A book written to be a tropey, 5.5-stars-on-IMDB type of film of extremely traumatized people making extremely stupid choices.

In Once There Were Wolves, Inti, a melodramatic, holier-than-thou narrator with an IQ of about 75 (I ASSUME) and yet two PhDs and a magical, selective skill of super-empathy frolicks her way through the Scottish highlands going on and on about her wolves, whom she romanticizes to no end and yet doesn't seem to know a lot about. They are mysterious and they know love, this scientist-woman keeps repeating and then wreaking absolute HAVOC on both them and the human community around her. Lmao

The wolves are a metaphor for Inti and her twin sister, or abused women in general, or maybe violent men, or humanity as a whole, or maybe a mirror of our animal nature, or something? I wouldn't know. It literally could be ANYTHING.

Or maybe they weren't even a metaphor. Maybe they were just wolves. Which makes me feel even more desperate and feral.

I refuse to address the plot. It's ridic.

As for the writing, McConaghy makes strangely poetic internal musings clash with the blandest depictions of nature I've ever seen ("there are trees", basically). The book is weirdly paced, the narrator making dramatic moments very blasé and the boring moments irrationally dramatic.

Also, for some reason everyone who lives in Alaska is Australian. Which somehow encapsulates this book. Sure