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bookly_reads's review against another edition
- Loveable characters? No
TLDR: This is such a wildly offensive depiction of what PTSD looks like. I hate that we live in a world where people are so ignorant about mental illness that they think this book is deep rather than drivel that could have been written in the time when mentally ill people were locked in insane asylums. This is not what mental illness looks like. Repeat: This is not what mental illness looks like. I hate hate hate this book.
This is the first time I have felt it unambiguously wrong for a publisher not to include content warnings. So:
CONTENT WARNINGS (incomplete) for domestic abuse, misogyny, sexual assault, physical assault, and on-page rape.
There is not a peep about any of this in the summary. Even a movie would warn you.
Onto the review: Oh, boy. Where to begin. On one hand this book was more masterfully layered and well-plotted than Migrations, but I’m giving it a lower rating. Why? It’s deeply ableist. More on this later.
First, I find it very curious how Charlotte McConaghy’s books are marketed. The publisher goes hard with the environmental plotlines. It advertised Migrations as literary fiction when it was at least equally akin to the thriller genre. The same has happened in their marketing of Once There Were Wolves, but this is just as much a fiery, tense thriller about misogyny as it is about a wolf rewilding project. The writing is very reminiscent of a less fleshed-out Tana French or Gillian Flynn book. I might even compare it thematically to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Above all, Once There Were Wolves is most similar to Migrations, and I suspect that anyone who doesn’t mind the ableism will greatly enjoy this book if they liked McConaghy’s last one. Both are <300 page books featuring unreliable female narrators taking on environmental projects while dealing with their own trauma. Structurally they are almost identical.
Just as with Migrations, I felt McConaghy’s unflinching willingness to take on environmental destruction was cheapened by an unearned happy ending. Toward the end of the book, Inti suddenly realizes that she should have worked with the locals on her rewilding project. As soon as she has this revelation, the locals abruptly open their hearts to her. I found this to be such a trite, after-school-special takeaway.
So get this: Anyone who works in environmental science already knows they need to value local stakeholders. This is a platitude you’re taught from day one in undergrad, and our narrator has a Ph.D. I find it unbelievable that she didn’t know this. If the book had taken place several decades ago it would have been convincing, but no one needs this revelation today. SpoilerIt may have been interesting if the main characters' actions had had real, negative consequences for the wolves: After all, the scientist who is supposed to be saving them frames them for a crime. There would have been a pleasing irony in that, but McConaghy nonsensically balks from her own suggestion of this.
In the epilogue the protagonist thinks “the people of Scotland” are opening “their hearts to wolves” after an entire book of conflict and zero on-page reconciliatory action. It felt saccharine and cheap and negated literally everything that had happened. In both of McConaghy's environmental books, the epilogues seem to say: No matter how badly humanity screws up, we will magically be okay somehow.
Onto the ableism. I don’t consider this a spoiler because sexual assault is just not a spoiler to me: Inti’s sister is brutally raped (on-page, via flashback) and then gets PTSD. Hi, person with PTSD here. Inti’s sister is such a problematic character that I wish she hadn’t been in the book at all, even though McConaghy does an incredible job of nailing the intensity of close sisterly relationships. For most of the book, I delighted in her getting the details of sisterhood precisely right, but as Aggie’s backstory became clear, I couldn’t overlook what a plainly, childishly bad depiction of PTSD this was.
Aggie gets elective mutism, meaning she doesn’t speak—ever. Except during a pivotal plot point near the end of the book, of course!!! :) :) :) This is common in films and it’s lazy and juvenile. Guess what? Elective mutism hasn’t been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1994 because it doesn’t exist. People don’t turn into helpless, silent children after facing traumatic violence. (There is a separate thing, called selective mutism. What’s in this book is not it. Is so thoroughly, thoroughly not it.)
When Aggie was first depicted on the page I thought she was literally braindead. It seemed implied that she had been physically abused to the point of being virtually comatose, so you can imagine my immense delight when I realized that, no, she just became a shell of a person after being raped, gaining all sorts of symptoms that no one gets in real life but that fit the made-for-TV drama of this book perfectly.
