Once There Were Wolves

McConaghy’s latest novel shares plenty of DNA with her 2020 breakout Migrations. Both novels follow memorable, hardened female leads who navigate life from behind carefully constructed defense mechanisms; both narratives are haunted by characters’ pasts and also their presents; and both are shaded with an existential fear born of our climate change crisis. They also bear the influence of McConaghy’s screenwriting background, arriving to the page rife with distinctive characters and plenty of dramatic tensions. That quality is perhaps even more present in this work, its lightly suspenseful contours almost recalling the shape of the average best-selling psychological thriller, but McConaghy smartly doesn’t rise to such easy histrionics. Revelations are handled with restraint, never over-punctuating the novel’s controlled rhythm, and even the bevy of metaphorical fodder—of which there is plenty, this being a story about wolves and human nature and the monster-making that takes place in our minds—remains welcomingly unsettled and intellectually rigorous. Ultimately, the narrative impressively roots itself in the center of a Venn diagram of diverse readers, marrying the complex character work and delicate prose of the best literary fiction with plenty of twisty mystery threads for genre-inclined readers, and peppering in the right amount of distinctive background and heady rumination to result in a truly arresting and singular work.