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A review by chriskoppenhaver
Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk
5.0
It happened in little bits, not all at once, and it wasn't easy to figure out what to do along the way.
From the very beginning--the short prologue, and even the cover of the hardback jacket--readers are told momentous things are coming. Something weighty and life-altering. As the story begins to gradually unfold, the foreshadowing continues with little comments like, We would have been spared some trouble if we had not crossed paths that day. Even so, it all happens in little bits, not all at once, and when the full course of events is finally revealed it manages to shock and disturb in spite of the warnings. That's not to say that this is a dark or disturbing book, merely momentous and weighty.
This is a beautifully crafted book with as vivid a sense of place, time, and character as I've encountered. Readers come to fully know the story's setting and participants with an affecting clarity. Anabelle makes a wonderful narrator, and her carefully observed insights into herself and others provide a perfect perspective for understanding the tragedies at the heart of the story. She knows, by the end, that she has made a significant transition from childhood to adulthood. She knows far more about pain and suffering, and she knows far more about decency and kindness and community. The unfolding of that transition is transporting, meaningful, and moving. This is a story you feel.
From the very beginning--the short prologue, and even the cover of the hardback jacket--readers are told momentous things are coming. Something weighty and life-altering. As the story begins to gradually unfold, the foreshadowing continues with little comments like, We would have been spared some trouble if we had not crossed paths that day. Even so, it all happens in little bits, not all at once, and when the full course of events is finally revealed it manages to shock and disturb in spite of the warnings. That's not to say that this is a dark or disturbing book, merely momentous and weighty.
This is a beautifully crafted book with as vivid a sense of place, time, and character as I've encountered. Readers come to fully know the story's setting and participants with an affecting clarity. Anabelle makes a wonderful narrator, and her carefully observed insights into herself and others provide a perfect perspective for understanding the tragedies at the heart of the story. She knows, by the end, that she has made a significant transition from childhood to adulthood. She knows far more about pain and suffering, and she knows far more about decency and kindness and community. The unfolding of that transition is transporting, meaningful, and moving. This is a story you feel.
The year I turned twelve, I learned how to lie.
I don't mean the small fibs that children tell. I mean real lies fed by real fears--things I said and did that took me out of the life I'd always known and put me down hard into a new one.
It was the autumn of 1943 when my steady life began to spin, not only because of the war that had drawn the whole world into a screaming brawl, but also because of the dark-hearted girl who came to our hills and changed everything.
At times, I was so confused that I felt like the stem of a pinwheel surrounded by whir and clatter, but through that whole unsettling time I knew that it simply would not do to hide in the barn with a book and an apple and let events plunge forward without me. It would not do to turn twelve without earning my keep, and by that I meant my place, my small authority, the possibility that I would amount to something.
But there was more to it than that.
The year I turned twelve, I learned that what I said and what I did mattered.
So much, sometimes, that I wasn't sure I wanted such a burden.
But I took it anyway, and I carried it as best I could.