Tell the Wolves I'm Home

What a marvelous and beautiful book.

There is considerable talent in the way the author orchestrates this work. You don't really realize how everything is going to tie together eventually and make you understand how gorgeous human love can be and how stupid our constraints are.

“But what if you ended up in the wrong kind of love?” Julia asks. “What if you accidentally ended up in the falling kind with someone it would be so gross to fall in love with that you could never tell anyone in the world about it? ... The kind you squashed deeper and deeper down, but no matter how far you pushed it, no matter how much you hoped it would suffocate, it never did?”

I don't know the last time I got misty-eyed over a book, but Tell the Wolves I'm Home did that for me. And yet it never was overly sentimental or preachy; it walked that line exceptionally well. It's a wonderful debut and I sincerely hope it is listed on many of the end of the year lists. It is a deserving novel, a story that has finally been told with the grace and attention it is entitled to.