Customer Reviews

Ordinary Wolves: A Novel (Milkweed National Fiction Prize)

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Ordinary Wolves turns much of what one would expect to read about the "natural and native" life in Alaska on its head and in so doing has crafted a strong first novel that more than overcomes its flaws. The story focuses on Cutuk, a white boy who lives outside an Inupiaq village with his sister and brother (both older) and his father, who brought them all (plus their mother who left when Cutuk was very young) to Alaska where he paints and lives close to the land. We watch Cutuk grow from five or so to young adulthood, wrestling with his place in the world, torn between the wilderness and the city, between modern life and more traditional life, between white and Inuit. In between chapters following Cutuk, we are treated to beautifully written passages set in the animal world and so like Cutuk, we move between the world of humans and the wild.
Part of the joy of wolves is the way expectations are turned around on the reader. In this novel, Cutuk's family is more "native" than most of the natives. They live the old way, out of the village in "camp", eschewing the motorized "sno-go's" in favor of dogs, trapping in the old style, living in a sod home. This is not the romanticized Alaska. It is a gritty, dark view of the life there, filled with drugs, suicides, domestic abuse, alcoholism, cruelty to animal, sardonic portrayals of white "native lovers" or "animal lovers"(Despite this, the tone itself is rarely as dark, a skillful maneuver on the author's part). So while the city is as physically and socially ugly as one would expect in a "country-city" novel, it also has friends and at times its own sort of beauty and so the contrast isn't as simple as usual in these sort of works
Cutuk is an easy character to care about and his coming-of-age story is realistically and tenderly conveyed. We get to know him intimately. His father is also a wonderful character but remains a bit mysterious, a bit of an enigma to both Cutuk and the reader. On the one hand it would be nice to know more about him, to see more deeply into him, but the sense of distance works in the novel and has something equally appealing about it. His brother and sister disappear a bit too quickly and are off stage a bit too much, as are a few of the other side characters. a strong exception is Enuk, an elder native hunter whom Cutuk idolizes as a youth and who is drawn in wonderfully sharp detail, exerting a presence even when he isn't there.
There are some minor pacing issues. Cutuk's introspective passages on not fitting in sometimes get a little repetitive. There are a few spots where the book lags and it probably could have benefited from more stringent editing. But these flaws are more than outweighed by the book's strengths: strong characterization of both Cutuk and his father, beautifully lyrical descriptive prose focusing on the animals, the depth and variety of emotions conveyed, and the underlying deep questions of who am I, how do we balance the modern and the traditional, the sense of self and the desire for society, the natural and the technological, the desire for comfort and the wish to do as little harm in the world as possible?
Read through the few rough patches, enjoy the ride with Cutuk, and let the book's deeper questions linger. It's well worth the read. Strong recommendation.

Two days now, he's made me late for my government job, this Cutuk Kanter. I should be parked in front of the blue Dell glow. Instead I'm lying on my couch under the south window of my suburban Crotch City house, warming in the Arctic Sun, and reading a True story - a shrew story - about life in the North.

Publisher's Weekly says Cutuk's the best since Jack London, which says a mouthful about the sorry state of Northern fiction. This is not Jack London. Not John McPhee. Not, God fobid, James Michener or Peter Jenkins. This is where Jack Kerouac and Nanook lock eyes and walk away together. Don't expect the whole story. This is the cracks between the logs, the vole holes in the floor, the leaks in the sod, the spiders in the corner, the all encompassing entropy so few escape. The tourism people down in Juneau are not going to like it. It's not the prettied-up Alaska they sell to the Princess herds on the freshly washed buses. This is the other Alaska, the Alaska we live in every day after the tourists have disappeared into the sky, after the Eskimo girls have taken off their fancy quspuqs and dancy mukluks and lit up a joint. If you live in Crotch City and this book makes you mad, good. Only don't be mad at Cutuk. He just wrote it all down.

What I don't get about this book, though, is why the Wolf on the cover is upside down. It's either the Wolf or the title, one of um's upside down. `Splain that, Cutuk. Nah, let `em try make it pretty. Whadda they know?

Alaska has never had a book like this before. How come it took you so long, Cutuk?

it's a well-written, unromanticized, fascinating window on life in Alaska, written by someone who knows what it's like first-hand. As an Alaska resident for more than 20 years myself, I can tell you that the details in this novel ring true.