Aggie is a complete recluse who can't step a few meters out of the house to get firewood because she's deluded into thinking her attacker will return. Guess what? I know a lot of women who've had very legitimate fears of their past abusers seeking them out. I can't believe I have to say this, but these women talked, brushed their hair, and even went to work! :) :) :)
Oh, also, is Aggie miraculously cured after no professional help because her sister...has a baby? You betcha. Barf, barf, barf. Oh, and does she commit suicide afterwards anyway because the pain of having been raped makes life forever unbearable? That one’s a little ambiguous, but leaning towards...you betcha! :) :) :) Spoiler "Maybe you think you'll come between [me and my new man], or simply want to make space for something new. Or because it doesn't go away, it never goes away, that pain, even in the midst of this new life. ... You have gone into the wild to die." LOL WELL ALRIGHT THEN. Too much trauma I guess, time to make space for something new...! "oR mAybE, yOu hAve GoNe tO LiVe" What does that even mean???
Then there were the other things I couldn’t stand: That Aggie is dangerous because she is mentally ill, the police chief’s wildly unrealistic response to Aggie’s violence, the fact that one of the shorthand ways we’re told Aggie’s abuser is bad is that he—gasp—likes kink in the bedroom. Yes, that’s right: very simple, consensual bondage is demonized in this book. I felt like it was written by Ronald Reagan or something.
The ending is weirdly heteronormative: The sisterhood has to be broken up in order for our main character to fully heal. She never seeks professional help for all of her trauma, but is instead considered whole when she’s in a relationship with one of the “good men” and has a baby. I know it’s fiction, and yet I am so incredibly worried by that baby being raised by two completely unhinged adults, and by Inti’s refusal throughout the book to even get an ultrasound while she’s pregnant.
Are we seriously supposed to believe that she’ll be a good mother now? Because that’s how the ending is depicted: After this brutal, relentlessly violent book, we’re given a sugar frosting ending where everything is healed by heterosexuality and baby-making. Except the mute rape victim, of course, who needs to die.
Barf, barf, barf.
EDIT: Lowering this to one star because it did trigger my PTSD and that is so wildly uncool. Thirty hours later and I still feel awful. I have a lot of thoughts about how to write assault scenes without them being triggering, and while it is completely not McConaghy's responsibility to do that, the publisher was flatly wrong for not giving an accurate preview of what's inside this book.
EDIT 11/2022: If people reading this could not 'like' the review I would really appreciate that. It seems that I can't change the settings on Goodreads to not alert me when one of my reviews is liked, and I really want to stop thinking about this book.
This is the first time I have felt it unambiguously wrong for a publisher not to include content warnings. So:
CONTENT WARNINGS (incomplete) for domestic abuse, misogyny, sexual assault, physical assault, and on-page rape.
There is not a peep about any of this in the summary. Even a movie would warn you.
Onto the review: Oh, boy. Where to begin. On one hand this book was more masterfully layered and well-plotted than Migrations, but I’m giving it a lower rating. Why? It’s deeply ableist. More on this later.
First, I find it very curious how Charlotte McConaghy’s books are marketed. The publisher goes hard with the environmental plotlines. It advertised Migrations as literary fiction when it was at least equally akin to the thriller genre. The same has happened in their marketing of Once There Were Wolves, but this is just as much a fiery, tense thriller about misogyny as it is about a wolf rewilding project. The writing is very reminiscent of a less fleshed-out Tana French or Gillian Flynn book. I might even compare it thematically to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Above all, Once There Were Wolves is most similar to Migrations, and I suspect that anyone who doesn’t mind the ableism will greatly enjoy this book if they liked McConaghy’s last one. Both are <300 page books featuring unreliable female narrators taking on environmental projects while dealing with their own trauma. Structurally they are almost identical.
Just as with Migrations, I felt McConaghy’s unflinching willingness to take on environmental destruction was cheapened by an unearned happy ending. Toward the end of the book, Inti suddenly realizes that she should have worked with the locals on her rewilding project. As soon as she has this revelation, the locals abruptly open their hearts to her. I found this to be such a trite, after-school-special takeaway.
So get this: Anyone who works in environmental science already knows they need to value local stakeholders. This is a platitude you’re taught from day one in undergrad, and our narrator has a Ph.D. I find it unbelievable that she didn’t know this. If the book had taken place several decades ago it would have been convincing, but no one needs this revelation today. SpoilerIt may have been interesting if the main characters' actions had had real, negative consequences for the wolves: After all, the scientist who is supposed to be saving them frames them for a crime. There would have been a pleasing irony in that, but McConaghy nonsensically balks from her own suggestion of this.
