Throw Me to the Wolves
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
**WINNER OF THE ENCORE AWARD 2020**
'This is literary fiction as it should be: in stylish, surprising, lyrical sentences we are forced to confront the hidden power structures, public and private, that control our everyday lives' The Times
A young woman has been murdered, and a neighbour, a retired teacher from Chapleton College, is arrested. An eccentric loner - intellectual, shy, a fastidious dresser with expensive tastes - he is the perfect candidate for a media monstering.
In custody he is interviewed by two detectives: the smart-talking, quick-witted Gary, and his watchful colleague, Ander. Ander is always watchful, but particularly now, because the man across the table is his former teacher - Michael Wolphram - whom he hasn't seen in nearly 30 years.
As the novel proceeds, we watch Wolphram's media lynching as ex-pupils and colleagues line up to lie about him. In parallel, we read Ander's memories of his life as a young Dutch boy in 80s England. Another outsider, another loner in a school system rife with abuse and bullying, Ander has another case to solve: the cold case of his own childhood.
Though it deals with historical abuse and violence in schools, and the corrupt power of the popular media, Throw Me to the Wolves is about childhood and memory. A perceptive and pertinent novel of our times, beautifully written and psychologically acute, it manages to be both very funny and - at the same time - shatteringly sad.
*LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER 2020*
*A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this cerebral, if less than exciting, procedural from British author McGuinness (The Last Hundred Days), police officers Ander Widderson and his crude, quipping partner, Gary, look into the murder of a young woman whose body was discovered under a bridge in South East England (and about whom the reader learns nothing of consequence). The prime suspect, retired teacher Michael Wolphram, taught at Chapleton College when Ander attended the exclusive boarding school back in the 1980s. Ander's reminiscences about his time as Wolphram's student and the disappearance of his best friend, Danny, from the school provide counterpoint to the present-day investigation. The relationship between Ander and Gary, and that between Ander and Danny, come across with appealing tough-guy tenderness. But McGuinness's choice to center the media's frenzy to scapegoat Wolphram on individual manipulative reporters in print, and not on populist social media, seems quaintly out-of-date. Between musings on the conflict between media coverage and truth, the narrative often feels overly introspective and tensionless, while also failing as social commentary.
