying...a rare and wonderful bargain for readers. I hope to be looking into the Abyss for a long time to come."

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

This has been on my 'to-read' shelves for years, finally got round to reading it - but it wasn't for me.

A werewolf novel detailing the lives of an ancestral matriarchal family, it never really goes anywhere. There are a lot of generations of family, with chapters following different were-women, but essentially they're all incredibly similar and it often becomes really tedious reading. The prose is quite stark and clinical.

There's an awful lot of visceral explicit language and content, but it never really feels necessary. The characters are very flat and the story doesn't really go anywhere, it failed to engage me. I imagine at the time this was written (1990's) it was quite striking and different but it definitely hasn't aged well.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four sisters each build a house on a single city block in Denver during the final years of the 19th century. Each house stands alone on its side of the the block, and a brick wall makes a compound of the overall structure. The houses are the grandest homes the sisters have ever had. Before Denver they lived at various times in the woods of Pennsylvania, an island off the coast of the the Carolinas, and in the Florida Everglades. Their family originated in caves and dugouts high in the Carpathian mountains.

The four sisters are the "citified" branch of a clan of werewolves, most of whom have taken up residence in the mountains and canyons outside of Denver. The mountain dwellers look down on their relatives' decision to move into a city. They think they are putting on airs, But it is to these four houses that they gather for important events, such as when a girl child comes of age. The novel opens with Deborah, the child of Lydia and great-grand daughter of Mary, the clan's ruling matriarch, ready to celebrate her fifteenth birthday. Deborah is also pregnant, having allowed herself to be gang banged at a drunken teenage party. But something goes wrong. Mary declares that Deborah is not ready to transform. Deborah goes on the run, disappearing into the street life of late 20th century Denver. Much else starts to go wrong, as well.

As Tolstoy said, "All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Wilding is about a very unhappy family. Lydia, Deborah's mother, has never successfully transformed and lives her life as a drudge to her older female relatives, cooking them meals they don't enjoy and cleaning human and animal remains from the four now largely abandoned houses, as well as the vomit and excrement her great-grandmother leaves indiscriminately wherever she sleeps or prowls. Lydia's mother and aunt are considering a takeover scheme, but the mountain clan has plans of its own. Pregnant Deborah is living under a bridge with homeless people. Lydia must decide if responding to the lesbian overtures of her coworker at the bookstore where she is employed is worth the inherent risks.

Where are the menfolk? We learn about the men in Lydia's memory of Deborah's birth.

At first Lydia was crazy with relief. They won't take her. They'll have no use for her blood to drink, or for her new flesh, or for tallow and unguent from the melting of her body.

Male children are sacrificed at birth and their fathers are usually consumed after they ejaculate. Werewolves, it seems, are a fertile bunch, although only the mountain dwellers still give birth to litters rather than single children.

Tem does savagery well. She makes no pretense that there is anything noble about these creatures. They are dangerous wild animals, existing in a state of fear infused anger. They flinch at every human touch, fearful of its seductive appeal. It is against their nature. This is Mary when she catches of glimpse of her great granddaughter running on all fours .

...Mary's heart leap[ed]
Anger. Wildness. Anger in the streets. Anger in the veins. Anger slicking the outsides of buildings, turning coppery the panels of reflective glass, streaking brown and red the concrete and steel. Anger pooling in the bedrooms, kitchens, hallways, stairways, cellars, attics, closets where people loved and where they died...Mary knew: Never enough anger. Never enough blood. Even though the world reeked of it...

Later we get this edifying moment with Deborah's grandmother. "It had been a long time since Ruth had tasted the sweet hallucinogenic tissue of a baby's heart..."

But Tem is not writing a gross-out horror novel. There is no shortage of outrageous images and episodes -- Dachshund lovers should not read this book -- but Wilding is at heart of family saga. It is as bloodthirsty and unrelenting as its characters and completely engrossing.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Abyss #23

Tem's first novel, Prodigal, was one of the inaugural titles of the Abyss imprint, and it left a strong one with me. A social worker in her full-time job, Tem drew on family dynamics and dysfunction to create a stunning horror novel that was more about people and their social constructs than it was about the horror. I expected something similar from Wilding, and while I found it, somehow the story itself was disappointing.

