THE HUNTER AND THE WILD GIRL

Giller Prize shortlisted author Pauline Holdstock has created an atmospheric and extraordinary world – reminiscent of Marcel Pagnol's Manon of the Spring and Jean de Florette – and characters so wholly original that they become unforgettable.

A feral child roams the dense vegetation of 19th century Languedoc, naked and savage, stealing food from remote farmyards, and trying to avoid all contact with people. But on one of her thieving missions to a remote home, she is startled to encounter a wolf; the animal poised and lifelike but simultaneously, strangely, devoid of life. Puzzled but hungry, she returns again and is surprised by Pierre Rouff, a taxidermist who prefers the company of the animals he is preserving to the townspeople of Freyzus. Pierre had committed a horrific act, accidentally killing his only son, and his guilt and grief, and the impossibility of transcendence in some things, have caused him to withdraw from society. What follows is a fascinating and engrossing novel about trust and betrayal, companionship versus solitude, the way that stories can be embroidered and misunderstood, and the fundamental urge to be alive and free. In the profound isolation of – and then connection between – the girl and the hunter, and the author's visceral treatment of grief, the world is transformed. The inspirations for this novel are varied. Pauline has the good fortune to spend a fair amount of time in France, and one pivotal visit to Paris brought her into the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature. It was very intimate, very intriguing, and gave Pauline the idea for a character who would be both hunter and taxidermist. A year later on a visit to Stockholm, Pauline was moved by a photograph of a man by a window in a sparsely furnished room. The photo was titled "Albert Eriksson, tinsmith, cafe owner, hunter and fisherman, who shot his only son by accident at a duck hunt" and the seed was planted for what could cause her character to turn away from all society. As the mother of four, Pauline could imagine no worse nightmare than causing the death of one's own child. PAULINE HOLDSTOCK's most recent novel, Into the Heart of the Country, was critically acclaimed and longlisted for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her previous novel, Beyond Measure, won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. Holdstock's other novels include The Blackbird's Song, The Turning, and The Burial Ground. She divides her time between Vancouver Island and France.