Wolfe Island
Lucy Treloar

Wolfe Island
Lucy Treloar
Review
by Marie Matteson
There is a lyrical sense that is not to be hurried in Lucy Treloar’s writing. She writes you slowly into the world of her novels and you need to spend some time and pay attention. In her first novel, Salt Creek, she wrote us into the world of a young white woman moving to the Coorong in the nineteenth century, learning to live in an unfamiliar landscape and growing in to her awareness of all that the presence of her people destroyed. In Wolfe Island, we start again in an estuary, we start again with a woman of hardy mind and strong spirit, but we are at an end point now, the destruction has been wrought. Though a date is never given, it is sometime in the very near future.
Wolfe Island is part of the Chesapeake Bay estuary off the east coast of the US and it has been taken by the sea. All the islands are slowly submerging; most of the landscape is now only accessible in Kitty Hawke’s memories. Kitty is from Wolfe Island; her people have been there for centuries and she is the last remaining inhabitant. An artist, Kitty prefers solitude with her wolfdog, Girl, and her memories, to what is happening on the mainland. But she is pulled back into the world by the arrival of her granddaughter and her granddaughter’s friends. They are running from a world Kitty has already left. This world is an America in which climate crisis is literally eating away at the coast. It’s a world in which people seeking refuge from ‘down south’ are called ‘runners’, and are locked up.
If this sounds like a climate-change dystopia – well, it is, and it isn’t. It is foremost a story of individual separateness and grief, of strength and love, and of the way seismic change happens and people choose to look away. It is a story of now. I loved it, and I loved the grief it brought me.
Marie Matteson is a book buyer at Readings Carlton.
This item is in-stock and will ship in 2-3 business days
Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.

Too Much Lip: Winner of the Miles Franklin Award
Too much lip, her old problem from way back. And the older she got, the harder it seemed to get to swallow her opinions. The avalanche of bullshit in the world would drown her if she let it; the least she could do was raise her...
$24.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The White Girl
In The White Girl, Tony Birch has created memorable characters whose capacity for love and courage are a timely reminder of the endurance of the human spirit.
$24.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

There Was Still Love
The profoundly moving new novel from the critically acclaimed and Miles Franklin shortlisted author of Past the Shallows and When the Night Comes. A tender and masterfully told story of memory, family and love.
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Wolfe Island
The stunning new novel from the award-winning author of Salt Creek is Barkskins or The Son meets The Road...
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Wolfe Island
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Trespassers
$29.95Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Exploded View
$22.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Fusion
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Year of the Beast
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Crossings
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Simpson Returns
$19.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Palace of Angels
$32.95Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The White Girl
$24.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Mother Fault
$32.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Skylarking
$24.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Wolfe Island
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Salt Creek
$22.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Common People
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Ghost River
$29.95Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Shadowboxing
$24.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...