Once There Were Wolves

March 1, 2021

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with twin sister Aggie to lead a team of biologists reintroducing 14 gray wolves to the Highlands, but she also wants to help Aggie heal from a chaotic past. Following the gorgeously perceptive Migrations, an LJ Best Book; with a 200,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 28, 2021
Australian author McConaghy (Migrations) returns with a vividly realized story of trauma and the attempted “rewilding” of the Scottish Highlands. Empathetic biologist Inti Flynn, raised in part in Sydney, Australia, and in part in the woods of British Columbia, is on a project site in Scotland with a group of biologists, where she works to introduce North American wolves into the Scottish ecosystem. She has brought her mute identical twin sister, Aggie; Inti knows the source of Aggie’s trauma, but the details are kept from the reader until late in the narrative. When Inti discovers the body of a man she suspects was abusive to his wife (he said she fell off of a horse; she looked like she was beaten up), and who might have been killed either by a wolf or another person, she impulsively buries the body and sets out to solve the mystery of the death, a process complicated by her sexual relationship with the local police chief, as they have a hard time trusting each other, and by an unexpected pregnancy. In a story full of subtle surprises, revolving around Aggie’s painful past as well as the source of the violence on the project site, McConaghy brings precise descriptions to the wolves—“subtly powerful, endlessly patient”—and to Inti’s borderline-feral way of existing in the world. The bleak landscape is gorgeously rendered and made tense by its human and animal inhabitants, each capable of killing. Throughout, McConaghy avoids melodrama by maintaining a cool matter-of-factness. This is a stunner.

July 1, 2021
"I am unlike most people," declares Inti Flynn, referring to her mirror-touch synesthesia. When she looks at another living being, she feels what they feel, from a caress to a punch, which both propels and complicates her work as a wolf biologist. Then there's her preternaturally close relationship with her twin sister, Aggie. As in her best-selling Migrations (2020), McConaghy has created an intensely driven, environmentally passionate protagonist whose struggles illuminate the marvels of the living world and the dangers of the climate-change crisis while connecting humanity's decimation of nature with violence against women. Raised in Canada and Australia, Inti is now in charge of a controversial and increasingly dangerous effort to reintroduce wolves to the ecologically impoverished Scottish Highlands. McConaghy infuses Inti's adventures with ravishing descriptions of the landscape and the "infinite mysteries of wolves," portrays wolf-fearing sheep farmers, orchestrates a knotty relationship between Inti and the police chief, and presents chilling flashbacks to the traumas that left Aggie mute and agoraphobic. McConaghy's richly plotted tale of suspense and psychological insight poses provocative questions about predators and humanity's impact on Earth.

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Starred review from June 1, 2021
One woman's mission to rewild the forests of Scotland with wolves yields far-reaching personal consequences. Wildness in all of its forms is the central theme of McConaghy's second book, which circles the lives of twin sisters Inti and Aggie Flynn as Aggie trails Inti, who's a biologist, from Australia to Canada and, eventually, Scotland. Inti and her colleagues hope that reintroducing wolves to the ecosystem will promote reforestation after the lumber industry has robbed the Scottish Highlands of timber, having seen success with similar projects in Yellowstone National Park. McConaghy's powerful debut, Migrations (2020), dealt similarly with a woman determined to preserve a valence of wildlife while struggling with the violence and isolation of such a task, and some of the same tensions prevail here, as it becomes increasingly clear that the menacing wildness of wolves often pales in comparison to the cruelties of which humans are capable. Inti and Aggie are close to the point of codependence, having moved from place to place together and survived Aggie's struggles with domestic violence in her marriage. McConaghy cleverly withholds the details of a trauma that has left Aggie without speech while Inti's anger at the plight of the wolves and the local people's resistance to their rewilding carries the narrative at a breakneck pace. All throughout, the language hews to the poetic: "Tiny leaves shimmer green...the color of ripe Colmar pears, Irish pitcher apples, and the glittering mineral called uran-mica." Inti has a tendency to overidentify with the wolves she is struggling to help, and there is no shortage of emotional and physical violence here, but the payoff is the glimpse of gentleness and humanity that we spot through Inti's and Aggie's eyes. A lovely, gripping tale about a world that could be our own.

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Starred review from July 23, 2021

McConaghy's latest novel shares plenty of DNA with her 2020 breakout Migrations. Both novels follow memorable, hardened female leads who navigate life from behind carefully constructed defense mechanisms; both narratives are haunted by characters' pasts and also their presents; and both are shaded with an existential fear born of our climate change crisis. They also bear the influence of McConaghy's screenwriting background, arriving to the page rife with distinctive characters and plenty of dramatic tensions. That quality is perhaps even more present in this work, its lightly suspenseful contours almost recalling the shape of the average best-selling psychological thriller, but McConaghy smartly doesn't rise to such easy histrionics. Revelations are handled with restraint, never over-punctuating the novel's controlled rhythm, and even the bevy of metaphorical fodder--of which there is plenty, this being a story about wolves and human nature and the monster-making that takes place in our minds--remains welcomingly unsettled and intellectually rigorous. Ultimately, the narrative impressively roots itself in the center of a Venn diagram of diverse readers, marrying the complex character work and delicate prose of the best literary fiction with plenty of twisty mystery threads for genre-inclined readers, and peppering in the right amount of distinctive background and heady rumination to result in a truly arresting and singular work. VERDICT Another win for McConaghy that weaves together various modes and creates something that will be immediately appealing to a diverse spate of readers.--Luke Gorham, Galesburg P.L., IL

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.