My Heart Is Nuclear

 So, I just finished reading History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund and it was a rather quick read once I sat down to actually read it. It was alright – not the best thing I've read, not the worst, just kinda alright. The book wants to be this story about “the origins of human evil” but it's really a story about parental neglect and the struggles of coming of age as an LGBT person when you never realize you're queer.

This story is told through the perspective of Madeline, called Linda (amongst other names), recounting her childhood growing up in the middle of nowhere in Rural America right around the time when she was involved in a case of parental neglect that ended in the death of a four year old. She was involved because she spent months as a babysitter to the child, named Paul, and slowly being groomed by his mother Patra as she discovered more about her sexuality. Patra and Linda never move their relationship to the sexual, but it seems clear that it's more due to the fact that Paul ends up dying and that destroys the relationship rather than Patra, as the adult here, realizing that she's getting too close to this literal child that she lets babysit her son.

If not for the fact that the story seems to just stop, this wouldn't be that bad of a novel, all things considered. The ending is very abrupt and it very much feels like the author just said “I'm done writing this” as opposed to finding a good ending point. I think a lot of that has to come from the fact that they went into this story with the idea that the main theme was going to be about the nature of human evil instead of letting the story evolve and that informing what the main theme is. We get to the end of this chapter of her life, the death of Paul and the consequences of that, and then the story just ends. Even though by that time, the novel has different themes that are just left dangling there.

I really enjoyed the slow dread of the beginning, because it opens with telling us that Paul is going to die, and so seeing Linda get closer to Paul and starting to get more emotionally open with Patra while starting to think about a future with her and her son, was like watching the beginning of the Titanic. You know what is going to happen and it still makes you want to cry when you get to the actual iceberg and all the death.

I also like how every male relationship Linda has, other than the relationship with her father, is built around either making her feel less than or makes her feel bad. The teacher she tries to seduce because she's managed to pick up that he's a predator is her exploring what it means to be “a young girl” and also trying to get his attention away from another classmate because she clearly has a crush on her. She tries to re-connect with his as an adult for the sole purpose of making her feel like she's the kind of person she thinks she is – someone who let a child die right under her nose instead of doing anything to help, as opposed to a child who didn't have the agency or know-how to realize that a child she cared for was in danger and that she should get help. (she's a product of parental neglect herself, she's not used to being able to ask for help and receive it.) Leo, Patra's husband, who comes home after months away and intrudes upon her fantasy of having a life with Patra and Paul alone; who she resents because Patra stops treating her as a peer and goes to him for emotional attention and support; who is overbearing and patriarchal to a woman who seems to shrink around him, who Linda is clearly starting to develop feelings for. Rom, her boyfriend as a young woman who psychoanalyzes her badly and seems to think that means he knows her better than she knows herself; who wants to get closer to her emotionally and try for a long term, serious relationship, which she goes out of her way to sabotage and then bails on the moment she has an excuse to go back to her hometown.

Linda is clearly a lesbian and also a bad person. She's a stalker, has been since a teen, and at least as an adult settles for social media only stalking and not physical (anymore) and also a little mean. She's lonely, depressed, and very in need of therapy and I wish we had more time with her. I wish her novel was more focused and had an actual ending instead of a stopping point.