Wolf on the Fold - Softcover

Judith Clarke

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1876631058 ISBN 13: 9781876631055

Publisher: Pan MacMillan, 2000

Synopsis

Kenny is fourteen. His dad has just died and to keep the family together, Kenny must find work. 'Be careful going through the flatlands,' his mother warns him. 'Don't stop for anyone.' But Kenny does stop, and what happens next will define the man he becomes. With supple, evocative prose, and characters you will grow to love, Wolf on the Fold journeys through the generations of Kenny's family, examining those critical moments when youth collides with the adult world.

About this title

About the Author:

Judith Clarke was born in Sydney and educated at the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University in Canberra. She has worked as a teacher and librarian and in adult education in Victoria and NSW. She now lives in Melbourne with her husband and has one grown-up son. Judith's novels include the award-winning Friend of My Heart and Night Train and the popular Al Capsella series. Her books have been published in the US and Europe to high acclaim.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 10 Up-In this novel, six loosely connected short stories that may be read independently follow four Australian generations through their few ups and many downs. The first story takes place during the Great Depression, when 14-year-old Kenny's father has died and the teen drops out of school to support his family. The fifth is set in 1991, in war-stressed Israel. These events give the collection an overall historical perspective. Kenny's two daughters, who are introduced at their dying father's bedside, thread in and out of the stories. Readers meet them again as teens, and then follow them into their separate middle-aged lives. The final selection is a reflection on the present; Kenny's great-grandson is trying to fend off the emotional fallout from his parents' shouting sprees. From Kenny's hard-luck times of surviving the Depression, to his great-grandson's plugging his ears against the reality of a contemporary "happy home," this family's cycle tracks a jagged path of irony. All of these stories carry strong themes of youth facing the misfortunes of adult reality-poverty, death, emigration, divorce, senility, psychosis, war, peer cruelty. Clarke's writing is strong and competent; her subject matter is haunting and evocative, but the book is missing an overall teen voice/perspective/narrative and is not likely to appeal to a YA audience. It's a sad family recollection, tuned toward an adult ear.
Alison Follos, North Country School, Lake Placid, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan MacMillan
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1876631058
• ISBN 13: 9781876631055
• Binding: Paperback