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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Genre fiction executed with skill, intelligence and wit, April 25, 2007
Pat Murphy continues the experiment begun with the delightful THERE AND BACK AGAIN, this time adopting her psuedonym's (Max Merriwell) psuedonym (Mary Maxwell) to provide a fresh take on the myth of the feral child, a premise as old as Romulus and Remus, familiar to afficionados of literature and adventure fiction alike. Whether she herself feels this experiment has been successful is for her to say. However, she certainly SEEMS to be having fun.
The book's obvious model is Burroughs' TARZAN OF THE APES, although one can sense echoes of books like Kipling's THE JUNGLE BOOK, Hudson's GREEN MANSIONS, and even Jane Auel's CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR . It tells the story of young Sarah MacKenzie, who, surviving an attack on her family that leaves her parents dead, is adopted by a wolf pack which makes its home in the California woods. Growing to young adulthood, Sarah becomes a legend to both her pack and the denizens of California, acting as saviour for many endangered travelers. Along the way, Sarah is befriended by the journalist/artist Max Phillips, who helps her seek her roots. But, even as she does so, she is threatened by one of the men who killed her parents, who has since become a pillar of the community in a nearby Gold Rush town.
Wild Angel is a celebration of story itself--Murphy, who, by quoting Twain in the epigram to the first chapter ("Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attmepting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."), makes her intentions quite clear, acknowledges as much in her afterword. Writing the book seems to have reconnected her to the love of fiction which sparked her love of writing fiction in the first place, opening her mind to the possibilities of fiction. As with so many writers, it's hard to know for sure exactly "who" is writing these books, the "real" writer, or the psuedonyms, which seem to have freed her to take her fiction in new directions. Witness her own remarks, which echo those of writers like Stephen King, Donald Westlake and Ed McBain in discussing their own pen names:
"As a writer known for my feminist leanings, the doubly layered psuedonym added an interesting aspect to the writing of this novel. Throughout the writing of Wild Angel, I was aware that i was a woman, writing as a man, who was writing as a woman. Twisted and confusing, I know, but necessary in a strange way. Max has the confidence to believe that anything he writes is wonderful, Mary shares that confidence--but modifies the subject matter to match a woman's experience."
She goes on to state that :
"I have created psuedonyms who have become characters who have been writing books that I enjoy--but wouldn't have been written without them. It has been a strange and wonderful experience."
Indeed, Murphy has grown increasingly playful as her experiment progresses, even providing afterwords from both Mary and Max. Further evidence of this playfullness is evident is her use of Gitana, the Gandalf stand-in from THERE AND BACK AGAIN, in WILD ANGEL, and in the appearances of Pinkerton operative "Patrick Murphy" and a young Mark Twain late in the story.
WILD ANGEL is, like its predecessor, a simple pleasure, a book that weds the humor and magic of a folk tale with a very modern feel for the psychological dynamics between men and women, exploring the fine line between civilization and savagery. It has been crafted and executed with skill, intelligence and wit, radiating Murphy's evident love of genre fiction, a love which, as evidenced by the success of this narrative, has been requited.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful read for anybody who loves wolves and strong-willed women, November 14, 2005
This was a book I was really saddened to finish. I truly hated to say goodbye to Sarah McKensie, the main character of the novel, who was transformed by the skillful writing of Pat Murphy into someone I soon grew to deeply like and long to know.
"Wild Angel" tells the tale of a young girl who, after watching her parents gunned down at age three, is raised by wolves and becomes a strong willed and strong muscled heroic savage. Murphy's novel is unabashedly based on the great works of pulp fiction, particularly the Tarzan series, and as such doesn't pretend to be a great classic of social and intellectual literature. Who cares? Possibly because of that, it was one of the most wonderfully enjoyable reads I've experienced in a very, very long time.
Despite the style of writing it was based on, the novel often rose above the level of pulp fiction through Murphy's eye for fine detail. As someone who knows a bit about wolves, I can say that the members of Sarah's non-human family behaved very realistically, and it is clear that Murphy did her research on the biology and behavior of wild canines before writing this volume. (And although exceedingly rare, there have been several well documented cases of abandoned children being raised by non-human surrogate parents. A well-known example is Kamala and Amala, two young girls discovered living with wolves in 1920 near Midnapore, India.) Likewise, so is the Wild West portrayed realistically. Well, yeah, there were some fudges of historical facts here and there, but the feel and flavor of life during those times was played in a caring, painstaking way that made suspension of disbelief extremely easy throughout the story's 180 pages.
I soon became totally entwined in Sarah's life and joyfully became party to her experiences. I unexpectedly found myself crying as she cried during a particularly mournful scene in the middle of the book. And by the end, I was howling with her in pleasure. After the book came to a close, I found myself restlessly looking around the four walls of my room, and I realized I was being drawn toward the open spaces, where I drove and, in a midst of trees, away from all other people, I howled again, this time in sadness for the fact that I would never hear of Sarah again.
Yeah, the book was that good.
My main wish at the end was that it was like the Tarzan books in another way - that Sarah's story also stretched across 24 novels, which would mean I could possible have another 23 chances to read of her life's saga.
Goodbye, Sarah McKensie. You won't soon be forgotten. And thank you, Pat Murphy, for another fine piece of writing.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Sarah of The Wolves a la Tarzan (3.5 stars), February 7, 2007
Pat Murphy is a very talented, prolific and interesting writer. I find her use of nested pseudonyms amusing and confusing. This story is somewhat of homage to a childhood favorite of hers, Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan series (along with other great stories). It tells of a child lost in the wilderness that is adopted by a pack of wolves, survives and eventually encounters other people, including Max Phillips a writer/artist from back east whose name is close to Max Merriwell, a pseudonym/character of Pat Murphy's and whose initials a MP, the reversal of those of the author.
The story is simple and where it is contrived, we will blame Burroughs, who, according to Pat, shamelessly took liberties with plot and circumstance to make a story work. Pat Murphy would never do that of her volition.
This is part of a project that included "Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell" and "There and Back Again". Of the three, I enjoyed this one the least, considering it to be the least inventive - yes, "There and Back Again" was a complete parody/rewrite of The Hobbit, but I enjoyed the SF aspect.
If you've read the other Pat Murphy books, read this one. If not, read the others first.
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