I Hold a Wolf by the Ears

Stories

By: Laura van den Berg

Narrated by: Amy Landon

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears draws listeners into a world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the mouth and mind like rotten, fragrant fruit. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America with van den Berg's trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City, Sicily, and Spain, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is uncannily attuned to our current moment, and to the thoughts we reveal to no one but ourselves.

In "Lizards," a man mutes his wife's anxieties by giving her a La Croix-like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a choice that brings about strange and violent consequences, while in "Karolina," a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her violent brother.

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears presents a collection of women on the verge, trying to grasp what's left of life. With remarkable control and transcendent talent, van den Berg dissolves, in the words of the narrator of "Slumberland," "that border between magic and annihilation," and further establishes herself as a defining fiction writer of our time.

©2020 Laura van den Berg (P)2020 Tantor

Ambiguous

If you like story's that have no ending or redemptive quality's, this is the book for you. Maybe reading this stuff would have been more rewarding,

If the voice actor didn't sound like a robot?

Who uses Amy Landon as a VA? I have tried, multiple times, to read this book. Every time I start, I hear the robotic and unnatural speaking/reading tones. I give up.

It doesn't help that the first portion of the text is filled with short jagged sentences, so the roller coaster of the narrator's stilted voice is rammed unmercifully into your ear.