Part of it is there aren't any truly sympathetic main characters in the book. There are two secondary characters who serve as redeeming, but they're there mostly to drive the other main characters, and in one case, they're completely expendable. There are moments where you think the characters will have some redemption, but for the most part, they're all terrible people making terrible choices. It seems clear this is intentional, that this is Tem's way of showing how a self-destructive family passes down those poor traits to the children, perpetuating a cycle of dysfunction, but it didn't give me a reason to want to read the story. By the end of the story, one of the main characters makes the only worthwhile choice in the entire book, but it comes so late in the game (it's literally on the last page), it comes too late to change my opinion of the rest of the story.

Horror-wise, this is a story about werewolves, which I discovered is a lore with which I'm not that familiar. It feels like Tem created a lot of her mythology on her own, because I didn't recall a lot of that from other books. Then again, werewolves aren't that interesting to me, so I don't really know that lore off the top of my head. I thought maybe Tem would tell the story without using the word "werewolf", but she did. In a way, I think it might have been more interesting had she hinted at it without explicitly saying it.

The themes of Wilding make it worth reading, but the characters prevent readers from making a good connection with the story itself. In some ways, I would recommend it, but in others, I would tell people to avoid it. I guess I would recommend it with caveats that it may be a difficult book to crack.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

crazy unhinged good, someone smarter than me could unpack reams on how it uses blood, shit, organs, and the cycle of abuse leaving negative-image dysfunctions in intergenerational webs to trace the historiography of family as feminine violence and passion itself. the extremely distinctly punctuated motivic use of the heart as a locus of sexualized but also familial consumption in the climax had me losing it, incredible that it seems to flow so naturally from the fleshy-symbolic order of the narrative, when in most other hands a gesture like that might seem so, for lack of a better word, tryhard. single-handedly restored my desire to read books lol

[scarr · Rating 4 out of 5]

disgusting, disturbing! (complimentary)

Melanie Tem's wikipedia linked to an interview with her about how she considers her work dark fantasy rather than horror because, "I'm not trying to frighten people. If anything, I guess I would say I try to disturb people, to shake up how people look at the world." I'm going to be thinking over this distinction for a long while.

https://web.archive.org/web/201812210...

[Lin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if I liked this! It was so dark and so visceral and so violent. There are so many gut punch moments that sometimes I thought I was getting inured to them. but I'm still thinking about it the next day. this book sits with you, sticky like blood. It paints an image of a violent all-female world with run-on prose that assaults you and makes you feel drunk.

[Rick Powell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one captivated me, but still unsure if I like it or not. More violent and more sexually explicit than I expected, but it was hard for me to care for the characters except Deborah. Melanie Tem’s writing is smooth and refined, but I could not get into the story after the third act.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

love this novel!
perfectly blends crazy supernatural horror with the writer's real world experience as an inner-city social worker.

[Alex Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorite horror novels ever. Perfect synthesis of supernatural horror and realistic family drama.

[Cris Morris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoy a good werewolf story, but this wasn't one. Far too much exposition, far too little werewolf.

[johnny dangerously · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible, evocative novel that puts to shame much of contemporary urban fantasy.

[Douglas Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

How is it that we do not talk all the time about how this is the greatest work of werewolf literature ever written?

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

A grotesque yet highbrow horror. This author is phenomenal.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was very weird but overall a decent werewolf story!

Popsugar Reading Challenge: A book published the year you were born (1992)

[Finn · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

4.25/5

This is a hidden gem of a novel.


Real quick though here are CWs that I can think of (I couldn't find CWs for this book anywhere and I would've liked to know before reading): detailed gore, child death, parent death, animal death, abuse of many forms, domestic violence, eating disorder, sexual assault, r*pe, murder, sexual content, genital mutilation, teenage pregnancy, kind of bestiality? (werewolf?), vomiting

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

By far the best werewolf story I've ever read. Impossible to put down -- you must choose between reading and showering and I'm sorry, but there will be no shower as I have not finished it yet.

[DAISY READS HORROR · Rating 2 out of 5]

It felt like we were on a never ending chase throughout the whole story. Nonetheless it was still a decent read. Sort of had a gothic 80's feel.

[Darinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Horror - Werewolves

Supernatural, horror, and drama combine in this entertaining novel about werewolves.

[Tatum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never wanted to be a werewolf less and felt like a werewolf more. The only thing of it's kind that's actually scared me