I don't write as much as I used to. It's funny how one thing leads to another. I got Invisalign braces back in December, discovered they did wonders for curbing my appetite, realized that (for me) watching tv is inevitably linked to wanting to eat so I stopped watching tv, except when I'm already in bed, ready to fall asleep.
All that open time where I no longer eat so much or watch tv has lead me back to reading passionately, whenever and wherever I can. I'd rather read than write, except when I'm troubled (writing is therapy) or excited (about a new book or song).
Tell The Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt is something to be excited about. On Twitter, lulu 34 writes: "Stop what you're doing and read Tell The Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt. This book DESTROYED me. All my tears."
People magazine (often a great source for book reviews...I did not know this until recently) had this to say:
Tell the Wolves I'm Home
by Carol Rifka Brunt
by Carol Rifka Brunt
Remember how it felt to be 14? In this lovely debut novel set in the 1980s, Carol Rifka Brunt takes us under the skin and inside the tumultuous heart of June Elbus. Lonely at school and tormented by her older sister, June habitually vanishes into the woods near her suburban New York home to pretend she's living in the Middle Ages. "I look at everything-rocks, fallen leaves, dead trees-like I have the power to read those things. Like my life depends on understanding exactly what the forest has to say." Like most 14-year-olds, June is full of secret emotions too powerful to reveal-in particular, her "wrong" love for Finn, her uncle and godfather. An artist who has introduced his goddaughter to a world of beauty, Finn is gay, and dying of AIDS. Once he's gone, the grief-shattered June recklessly embarks on a new relationship that's just as obsessive, just as secret, and ends up shaking her family to its core. Distracted parents, tussling adolescents, the awful ghost-world of the AIDS-afflicted before AZT-all of it springs to life in Brunt's touching and ultimately hopeful book.
Reviewed by Helen Rogan
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