In the epilogue the protagonist thinks “the people of Scotland” are opening “their hearts to wolves” after an entire book of conflict and zero on-page reconciliatory action. It felt saccharine and cheap and negated literally everything that had happened. In both of McConaghy's environmental books, the epilogues seem to say: No matter how badly humanity screws up, we will magically be okay somehow.
Onto the ableism. I don’t consider this a spoiler because sexual assault is just not a spoiler to me: Inti’s sister is brutally raped (on-page, via flashback) and then gets PTSD. Hi, person with PTSD here. Inti’s sister is such a problematic character that I wish she hadn’t been in the book at all, even though McConaghy does an incredible job of nailing the intensity of close sisterly relationships. For most of the book, I delighted in her getting the details of sisterhood precisely right, but as Aggie’s backstory became clear, I couldn’t overlook what a plainly, childishly bad depiction of PTSD this was.
Aggie gets elective mutism, meaning she doesn’t speak—ever. Except during a pivotal plot point near the end of the book, of course!!! :) :) :) This is common in films and it’s lazy and juvenile. Guess what? Elective mutism hasn’t been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1994 because it doesn’t exist. People don’t turn into helpless, silent children after facing traumatic violence. (There is a separate thing, called selective mutism. What’s in this book is not it. Is so thoroughly, thoroughly not it.)
When Aggie was first depicted on the page I thought she was literally braindead. It seemed implied that she had been physically abused to the point of being virtually comatose, so you can imagine my immense delight when I realized that, no, she just became a shell of a person after being raped, gaining all sorts of symptoms that no one gets in real life but that fit the made-for-TV drama of this book perfectly.
Aggie is a complete recluse who can't step a few meters out of the house to get firewood because she's deluded into thinking her attacker will return. Guess what? I know a lot of women who've had very legitimate fears of their past abusers seeking them out. I can't believe I have to say this, but these women talked, brushed their hair, and even went to work! :) :) :)
Oh, also, is Aggie miraculously cured after no professional help because her sister...has a baby? You betcha. Barf, barf, barf. Oh, and does she commit suicide afterwards anyway because the pain of having been raped makes life forever unbearable? That one’s a little ambiguous, but leaning towards...you betcha! :) :) :) Spoiler "Maybe you think you'll come between [me and my new man], or simply want to make space for something new. Or because it doesn't go away, it never goes away, that pain, even in the midst of this new life. ... You have gone into the wild to die." LOL WELL ALRIGHT THEN. Too much trauma I guess, time to make space for something new...! "oR mAybE, yOu hAve GoNe tO LiVe" What does that even mean???
Then there were the other things I couldn’t stand: That Aggie is dangerous because she is mentally ill, the police chief’s wildly unrealistic response to Aggie’s violence, the fact that one of the shorthand ways we’re told Aggie’s abuser is bad is that he—gasp—likes kink in the bedroom. Yes, that’s right: very simple, consensual bondage is demonized in this book. I felt like it was written by Ronald Reagan or something.
The ending is weirdly heteronormative: The sisterhood has to be broken up in order for our main character to fully heal. She never seeks professional help for all of her trauma, but is instead considered whole when she’s in a relationship with one of the “good men” and has a baby. I know it’s fiction, and yet I am so incredibly worried by that baby being raised by two completely unhinged adults, and by Inti’s refusal throughout the book to even get an ultrasound while she’s pregnant.
Are we seriously supposed to believe that she’ll be a good mother now? Because that’s how the ending is depicted: After this brutal, relentlessly violent book, we’re given a sugar frosting ending where everything is healed by heterosexuality and baby-making. Except the mute rape victim, of course, who needs to die.
Barf, barf, barf.
EDIT: Lowering this to one star because it did trigger my PTSD and that is so wildly uncool. Thirty hours later and I still feel awful. I have a lot of thoughts about how to write assault scenes without them being triggering, and while it is completely not McConaghy's responsibility to do that, the publisher was flatly wrong for not giving an accurate preview of what's inside this book.
EDIT 11/2022: If people reading this could not 'like' the review I would really appreciate that. It seems that I can't change the settings on Goodreads to not alert me when one of my reviews is liked, and I really want to stop thinking about this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual violence, Car accident, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Ableism, Blood, Death, and Domestic abuse
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