Read This Book . . .

Erica Berry’s debut nonfiction title can’t easily be shoved into one genre or another. Berry combines threads of memoir, the study of wolves, wolves in humanity’s current cultural context, and wolves in fairytales and folklore. But as we meander through Berry’s thoughts, we quickly understand that this book isn’t as much about wolves as it is about what wolves often symbolize to humanity: fear.

Each chapter focuses on a different way that wolves embody ideas around fear, including chapter titles like “Girl vs Wolf,” “Town vs Wolf,” and “Self vs Wolf.” If you replace the word “wolf” in these chapter titles with the word “fear,” you begin to see the bigger picture that Berry weaves together. Through her personal anecdotes, Berry describes her own experiences with fear, whether that’s meeting an intrusive stranger on a cross-country train journey or accidentally eating large quantities of mandrakes in Sicily.

Berry uses wolves as the vehicle to describe fears that we build up in our minds that may or may not be warranted. She returns to the example of wolves being reintroduced to Idaho, some of whom crossed the border into Oregon. The people from the area carried their fear of wolves around with them, needlessly stressing about the small number of wolves that rarely attack humans. They insisted their fear was real and needed to be addressed, and it was often the wolves that suffered the most at the hands of men.

Wolfish is a tangled web of thoughts and ideas that asks the reader to engage with the text and mull over each chapter. It’s a prime example of a multi-model book that defies genre, showing its readers that it’s unafraid of breaking literary norms. We, the readers, just have to keep an open mind and be brave enough to dive right in.