Ordinary Wolves: A Novel [Paperback]

Seth Kantner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2005

In the tradition of Jack London, Seth Kantner presents an Alaska far removed from majestic clichés of exotic travelogues and picture postcards. Kantner’s vivid and poetic prose lets readers experience Cutuk Hawcly’s life on the Alaskan plains through the character’s own words — feeling the pliers pinch of cold and hunkering in an igloo in blinding blizzards. Always in Cutuk’s mind are his father Ab,; the legendary hunter Enuk Wolfglove, and the wolves — all living out lives on the unforgiving tundra. Jeered and pummeled by native children because he is white, Cutuk becomes a marginal participant in village life, caught between cultures. After an accident for which he is responsible, he faces a decision that could radically change his life. Like his young hero, Seth Kantner grew up in a sod igloo in the Alaska, and his experiences of wearing mukluks before they were fashionable, eating boiled caribou pelvis, and communing with the native tribes add depth and power to this acclaimed narrative.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the small but growing genre of ecological fiction, the great challenge is to balance political and environmental agendas with engrossing storytelling. This riveting first novel sets a new standard, offering a profound and beautiful account of a boy's attempt to reconcile his Alaskan wilderness experience with modern society. Abe Hawcly came to Alaska in search of his bush-pilot father, became enraptured with the wilderness, then moved there with his wife to live in a sod igloo and subsist on his hunting skills while he pursued his painting. Soon disenchanted with isolation and hardship, his wife abandoned him, leaving him to rear and educate their three children. Abe's youngest child, known by his Iñupiaq name, Cutuk, grows to manhood and learns to hunt, gaining an intimate knowledge of the frozen tundra. Eventually, Cutuk's brother, Jerry, escapes to Fairbanks, and his sister, Iris, attends college and becomes a teacher. Meanwhile, torn between two cultures, Cutuk chafes under discrimination as a white in the midst of Native Americans; he is deprived of both rights and respect by the locals. He also develops a profound curiosity about the city, but once he makes it to Anchorage, he is bewildered and confused by urban slang and modern mores. His attempts to reconcile himself to his own race fail dismally as he is drawn back to the north and the values inherent in the wilderness ("I shook my head, trying to align the years, the Taco Bells, exit ramps, rabid foxes, and this old pot"). Though Cutuk's gnawing angst occasionally grows tedious, this is a tenderly and often beautifully written first novel. As a revelation of the devastation modern America brings to a natural lifestyle, it's a tour de force and may be the best treatment of the Northwest and its people since Jack London's works.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School - This exciting story of a white boy growing up in a sod igloo in remote northern Alaska challenges any romantic ideas about life on the last American frontier. Cutuk and his older brother and sister are being raised by their father, who has totally rejected modern American society in favor of a culture of self-reliance in the wilderness. Cutuk wants desperately to be accepted by the village Inupiaks, who ridicule and harass him as an outsider. Village life is not a pretty picture with its alcohol abuse, rape, incest, and family violence, but Cutuk cherishes the old ways and respects the elders. His siblings grow up and leave for the cities, and in his early 20s he leaves for Anchorage. He comes to realize that he doesn't fit in there either and finally returns to the village to make a place for himself. The episodic novel has a connecting thread throughout as Cutuk continues to search for an old Eskimo hunter who befriended his family and then disappeared. There is an interesting contrast between the protagonist's preference for the indigenous lifestyle and the Inupiaks' adoption of American fast food, gadgets, and fads. Kantner gives readers many exciting and realistic views of everyday life in the igloo; hunting wolves, caribou, and bear; and traveling by dogsled and snowmobile in the dark northern tundra. A valuable story about a boy trying to find his place in the world. - Penny Stevens, Andover College, Portland, ME
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions (May 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571310479
• ISBN-13: 978-1571310477
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #61,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars unique pov and strong character overcome flaws--a good read, August 27, 2004

By 

B. Capossere (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ordinary Wolves: A Novel (Milkweed National Fiction Prize) (Hardcover)

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.

61 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Ordinary Book, May 16, 2004

By 

James Magdanz (Alaska) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ordinary Wolves: A Novel (Milkweed National Fiction Prize) (Hardcover)

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?

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book because, May 15, 2004

By 

Faye A. Harasack (Kotzebue, Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ordinary Wolves: A Novel (Milkweed National Fiction Prize) (Hardcover)

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!