Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

This book’s been a ”talker” all around the world and now the Swedish audience is bubbling up about it too. “Tell the Wolves I’m Home” is a masterpiece, it is also a fascination book to debut with. The book is set in New York City during the 80’s and the books protagonist is a 14-year-old girl called June with a vast imagination and great love for the Medieval times. Her best friend and uncle Finn is her everything, a man who’s shown her so much of what she knows about art, history and even her favourite song. When we meet June her beloved uncle’s got aids and he soon dies, a death that breaks June’s heart. Finn was her everything and when a man called Toby appears and seem to be the man Finn’s been living with in secret for ten years Junes world that’s she’s been building around and with Finn falls apart. However, the two of them, lonely and sad, might actually share more than they think even though the stubbornness of them both seem to pull them even more apart.

The plot might seem to be a heavy one but it is actually filled with an almost floating feeling of promise and a strong feeling of strength in June. This novel is about sorrow and envy, but also about hope and love. Someone once said “there are as many forms of love are there are moments in time” and this novel is about love in so many ways: forbidden love, lost love, strong love, sisterly love and the love you feel in secret when you are alone in your room behind a closed door.

June’s voice in the book is a sweet and independent one, and her reality is making the book move in a calm pace, which make every page a story itself. This is a book you can read four pages at a time from and feel something for every page. The language in the book is brilliant and smart, with wonderful sentences that form small thoughts and ideas and really capture the honesty of a 14-year-old.

The most beautiful part in the book is the love-and-hate relationship between June and her two years older sister Greta. Before June got her very strong bound to Finn she had another strong bound to her sister. Greta would do anything for June, they were inseparable and strong together. Now, at the age of 14 and 16, Greta is envious of June and her relationship with Finn. The same amount of strong self esteem June’s got her sister Greta’s got in self-confidence. However, the loneliness Greta feels in the world even though she is very popular at school makes her mad and angry with her sister. She thinks June left her and the one hope she’s got is that when Finn is leaving Earth, he is leaving her sister too. This terrible thought is haunting Greta and she hates herself for having it. Reading about the events of the two sisters in the book is like watching two planets circling around each other with their own realities. They are bound to each other but not able to reach out for one another, a feeling many siblings might recognize from their teens. Even though this is June’s story we are able to see the characters so clear, almost naked at some times which is why I fall in love with the book.