Book review: History Of Wolves

Linda, 15, lives with her mum and dad — at least she thinks they’re her mum and dad — in the rundown cabins of an abandoned commune, in the icy, forested, lakeside wilds of northern Minnesota.

Emily Fridlund

W&N, £12.99; ebook, £6.99

Relief from this bleak existence appears in the form of the Gardners, an apparently normal nuclear family — mum, 4-year-old boy and mostly absent dad — who take up residence in a cabin across the lake.

Linda gets to know mum Patra and son Paul, becoming their long-term babysitter.

In her desperation to be wanted, she becomes a sort of benign stalker of the family.

And she also overlooks their increasingly odd behaviour when Paul falls ill and his condition worsens; ignoring his condition, indeed, becomes the price of acceptance .

The chilling plot is only part of the mesmerising power of this assured and striking debut.

Fridlund deftly builds atmosphere and evokes a sense of place, generates a terrible sense of foreboding, and creates a cast of characters of utterly credible complexity.