Wolf on the Fold

 

Wolf on the Fold by Judith Clarke was another pick-up from the Allen & Unwin clearout. I only discovered Judith Clarke's writing a few years ago, but she was a deeply admired and prize-winning author. Wolf on the Fold won the CBCA Book of the Year in 2001, just as I was starting out on my own publication journey. It's not really a novel, but a set of short stories linking generations of one family, from 1935 to 2002. Characters weave in and out; sometimes the family members are not even the centre of the story, but just appears on the margins.

Wolf on the Fold is a beautiful and sad book, and beautifully written, but I doubt very much if any young adult reader would pick it up today. It mixes history and politics, but seen through the lens of the personal, and brings into sharp focus the idea of 'family stories,' those well-polished anecdotes that every family has, sometimes only one or two lines, that ends up defining an ancestor or a generation forever in the family memory. One of the stories is set in Jerusalem, around the time of the Gulf War, which was a shocking reminder of the ceaseless history of bloodshed in that region.

All the children in these stories are confronted with the harshness of the adult world, whether in the form of poverty, war, murderous intent, racism, or institutional cruelty, and they each find their own way of dealing with it. I suppose each story is a stepping stone toward maturity. Because of this, I think Wolf on the Fold works better as a reflective adult book than as a YA novel.