Book Review: Wolfish by Erica Berry

 

Impulse buy because it has a wolf in the cover, title and synopsis. Obviously.

In this book, Berry takes a look at wolves and the fear surrounding them, including a particular individual: OR-7 AKA Journey, a wolf who walked a huge distance in Oregon and California. Berry also intersperses some of the book with her own anecdotes regarding fear and predators.

So, there's parts of this book I really like. Most notably, the part that are actually about wolves, or wolf-human relations. That's what I bought the book for, after all. It's in the title. It's on the cover. It's in the synopsis.

What I did not care for was Berry regularly interspersing these wolf sections (AKA what the book should actually be about given the three elements I just mentioned) with anecdotes from her own life. It'd be one thing if these anecdotes were wolf-related, but the majority of the time they're just not. I did not buy this book to read about Berry's personal life. I read this book as a non-fiction about wolves, wolf-human relations and OR-7. One of the frequently referenced anecdotes is about a man sitting beside her on the train whom she finds creepy. And from then on we go on entire tangents about how wolves can be used as a symbol for predatory men and whatnot and this is where the book utterly lost me.

I did not come here to read a memoir about Berry's life. I came here to read about wolves, like the title/cover/synopsis promises. Had Berry's personal life story any real connection to wolves I wouldn't be complaining here, since then they would at least connect to the central theme. But these constant personal unrelated anecdotes and somehow trying (and failing) to connect this back to wolves is just...not working.

If you want to write a memoir, write that bloody memoir. But do not deceive people into thinking they'll be reading something else, because that's just false advertisement. I kept being really invested in the non-fiction wolf sections, only to be pulled back into another Berry-anecdote. Not very pleasant as a reader who is passionate about wolves but not about Berry's unrelated personal life. 

I think she either should've gone all the way with her memoir and just sold it as that: a memoir. Or have done what the book promises and writing an actual solid non-fiction wolf book. Because this weird half-and-half stuff isn't working and it made reading the book jarring. It kept losing my attention constantly.

Not recommended. If you want a true memoir of Berry's life, you'll be better off not reading this because there's a lot of wolf stuff interspersed. If you want a solid wolf non-fiction like I do, you get constantly interrupted by Berry going on her own personal tangents about her life. It's a lose/lose situation. Unless you're the type of person who happens to want exactly both, but that's definitely not me.

Rating: 3/5