I wish I could properly thank the neighbor who left a copy of Tell The Wolves I’m Home in our Little Lending Library.
June Elbus is a character I’ll remember forever. While I take periodic breaks from writing thorough book reviews, I knew I needed to share her with the world.
The focus of the story is 14-year old, old soul, June. She’s different from the kids her age. She likes to escape into the woods and pretend she’s living in the middle ages. Preoccupied with work, her parents aren’t as involved with her as they’d like and her older sister, Greta went from being her best friend to a stranger. The only person she connects to is her Uncle Finn. The two are kindred spirits who share an appreciation of classical music, tea and regular visits to the Met. Their tender relationship gives the book so much heart.
After the devastating loss of her Uncle to AIDS, a stranger walks into her life changing the fabric of it forever. The mysterious man is Toby, Finn’s partner. She thought she knew everything about her best friend. Shocked and hurt that such a big part of his life was a secret to her, she tries to grapple with the fact that Toby knew so much about her for years. As the two people who knew and loved Finn most, a slow-burning friendship blossoms between them. They’re able to grieve and piece each other back together again by sharing stories of Finn. Their relationship becomes a secret of her own.
I tend to prematurely judge stories from an adolescent perspective and stash them in the Y.A box along with Harry Potter and the Nicholas Sparks stories. I’m so glad I didn’t put TTWIM in that category because it belongs on every bookshelf. Regardless of age, I think readers will take a lot from this story and easily be able to recall the confusion and nostalgia of their youth. Of how painful and beautiful life can be at every stage and how important it felt to be seen by someone, really seen for the first time. It’s a love letter to the safe people in our lives.
I did a lot of highlighting and marking up inside the pale bluish-green cover, a sign of it speaking to the soul. June is written with such love, she’s a poet and a romantic and is emotional and messy and likes what she likes and doesn’t apologize for it. I felt very much like her at 14; always observing from the periphery, not wanting attention but wanting to be seen. It was refreshing to not be fed the angsty, shallow boy-crazy teenage girl troupe that gives the demographic such little credit.
An excerpt depicting how thoughtful June was towards her Uncle Finn:
“I understand how just about anything in the world could remind you of Finn. Trains, or New York City, or plants, or books, or soft sweet and black-and-white cookies, or some guy in Central Park playing a polka on the harmonica and the violin at the same time. Things you’d never seen with Finn could remind you of him, because he was the one person you’d want to show. “Look at that,” you’d want to say because you knew he would think it was wonderful. To make you feel like the most observant person in the world for spotting it.” – June
Tell the Wolves I’m Home will fill your heart and break it multiple times. It’s an untraditional love story about grief, family dynamics, chosen family and forgiving yourself for things left unsaid. It reads so honestly to life. A part of me describes the story as a tragedy, another as a poignant coming of age tale about hope. There’s no big shiny bow tied at the end. Nothing’s worse to me than a lukewarm book. Some of the best stories will leave you feeling deeply, whatever that may be. This made me feel a lot of things. Maybe it’ll shake something loose in you, too?
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