The book addresses lots of "issues": the disconnect between rural and urban life, the effect of modernization on traditional lifestyles, the moral questions posed by the "footprint" we humans leave on the wilderness. But this isn't a book about issues. The author has a good ear for dialogue, and his characters are people the reader comes to care about. The protagonist, Cutuk, an outsider in rural Alaska because of his race, and a misfit in the city because of his upbringing, is easy to identify with, if you've ever felt yourself on the outside looking in. His experiences are sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes comic, but always absorbing.

As a counterpoint to his account of Cutuk's struggle to feel at home in the world, the author gives us short chapters every once in a while that recount the lives of the animals on the land. In contrast to the sometimes-agonized interiority of modern human life, the animals simply are. Kantner, a talented wildlife photographer, has an eye that has learned to see the reality, bloody and beautiful, of the Alaskan wilderness. His words give us a chance to experience that world too, and to remember that human life, loves and conflicts are not the only game in town. There's more going on in the universe than just our own life stories, and this book reminds us to step back and take a broader view.

Read this book for a window on a world most people probably won't get to experience. Read it because it will make you ask yourself questions. Read it because, once you pick it up, you won't want to put it down!

As a longtime resident of arctic Alaska and a professional writer, I have to say that Seth Kantner has captured both the landscape and the people of modern bush Alaska as no other writer of fiction has. Bold words, perhaps, but not hyperbole. The details are gritty, authentic, and unflinching, and the prose from which the narrative is woven is inventive, lyrical, witty, and often flat-out gorgeous. The characters are compelling and feel drawn from life. This is enough to allow the reader to forgive some loose ends in the story line. Few first novels are so accomplished or deserving of recognition--especially coming from an unheralded writer from a small press. Whether you love Alaska, have a taste for literary fiction, or are just a fan of superb prose, you should read this book. Better yet, buy it.

I've been in search for good, so-called "environmental" novels for a while. This was a superb choice. It did the job of telling a story about humans who live in deep connection to the earth and its creatures and who therefore exhibit a supreme value for the planet, but without preaching about their own moral righteousness. Cutuk occasionally starts to vent about "Everything-wanters", but he cuts himself off just in time.

I've got a Ph.D. in English Lit, and let me say just one thing Kantner does that is unique. Throughout the story a few real suspenseful, life-and-death moments happen leaving the reader with a true cliffhanger at the end of a chapter or section. But in the chapter/section (they're not numbered) that follows the cliffhanger, the reader does not find out about how the situation was resolved for quite some time. It's as if the writer is saying, "You know, life went on, and that big exciting moment just proved to be another moment in life, one that we remember but not one that contains all the meaning to life." It was a refreshingly new way to read a plot.

I hope to read more from Kantner; I hope he hasn't spilled out all his life's best in this first work.

It's ironic that this book of fiction is probably the truest glimpse into aspects of life in Alaska that I've ever read. It has a dark undercurrent that is both powerful and beautiful, yet Kantner has a deft way with humor and irony as well. It would be easy to focus on the wonderful dialogue and descriptions of place. Don't. This books' deeper treatment of how people interact with each other, the land and its wildlife reveal issues readers would do well to absorb and contemplate. I'll read this book again.

There are some books that are so good that I purposely try to read them slowly just because I want them to last. This 2004 book, winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, is one of them. Its set in northern Alaska and starts in the late 1970s, when the main character, nicknamed Cutuk, is five years old and growing up in a sod igloo with his father and brother and sister. No, they aren't Eskimos. They're white Americans from Chicago. However, they are living an Eskimo way of life that most Eskimos have already abandoned.

Cutuk has no memory of his mother. She couldn't take the way of life and abandoned the little family when he was a baby. His father, Abe, does a good job of raising the children. They hunt and fish and live on the land. A few times a year, they hitch up their dog team and it takes a full day to get to the town. Everyone in the town is Eskimo and the children taunt him for his white skin. Cutuk and his family are dressed in animal furs; the Eskimos wear brightly colored nylon parkas.

One of the best things about this book is the detail of life in the frozen north. There is no plumbing and mice are ever-present in their igloo. There is constant work to take care of the dogs and hunt for food. But the family is happy. Abe is an artist who occasionally sells a painting. He also makes wooden tables which he sells in town. Otherwise, everything else comes from the land. The children learn through correspondence courses and study by the light of lamps during the long winter nights.

"Ordinary Wolves "is a coming-of-age story for Cutuk as it covers the time period right up to the present. He yearns to be an Eskimo but has to learn to accept who he is. The story is rich with details of his everyday life. I was particularly fascinated by the different kinds of meat they eat and I will never think of meat as simply "beef" again. I learned about hunting and eating animals. I learned about the balance of nature. And I learned about how things are rapidly changing and how the modern world is taking over.

