Kiss of the Wolf [Hardcover]

Jim Shepard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1994

When this spare, suspenseful tale opens, Joanie Mucherino has recently been abandoned by her husband, and she is trying to cope while dealing with her eleven-year-old son, Todd, and her comically tactless and intrusive Italian family. To complicate matters, Joanie is now "available" in the eyes of Bruno Minea, a family friend with shadowy connections whose twenty-year passion for her has been flattering but faintly frightening. All of these relationships are transformed one night when Joanie and Todd kill a pedestrian in a hit-and-run accident and then discoverstep-by-step, to their horror - that they will keep the act a secret. As the tension between them mounts, it becomes clear that Joanie not only has entangled her son in a web of guilt but also has enmeshed the two of them in a slowly closing net of suspicion and terror.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Shepard's gritty, effective fourth novel (after Lights Off in the Reptile House ) opens quietly as a slice-of-life story about an Italian-American family in Connecticut. Joanie Mucherino's husband has recently left her and their 11-year-old son Todd. Her parents try to help, but their old-world ministrations don't seem very relevant to the modern problem of working and raising a child alone. But things could be worse: Bruno the car salesman is clearly interested in her, and although Todd is slightly aloof, their relationship is basically good. Then, driving home from her parents' house one night with Todd, Joanie hits and kills a man who turns out to have vague ties to organized crime. Over the subsequent weeks she realizes that she doesn't intend to tell anyone about the accident. Catholic guilt wears away at her, Todd becomes more and more sullen and Bruno's attentions get a bit too keen. Shepard's writing is impeccable, and he portrays his blue-collar characters without condescension or sentimentality, but with clear-eyed compassion, catching their voices with unerring accuracy. Although the plot takes a while to gather steam, its violent, grisly conclusion is as gripping as any thriller's.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-The festivities surrounding a young boy's confirmation prove to be the ironic setting for the evil events that follow. The celebration is fraught with lighthearted bickering and tense, overprotective concern for Todd and his mother Joanie, both of whom are recovering from the recent abandonment by Todd's father. It is with a sense of relief and recklessness that the two leave the family party. Driving home, the woman hits a pedestrian and cannot bring herself to call the authorities; instead, she allows her son to absorb her guilt into his newly awakened spiritual consciousness. Todd has nowhere to go with his pain; Joanie, however, allows herself to be comforted by an old flame whose questionable ethics and boorish behavior once repulsed her. Readers will come to know the violent envy and brutal paranoia that motivate this man and will read with horrified fascination as he insinuates himself into Joanie and Todd's lives. The juxtaposition of the comical, mundane familiarity of the Mucherino family and of the savage character of Bruno, as well as the universality of the moral issues involved, raise this book above the ordinary thriller to the level of real human tragedy. A compelling and disturbing novel.
Jackie Gropman, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1st edition (February 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151472793
• ISBN-13: 978-0151472796
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,144,025 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jim Shepard was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and is the author of six novels, including most recently Project X, and four story collections, including the forthcoming You Think That's Bad (March 2011). His third collection, Like You'd Understand, Anyway, was a finalist for the National Book Award and won The Story Prize. Project X won the 2005 Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, as well as the ALEX Award from the American Library Association. His short fiction has appeared in, among other magazines, Harper's, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, DoubleTake, the New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Playboy, and he was a columnist on film for the magazine The Believer. Four of his stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories and one for a Pushcart Prize. He's won an Artists' Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Williams College and lives in Williamstown with his wife Karen, his three children, and two beagles.