Saturday Review: “The Stories We Tell – And Don’t Tell” a review by Julia Ridley Smith of Inside the Wolf by Amy Rowland (2023) in NCLR Online Winter 2024
Rowland “was looking to writers who plumb the timeless mysteries of how people struggle to live together in places where some folks are always trying to keep the upper hand, and everybody knows everybody else’s business. These very matters are at the heart of Rowland’s haunting second novel, Inside the Wolf,” Smith explains in the opening of her review of the novel.
Not a coming-of-age story, but rather a coming-to-maturity one, Smith describes how the main character goes home to a small town in Eastern North Carolina and must confront her own, her family’s, and the town’s past in order to understand the stories she’s been told. Smith comments on the numerous allusions to myths and folktales, including two NC-grounded ones.
Because this is North Carolina, it’s not a surprise that Smith and Rowland are former classmates and friends in the writing business. Is there someone you know on our To-Be-Reviewed list for whom you may write about for us? Writing reviews helps reviewers learn storycraft, helps the reviewed book with promotion, and helps NCLR. A win-win-win.
Read the entire review in the Online Winter 2024 issue out now! And order the book from Bookshop.org.