Cutuk grows up and eventually spends time in Anchorage. Though his eyes, all he sees is waste. We follow him through his awkward romances, his attempts at earning a living and his eventual return to the land and way of life he loves. The writer captures all of this with skill. I felt I was right there with him. And, even though I've read several books about Alaska, this is by far the very best one.

I loved this book, loved the world the author described and loved the characters. I can't give it any higher recommendation. It is a real treat.

A friend sent me a copy of this book soon after it was published. She had taught the author's brother in elementary school for a time when his parents had taken him into Fairbanks from the northwest Arctic bush for his first taste of urban school.

After spending most of my adult life in isolated Alaskan villages and raising my children there I can say that Kantner's first novel rings true and wise. The Caucasian characters in the novel are developed from real-life Alaskan individuals. They resonate with qualities that show why Alaska is often characterized as the last frontier of the rugged individual. The Alaskan Natives in the novel are developed in all of their complex beauty and tragedy. The reader may come away from Ordinary Wolves with the mixed emotions of one who has encountered human nature in its true symmetry of nobility and depravity.

Kantner depicts the Alaskan wilderness through the eyes of his characters as a multi-faceted stage on which their lives are lived: as a refuge from a plastic, consumerist society; as a dark and cold prison; as a place to extract a living, no matter how vicious and cruel of means; as a sanctuary that embodies all that is good and pure in the world.

Some reviewers have labelled Ordinary Wolves as eco-fiction, and it can definitely fit this genre. The main character, Cutuk, shows great concern for the onslaught of modern life on the wilderness and wildlife. Cutuk is deeply influenced by his father Abe, an artist refugee from the urban lifestyle. His other chief role model is the Inupiat hunter Enuk, who Cutuk feels epitomizes all that is good in Alaskan life. Cutuk tries to find a place in the city, but goes back to where he feels whole and at ease, the arctic bush.

Ordinary Wolves is a brilliant work of life in Alaska. The landscapes and wildlife resonate with clarity and the people live their lives in the Great Land in all of their paradoxical complexity.

Seth Kantner has written the seminal contemporary Alaskan novel. Read it if you want to vicariously experience life as it really is in the 21st century Alaskan bush.

I read Ordinary Wolves with great enjoyment. I recommend this well-written biographical novel to any person who wants to gain insight into the real conditions of life in northwest Alaska a generation ago. Moreover, Mr Kantner does an extremely good job of showing his readers how the incredible technological and social "advances" of the past decades have superimposed themselves on the Last Frontier.

I am old now, but I lived and worked in northwestern Alaska in the 1970s. I can attest to the truth and accuracy of Mr Kantner's observations---it's just amazing to see them written down somewhere. I especially share Mr Kantner's negative view of government bureaucrats and trophy hunters; my feelings toward wolves are a bit more ambivalent.

Mr Kantner's vivid descriptions of village life were bound to stir some resentment. After all, this is an age in which zealous guardians must shout about their group sensitivities. Truth is never palatable to all persons.

Mr Kantner has presented us with a fine painting. I saw in it the ultimate futility of cultural imperialism. Everything on this planet---igloos, rifles, individuals, cultures, empires---they're only temporarily with us. Those who lord over the land today will still, some day, be buried in it. The "everything-wanters" always never become the "everything-havers."

Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner

Three cultural narratives are in conflict in this book. There is the Thoreau narrative, changed to meet the environment, but none the less a very straight forward life in harmony with nature complete with all the good and bad. This is lovingly described and you can tell it has been lived. You live it vicariously courtesy of Seth putting you there through the eyes of Cutuk, a child, then youth, then teen - so yes it is a coming of age book. But there is also a glimpse of another narrative that plays well against the Thoreau narrative and that is the Enuk narrative - subsistence hunting, sophisticated but aboriginal, primal and spiritual. Both are furiously run over by snow machines and automatic rifles, alcohol and TV - the narrative of technological progress. Ordinary wolves do not stand a chance. But the ordinary wolves that are hunted down to near extinction are not just the wild wolves on the tundra, but the wolves that hunt them. Ordinary hunters are intoxicated and destroyed by the technology that destroys their prey and their hunting and escape from the tragic in one way or another is the desperate result. We have the advantage of seeing the death of the primal hunter through the eyes of an educated Cutuk even as we share Cutuk's primal vision of where the narrative of technological progress is taking everyone. We are all ordinary wolves.