The Wolf Border - Softcover

Sarah Hall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571299555 ISBN 13: 9780571299553

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2015

Synopsis

For almost a decade Rachel Caine has turned her back on home, kept distant by family disputes and her work monitoring wolves on an Idaho reservation. But now, summoned by the eccentric Earl of Annerdale and his controversial scheme to reintroduce the Grey Wolf to the English countryside, she is back in the peat and wet light of the Lake District. The earl's project harks back to an ancient idyll of untamed British wilderness - though Rachel must contend with modern-day concessions to health and safety, public outrage and political gain - and the return of the Grey after hundreds of years coincides with her own regeneration: impending motherhood, and reconciliation with her estranged family. The Wolf Border investigates the fundamental nature of wilderness and wildness, both animal and human. It seeks to understand the most obsessive aspects of humanity: sex, love, and conflict; the desire to find answers to the question of our existence; those complex systems that govern the most superior creature on earth.

About this title

Review

[T]he odd sense lingers of Hall as a well-kept secret. If you're currently revelling in your membership of the initiate, however, be warned: her new novel looks set to blow the lid off. (Guardian)

[A] thoughtful, gripping and utterly humane exploration of generation, parenthood, and the responsibility that connects individuals, both human and animal, to one another ... For sheer good writing and intelligence of execution, you may not read a better book this year. (Quadrapheme)

It is a compelling, psychological drama ... [Hall] has a golden touch, texturing her pages with rich metaphor and lyrical prose. (Economist)

[A] stylish, intelligent and a cracking read ... Hall is at her best when she deals with her outlandish scenario in a calm and unsensational manner. She writes with luminous precision about pregnancy and motherhood ... Her close observations of wolf behaviour and of Cumbrian weather are wonderful. (Sunday Times)

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

[J]oyous fragility characterises The Wolf Border ... which weighs sense and sensuality, order and chaos, with sumptuous grace. Hall writes gorgeously about small moments ... But her plot too is gripping, propelled by some intriguing mysteries, a couple of conspiracies and a pulse-racing set-piece in which Rachel juggles baby, wolves, brother and vocation. (Independent)

Hall is an outstanding writer and this is largely a magnificent novel ...spine-tingling ... (Metro)

Hall's alert, focused prose generates a sense of building exhilaration as personal, political and physical boundaries break down ... [A] reminder that real power - both human and animal - operates on ancient instinct: beyond the rules of the herd and border blind. (Spectator)

Beautiful and quite stunning. (Mail on Sunday)

Centuries after the British wolf's extinction, an eccentric Cumbrian earl plans its return. But what sounds like a Gothic fantasy is, in Hall's hands, a thrilling tale of politics and power ... Compulsively absorbing and masterfully plotted, it confirms Hall as one of our finest fiction writers. (Daily Mail)

Vivid and visceral. (The Times)

[W]henever the wolves stalk the page, their alien intelligence delivers an uncanny jolt ... The Wolf Border ranks among the finest meditations on motherhood that I have ever read ... If Hall gives us the wolf as an archetype of intuition and pure nature, then one could almost read The Wolf Border as a modern werewolf myth. It is the story of a human transforming and connecting with something terrifying, animal and true. (The National)

[A] graceful, visceral, utterly compelling read. --Sunday Express

Ghostlike, yellow eyes glimmering, lean, grey flanks rippling, they lope and streak through the heather in the pages of this absorbing novel so thrillingly and so metaphorically that you could say that Hall has created the ultimate Wolf Hall. --Scotland Herald

[A] very serious novelist hitting her stride. --Irish Independent

Book Description

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0571299555
• ISBN 13: 9780571299553
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448