Mary Hedengren

American audiences will find this tale of a mother raising her two half wolf children tricky on two counts: first, like many Japanese films, the plot is not strictly one arc: for example, there’s a plot about learning to farm, and then there’s another plot arc about making friends at school. The film procedes like real life, with several challenges presenting themselves and then resolving. The other difficult thing is the total sacrifice of the mother. She’s plucky. She’s indomitable. But while she gives everything for the ten (!!!) years she is raising her children, American audience may feel unsettled that she never remarries, never goes back to college, and appears to never be visited by either of her children, living alone at the end. The foil of this mother is the classmate’s mother, who dresses fancy, promises to sue, and remarries without telling her son. Surely there has to be and in-between for women.

An expertly written, but ultimately petty book. Petty in the “Janice is a Mean Girl” vein, where a prank to exact revenge on a broadly drawn drunk racist teacher only serendipitously embarrasses her instead of getting her fired (and mostly ends up giving the working class janitor a miserable day). That prank perhaps is microcosm for the entire book’s problems: melodrama, unsatisfying results, and clear heroes and villains cloaked in Ng’s superb ability to write in another’s voice. Even the key events are petty, imbued with meaning from one (virtuously rebellious) side, but ultimately only baffling destructive to those supposedly getting their comeuppance. Aside from this main complaint, the book shelters a variety of warmed-over tropes: the suburban sell-outs, the mysterious outsiders who sweep in and shake things up, stubbornly clueless parents all around, and, yes, the saintly mentor who must die. But in the pluses category are some great descriptions of solid art and the character of Moody is interesting, especially in what does (or doesn’t) happen with him and Pearl. Great craftsmanship, but both the heroes and villains are so petty and no one seems to have changed or developed by the end of the book—just gotten more annoyed at each other.