Ordinary Wolves: Summary and book reviews of Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner, plus links to an excerpt from Ordinary Wolves and a biography of Seth Kantner.

A stirring and vivid novel about a white boy raised among natives on the harsh Alaskan tundra, Ordinary Wolves depicts a life different from what most people have ever known. In its pages, Cutuk, a boy equally uncomfortable in the ways of whites and Inupiaq, tells of his youth and young adulthood: of his father, who brought his family to Alaska from Chicago before Cutuk's birth; of his adopted Inupiaq family; and of the vast Arctic expanse beneath the frozen sky. It is here that Cutuk grows up - hunting, fishing, and living off the land, far away from the grinding, yet beckoning, machine of consumer culture. Dispelling all mythical visions of Alaska, this evocative novel leads readers down its true trails, to feel the icy pinch of cold, to hunker as blizzards moan overhead. And in the twilit spaces from which animals appear are the wolves - and Cutuk's father - living their lives out on the tundra, unobtrusive, unapologetic, uninvolved in the world beyond.

BookBrowse

Ordinary Wolves makes Jack London's Call of the Wild look positively bland; Seth Kantner is the real thing; whereas London wrote most of his books about Alaska while living in California, Seth Katner was born in a sod igloo on the Alaskan tundra and raised simply on the land––wearing mukluks before they were fashionable, eating boiled caribou pelvis, and communing with the native Eskimos of the region.  (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Full Review (320 words).

Media Reviews

Orion Magazine Kantner's descriptions stay close to the bones of outdoor Alaska--it's as natural and satisfying as one season melting into another.   New York Times ...a magnificently realized story...smart and authentic...Ordinary Wolves has scope and a style to match its subjects.   ForeWord Kantner's writing is lyrical--he glides from gritty to the sublime and back again as fluidly as a skater on ice.   The New York Times - Mark Kamine Seth Kantner's first novel, Ordinary Wolves, is a magnificently realized story about a boy's coming-of-age in a difficult, distant place ... His novel comes across as smart and authentic. It's hard to imagine a better start.   BookBrowse - Davina Ordinary Wolves deserves to become a classic; don't miss this extraordinary book!   Library Journal In poetic detail, first novelist Kantner captures the rhythms and textures of life out beyond civilization in northern Alaska.   Booklist - Donna Seaman Impressively fluent and probing first-time novelist Kantner tracks a boy named Cutuk's rocky journey into adulthood in an episodic, avidly detailed, and many-faceted tragicomedy of Alaskan life.   Kirkus Reviews A man's novel full of nature lore and the mechanics of hunting and surviving, but also richly poetic and emotionally engrossing.   Publishers Weekly 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. Louise Erdrich I've not read anything that so captures the contrast between the wild world and our ravaging consumer culture. Ordinary Wolves is painful and beautiful. Howard Frank Mosher Seth Kantner's novel, Ordinary Wolves, is a magnificent and dramatic evocation of what it truly means to be a human being on North America's last real frontier. Ordinary Wolves is an original and beautifully written novel by a fresh new voice in American fiction. Barbara Kingsolver Once in a great while a novel comes along that can shiver right down your bones and show you the world was always larger than you knew. This is just such an astonishing book: exotic as a dream, acrid and beautiful and honest as life, it sweeps back the material curtain of human contrivance to reveal what lies panting behind it. A piece of your heart and some longing, I promise, will stay on in that other place forever.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by John
Ordinary Wolves
I lived in Interior and Northern Alaska for 15 years - hitched up there in 1971 as a teenager. Lived in remote cabins, small towns and survived living in one Native village Went to the university in Fairbanks. I am absolutely amazed by this...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Wayne
Remarkably accurate
I have never read anything which described bush living in the far north so accurately. I lived in Alaska for 5 years, on Baffin Island for 6, and in remote northern BC for 32, and I kept shaking my head in amazement at how perfectly Kantner evokes...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Penny
Love prevails - a story
I can't get beyond this book. Everything I read, see or hear brings me back to the love and the horrors visualized in this book. The voices of the characters ring true. The abysmal cruelties to people and animals chill your soul - I laughed, I...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Santiago
Ordinary Wolves
All of the people in this book are slobs. Why is it necessary? From the bush to the villages to the city they are slobs. It seems to me novels can be written without portraying constant strife and humiliations and ugliness. I don't think Mr. Katner...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Jen
This was the best book I've read all year...The description of the frontier and its people were the highlight as the author is amazingly adept at creating the scene, of a place very foreign to most of us. I'm hoping for another novel from this...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Mary
This book rang so true that it was hard to conceive that it was a work of fiction. The author painted a beautiful picture of the Alaskan countryside as well as giving emotional depth to his characters. I felt like I walked beside the main...   Read More

Readalikes

If you liked Ordinary Wolves, try these:

---

---

These are 2 of the 10 readalike suggestions for Ordinary Wolves. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.

Books with similar themes

• Novels
  
• Alaska & Polar Regions 
  
• USA 
  
• 1st Books/1st Novels 
  
• Adult Books From A Child's Perspective 
  
• Coming of Age 
  
• Books About Animals 
  
• Nature & Environmental Themes