Tell the Wolves I'm Home in Crazy Challenge Connection

Mar 01, 2013 Chaitra rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, bildungsroman, young-adult, lgbt

Given that I hate Young Adult genre as a rule, Tell the Wolves I'm Home comes as a pleasant surprise. I loved this book. I avoided it for a while because I have a mortal fear of book wolves post Twilight. But I'm happy to say this book has nothing to do with werewolves. It's rather a beautifully written coming of age YA book that tackles an adult theme with the maturity and the complexity it deserves.

June Elbus, the fourteen years old narrator, would love to have been born in medieval times, her Given that I hate Young Adult genre as a rule, Tell the Wolves I'm Home comes as a pleasant surprise. I loved this book. I avoided it for a while because I have a mortal fear of book wolves post Twilight. But I'm happy to say this book has nothing to do with werewolves. It's rather a beautifully written coming of age YA book that tackles an adult theme with the maturity and the complexity it deserves.

June Elbus, the fourteen years old narrator, would love to have been born in medieval times, her ambition is to be a falconer and her deepest, darkest secret is that she's in love with her uncle and godfather, Finn. Finn is dying of AIDS - this is the 80s when AIDS has just begun to rare its ugly head. After he dies, she becomes aware of the existence of his boy friend, Toby, who her family believes is the culprit. She hates him at first, believing her family's stand on him, but gradually befriends him for his own sake. Throughout this, she has a difficult relationship with her older sister Greta, who used to be her best friend. But Greta grew prettier and June grew weirder and the relationship was fraught.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home deals with some difficult subjects: AIDS when it was still taboo, the apportioning of blame, the forbidden nature of love, jealousy and redemption, and the fallibility of usually kind-hearted adults. It deals with them beautifully, never once overwhelming me, the reader with the tragedy of it all, never once manipulating my emotions. The prose is lyrical but understated. It would be very easy to slip into melodrama, but Brunt steers clear of that throughout this tearjerker of a book. June Elbus is a very relatable character, and her feelings, her love for the weird, for her uncle Finn is palpable. The other characters too are accessible and their motivations are explained well. None of them are perfect, not even Finn, but they're all coming from a place I could understand. I loved Greta and Toby and their respective relationships with June.

All in all, I'll be looking forward to the next Carol Rifka Brunt story, because this one has proven to me that she can indeed write a near perfect book, in my least favorite genre no less. ...more

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Jul 17, 2024 Olivermagnus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2024, zjuly-2024, x7, ya

Tell the Wolves I'm Home portrays an awkward young girl’s struggle to comprehend love in a time and a culture when AIDS awareness was just beginning. Fourteen-year-old June Elbus feels closer to her uncle Finn than anyone else on earth. June’s love for Finn will not die even though Finn is. It’s 1987, and he has AIDS. In the final months of his life, Finn spends Sunday afternoons painting a portrait of June and her sister, Greta, that he titles “Tell the Wolves I’m Home.” The girls’ mother, Finn ...more

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Oct 30, 2013 Anne ✨ Finds Joy rated it it was ok

I found the story line odd, and the characters un-relatable for the most part. The characters and their relationships were not believable enough, and they didn't draw me into the story. I kept wanting the plot to progress to something more than it did. Unsatisfying read for me.. ...more

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Feb 26, 2017 Sushicat rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

When June's Uncle Finn dies of AIDS, she struggles to come to grips with her feelings and her relationships with her family. The one person who feels the loss as keenly as herself is Finn's friend, which he has kept hidden all these years. A very moving story. ...more

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Mar 12, 2016 Megalion rated it really liked it

Shelves: year-read-2014, from-shelfari

Interesting trip back in time to 1981-82. I was too young to be aware of it but the AIDs crisis was still a huge scary thing that people were afraid of it like leprosy.

It's about a girl whose uncle who has full blown AIDs and her battle to have a relationship with him.

The origin of the title is rather interesting. ...more

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