Lone Wolf - Jodi Picoult

The arrival of a new Jodi Picoult novel is always a moment of intense excitement for any fan!

Lone Wolf tells the story of a family that has been broken apart, and is now brought back together through tragedy, leaving them with an impossible decision to make. Luke Warren has sustained brain injuries and is left in a coma after a car accident. On the one hand, his daughter Cara, also injured in the accident, is desperate for her father to come through, for him to live whatever it takes. But her older brother Edward, who disappeared one day and now lives in Thailand, hasn’t spoken to his father for six years, thinks Luke wouldn’t be satisfied to live a life that would be so altered from how it was, and so restricted compared to who he was before. Will they be granted a miracle, or will they have to let their father go? Should they remove the life support for their father, let him die, and allow his organs to be donated to help save others? Their mother Georgie is remarried but is by their side at the hospital, as the siblings maintain their different stances. Cara blames Edward’s leaving for the breakup of her parents’ marriage.

Luke has lived an unconventional existence to say the least, choosing to become close to wolves, not just observing their behaviour, but coming to see the wolf pack as his family, sleeping outdoors with them, eating with them, learning their rituals and mimicking their behaviour; in effect becoming one of them, to the detriment of his human family.

The novel is narrated in the first-person, and primarily from the different standpoints of all four family members, in alternate chapters. It’s a heart-rending tale of a broken family, and the baggage that they carry; blame, guilt, hurt, misunderstandings, and secrets. This is all portrayed and observed so well, as is Picoult’s great strength in her writing – telling insights into human behaviour and the huge dilemmas that a family can find themselves facing. The characters are flawed, they question their own actions and decisions, and we the reader can get inside their heads; we can sympathise with them, feel the emotions they are going through, and wonder how we would react in their position.

What the author does here though is move beyond human relationships with each other, to explore the closeness that man can feel with animals; it’s a fascinating portrayal of a man who has devoted his life to wolves. His involvement with wolves is depicted in sections throughout the book. There are many clever likenesses and parallels drawn between wolves and humans, and between aspects of the wolf pack and of the human family; the various roles within a pack and the roles human family members take on – as mentioned, this runs throughout the novel concurrent with the human relationships unfolding in the story. In all aspects, such as medical background and legal matters, again Picoult has done her research thoroughly, and the final outcome is uncertain until the end of the book.

This is an engaging and thought-provoking novel, which mixes sibling divisions, moral dilemma and an unusual subject matter – humans and wolves - and I am sure it will garner Jodi Picoult many new fans as well as delight the loyal old. 

5/5

Published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton on February 28th 2012