The Wolf Border - Softcover

Hall, Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062208489 ISBN 13: 9780062208484

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2016

Synopsis

From the award-winning author of The Electric Michelangelo, one of the most decorated young British writers working today, comes a literary masterpiece: a breathtaking work that beautifully and provocatively surveys the frontiers of the human spirit and our animal drives.

For almost a decade, zoologist Rachel Caine has lived a solitary existence far from her estranged family in England, monitoring wolves in a remote section of Idaho as part of a wildlife recovery program. But a surprising phone call takes her back to the peat and wet light of the Lake District where she grew up. The eccentric Earl of Annerdale has a controversial scheme to reintroduce the Grey Wolf to the English countryside, and he wants Rachel to spearhead the project. Though she's skeptical, the earl's lands are close to the village where she grew up, and where her aging mother now lives.

While the earl's plan harks back to an ancient idyll of untamed British wilderness, Rachel must contend with modern-day realities--health and safety issues, public anger and fear, cynical political interests. But the return of the Grey unexpectedly sparks her own regeneration.

Exploring the fundamental nature of wilderness and wildness, The Wolf Border illuminates both our animal nature and humanity: sex, love, conflict, and the desire to find answers to the question of our existence--the emotions, desires, and needs that rule our lives.

About this title

Review

"Where does freedom end and wildness begin? Self-preservation and intimacy? Sex and commitment? These are the gray borders Hall inspects...The real story is the one about one woman's coming to terms, not only with her family, but with her own untameable nature."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"An absorbing portrait of a woman and her conflicted relationships with family, homeland, and identity."--Booklist

"THE WOLF BORDER tracks Rachel through romantic and familial entanglements, childbirth and a series of dramatic events surrounding the wolf project in Cumbria. The plotting and characterization are crisp and effective, but perhaps the greatest pleasure is her prose."--Chicago Tribune

"I imagine that THE WOLF BORDER -- stylish, intelligent and a cracking read -- will mark the point at which [Hall] stops being promising, and becomes something of a star."--Sunday Times (London)

"A thrilling tale of politics and power ... Compulsively absorbing and masterfully plotted, [THE WOLF BORDER] confirms Hall as one of our finest fiction writers."--Daily Mail (UK)

"The skills that Sarah Hall demonstrates in her highly anticipated fifth novel are significant and profound... So it is that the descriptions of altered or threatened landscapes for which she is celebrated ... convey beauty but resist the picturesque, instead posing questions about it."--The Guardian

This is a book overflowing with life and history, propelled by a writer who engages all the reader's senses."--Telegraph

"Sarah Hall is wonderful at pinpointing the push and pull of loyalties, the way a person can be undone or remade by the force of fresh emotion. She's equally brilliant at tackling the notions of land ownership in an increasingly urbanised society... [A] graceful, visceral, utterly compelling read."--Sunday Express (London)

"Vivid and visceral."--The Times (London)

"[A] writer of sensual, muscular prose about the liminal spaces between civilisation and wilderness ... Everything about this setting provides a perfect playground for Hall's gorgeously visceral prose ... As the plot heads towards a crash, it's hard to decide which is more frightening: the untameable, or to be tamed."--The Independent on Sunday

Book Description

An incredible novel from Sarah Hall, one of the most garlanded writers of her generation.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062208489
• ISBN 13: 9780062208484
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464