Linger

Maggie Stiefvater (author)

Scholastic Press, USA: Australian release November 2010; 360pp

ISBN: 9780545123280 

Genres: adventure, fantasy, romance

Issues: friendship, family, identity

Sam isn't quite used to being fully human yet, still expecting every chilly day to trigger his change into a wolf and tear him away from his beloved Grace.

As summer draws near Sam knows he should fulfil his responsibility to the pack and get ready for the newly made werewolves, the ones who will change rapidly from wolf to human to wolf until the weather settles. This year Sam must take on Beck's responsibilities as his foster-father's lupine form has become permanent. But before he changed Beck brought another dominant personality into the pack: a handsome, manipulative, egocentric young man called Cole. Will Cole's past draw the wrong kind of attention to the mysterious wolves of Mercy Falls? Or will his remarkable intelligence find the cure that will protect the pack forever?

Once again told from multiple perspectives, Linger explores the developing personalities of the prickly, fragile Isabel, the arrogant, tormented Cole, practical, independent Grace and sensitive, lonely Sam. Each character is struggling to find balance and peace, each one trying to come to terms with their past and who it has made them and whether they will allow that past to continue to dictate who they become. The increasingly complex relationships between the four main protagonists create an exciting and interesting narrative tension.

Strong personalities with different, sometimes conflicting motivations, Sam, Grace, Cole and Isabel's viewpoints combine to give the reader the same depth of perspective, information and insight as would normally be provided by the traditional omniscient third person narrator. The first person narratives are short, creating a highly cinematic style that keeps the reader intensely engaged with the text. Stiefvater's writing is both lyrical and concise: there is not a wasted word, not an extraneous phrase – a rare thing in any novel.

While superficially a love story, Linger is actually much more than that. Stiefvater uses her characters to explore the nature of love in all its forms – parental, fraternal, platonic, romantic. The author works to show her readers that love is never black and white but as inspirational, destructive, challenging and heart-achingly beautiful as the ancient forests that are the wolves' home. Stiefvater's work seeks to encourage readers to reach for healthy relationships, once that strengthen and enrich who they are as people. Despite, perhaps because of the fact that they spend part of their lives as wolves, Stiefvater's characters demonstrate that relationships based on power and control, dominance and submission, waif and rescuer, are not the kind that last.

Linger is an absorbing, beautifully written book that carries the story arc from Shiver into the dark, challenging second act of a new take on an old idea. Werewolves have stalked mythology for centuries but Stiefvater's urban fantasy trilogy presents a thoughtful and thought-provoking interpretation that weaves together wolf and human experiences and viewpoints.

'It was eighteen degrees outside. In the bright light of the moon, a flat, pale disc behind a tangle of leafless branches, I folded my bare arms tightly across my chest and stared at my socks, waiting for Grace's mother to vacate the kitchen. I softly cursed the icy Minnesota springtimes, but the words swirled away in puffs of white in the darkness. It was strange to be standing in this cold, shaking with it, unable to feel my fingers or toes, my eyes burning with it, and to be no closer to being a wolf than I had been before.' (p71)

Warning: sex scenes; death of animals; some violence

Series: Shiver; Forever