The Tenderness of Wolves - Hardcover

Penney, Stef

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670066109 ISBN 13: 9780670066100

Publisher: Quercus, 2006

Synopsis

Mysteries also dominate this confident and complex portrait of 1860s Ontario. Although Stef Penney, an agoraphobic, lives in Edinburgh, she is the grandniece of Norman Bethune. The characters and lives she creates-consulting Hudson s Bay Company records from the British Museum-attain a larger-than-life dimension. Our only first-person narrator, an aloof woman with a history of confinement in Scottish asylums, is Mrs. Ross, who discovers the bloodied corpse of Laurent Jammet, a French trapper and trader. Soon the local magistrate, various Hudson s Bay Company investigators, and acquaintances of the deceased-including a native Canadian and a man very interested in something Jammet has acquired-are popping in and out of the narrative with an assortment of goals in mind.
Closer to home is the problem of Mrs. Ross s teenaged son, the troubled Francis, who vanished the night of the *. Francis at first tops the list of suspects, but is soon * by William Parker, a taciturn native who knew the slain man. When her son doesn t *, Mrs. Ross takes off to find him with Parker as her guide. Penney creates an engrossing narrative, connecting the dots across different social strata in the colony. Eerily adept at depicting a range of human traits-and hinting at more-she also teases us with an older mystery, the disappearance of two young girls from the Georgian Bay community several years before.
Between twists and turns of plot, Penney evokes the land-its shades of light and changes of weather, its marshes and treacherous waters. Rarely has winter seemed so febrile. One strange northern community gives way to the next-from a settlement of pious Norwegians to a decayed outpost peopled by those whom the Company has seen fit to exile. Something rather Conrad-like surfaces in the portrait of Mr. Stewart, the Company man gone bad. Yet masculine and feminine elements are fully balanced; there s not only the complicated Mrs. Ross and her tormented son, but also a sensual Norwegian widow named Line, determined to escape the sanctuary she has found with her fellow countrymen. This one is a powerhouse.
Nancy Wigston (Books in Canada)
-- Books in Canada

About this title

Review

'A quite remarkable debut novel' Birmingham Post. (Birmingham Post)

'This subtle and superb novel brings the freezing landscape of the Canadian woods to such vivid life that the landscape itself becomes a strong character within the story. Once you have dived into the tiny, closeted world of Caulfield and its forbidding surroundings, you will certainly not wish to leave' Crimesquad.com. (Crimesquad.com)

'Stef Penney's hefty first novel The Tenderness of Wolves, mines her setting and period for all it's got and then some, injecting plenty of invented intrigue and Da Vinci Code like revelations of Huge Cultural Importance whenever she can. The result is an entertaining, well-constructed mystery that jazzes up the 'real' history in a way that's more Ron Howard than Pierre Berton ... sexy, suspenseful, densely plotted storytelling ... a first-rate gripper with a notably sensual as well as psychological understanding of its main characters. More than this, it is a novel with far greater ambitions than your average thriller, combining as it does the themes of Conrad's Heart of Darkness with Atwood's Survival, and lashing them to a story that morphs Ian Rankin' Andrew Pyper, The Globe and Mail. (Globe and Mail)

'A highly assured debut ... Stef Penney has written an absorbing and stylish mystery' The Glasgow Herald. (Glasgow Herald)

From the Publisher

Review for Tenderness of Wolves:
an intensely atmospheric murder mystery that consolidates its hold with
each serpentine contortion of the narrative and every new character that
drifts into its frame ... it is by dint of sheer imaginative heft that
Penney's immense tale allows one to feel the tundra's perishing chill in
the bones every bit as authentically as the wintry tableaux of Annie Proulx
... robust craftsmanship, cracking storytelling and cinematically evoked
panoramas that recall the finest westerns - Sunday Times, Pick of the Week

Edition details

• Publisher: Quercus
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670066109
• ISBN 13: 9780670066100
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1