Sons of the Wolf (1967)
Listening: Respect
When cousins Harriet and Ada lose their grandmother, their care is given over to a distant cousin they've never met--the reclusive Mr. Wolfson. Chained to a wheelchair, "Wolf", as he urges his charges to call him, lives in an isolated manor in Yorkshire, with two wolfish dogs as his only real companions. He is nevertheless a man of charm and intelligence, his son Julian artistic and mild, and the two women soon come to think of Abbey Manor as home. But the return of Wolf's large and virile son Francis from Edinburgh disturbs the tranquility, and as ominous incidents mount, Harriet is forced to wonder if there is some truth in the local legends that the family are a pack of monsters--skinchangers who turn into wolves to stalk the moors on the full moon. Or is their evil far more practical...and more terrible?
Spoilers Below
Told in the form of a first person series of diary entries written chiefly over the span of 1859, Sons of the Wolf is not one of MPM's more brilliant entries. It is clearly an early effort, although traces of character choices and plotlines that will become hallmarks of hers are evident. For instance, Harriet and Ada are clear prototypes of Amelia and Evelyn in her later Amelia Peabody series. Rather dim prototypes--Harriet, although darkly colored and full of Amelia's aggravation with the male species, is condescending and frustratingly blind to events around her. Ada, while as blond and beautiful and sweet as Evelyn, lacks her intelligence and capable abilities.
Francis, too, is an early Emerson--large and practical and forceful. In fact, he's the most likable of a rather bad lot. I feel for him as he struggles through not only the malicious plottings of his father and brother, but also Harriet's stubborn misconstruction of absolutely every event that happens in the first two thirds of the novel.
Nonetheless, there's something rather fine in the ominous ruins of an old abbey, the vast moor, the obsequious villagers, the glimpse of Middleham castle. It's a Gothic novel in the most classic sense, with two women trapped far away from help, a powerful and terrifying man in control of their world, a secret will and a vast inheritance, and a threat of the supernatural. As it leaps to its dark climax on All Hallow's Eve, as a horse named Satan flees a howling wolf and as a heroine stares down rape and imprisonment in an abandoned tower, the pulse of the reader pounds. This work may lack later MPM sparkle and self-deprecating humor, but it has its own charm as a throwback to the sixties' craze for gothics and werewolves, Hammer Horror and Dark Shadows.
Favorite Line: "What I contemplated doing was bold and shocking and unwomanly; it would have been more 'ladylike' to let Wolf murder Francis and seduce me. Well, I thought, clutching the bars and grinding my teeth, if that is the conduct our society demands of a lady, then I am not one."
Rating: **
Notes:
*Look for an early example of MPM's staunch pro-Richard III feeling when Harriet and Wolf discuss the Wars of the Roses
*Also look for another Amelia/Emerson foreshadowing when Harriet helps Francis with his dislocated shoulder after a bit of wall nearly falls on his head.
Spoilers Below
Told in the form of a first person series of diary entries written chiefly over the span of 1859, Sons of the Wolf is not one of MPM's more brilliant entries. It is clearly an early effort, although traces of character choices and plotlines that will become hallmarks of hers are evident. For instance, Harriet and Ada are clear prototypes of Amelia and Evelyn in her later Amelia Peabody series. Rather dim prototypes--Harriet, although darkly colored and full of Amelia's aggravation with the male species, is condescending and frustratingly blind to events around her. Ada, while as blond and beautiful and sweet as Evelyn, lacks her intelligence and capable abilities.
Francis, too, is an early Emerson--large and practical and forceful. In fact, he's the most likable of a rather bad lot. I feel for him as he struggles through not only the malicious plottings of his father and brother, but also Harriet's stubborn misconstruction of absolutely every event that happens in the first two thirds of the novel.
Nonetheless, there's something rather fine in the ominous ruins of an old abbey, the vast moor, the obsequious villagers, the glimpse of Middleham castle. It's a Gothic novel in the most classic sense, with two women trapped far away from help, a powerful and terrifying man in control of their world, a secret will and a vast inheritance, and a threat of the supernatural. As it leaps to its dark climax on All Hallow's Eve, as a horse named Satan flees a howling wolf and as a heroine stares down rape and imprisonment in an abandoned tower, the pulse of the reader pounds. This work may lack later MPM sparkle and self-deprecating humor, but it has its own charm as a throwback to the sixties' craze for gothics and werewolves, Hammer Horror and Dark Shadows.
Favorite Line: "What I contemplated doing was bold and shocking and unwomanly; it would have been more 'ladylike' to let Wolf murder Francis and seduce me. Well, I thought, clutching the bars and grinding my teeth, if that is the conduct our society demands of a lady, then I am not one."
Rating: **
Notes:
*Look for an early example of MPM's staunch pro-Richard III feeling when Harriet and Wolf discuss the Wars of the Roses
*Also look for another Amelia/Emerson foreshadowing when Harriet helps Francis with his dislocated shoulder after a bit of wall nearly falls on his head.
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