“Only rain, not tears, ran down his cheeks. He wasn’t a real boy after all. He was a wolf, and he cried like one.”
Ruth Emmie Lang’s Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance (St. Martin’s Press, 2017) is one of my favorite reads of the year so far, and I almost didn’t read it. You may remember that Lang’s The Wilderwomen was a roaring disappointment for me. I didn’t think the characters had warmth or depth, and I had no connection to the story or those that inhabited the pages. I had no similar concerns with Lang’s debut; Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstances is a hug of novel, my favorite sort, and it’ll get under your skin and in your heart in the best of ways.
Reminding me of Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish, Beasts centers around the most remarkable of characters with the most fascinating of stories. Weylyn was born in a blizzard. On June 29th. He’s a bit of magic and a bit untamed, but all heart. When he’s orphaned, he runs away from child services and becomes part of a wolf pack. Mary meets him when she’s eleven. Her mother has died and her father is trying his best, but Mary is cloaked in grief. She runs away with the wolf boy, and he mends her broken heart and she teaches him to read. But children can’t be raised by wolves, and Mary is returned home and Weylyn is put in foster care.
Each person he encounters, from Mary to his foster sister Lydia to his teacher and eventual foster mother Meg, is forever marked by knowing Weylyn. He leaves bits of magic where he goes, but he is a nomad and cannot stay in one place long. He’ll spend his life loving the girl who ran away to join the wolves with him. And he’ll spend his life trying to find her again.
Read this book. Howl at the moon, and then read it again.
A Girl Named Tommi 