THE WOLF HOUR
Tessa Lowell is in Uganda doing postdoctoral research on child soldiers when her family learn she has gone missing, abducted by rebels. Tessa is naïve, says her brother, Stephen an importer with dubious connections, but it is her naivety that draws her inexorably into danger and ultimately a more confrontational understanding not only of herself, but the world into which she has ventured.
Allen & Unwin link & bookclub notes
“The Wolf Hour transcends any categorisation as a suspenseful thriller even though it’s unputdownable… It’s not just a very thought-provoking novel, it’s also beautifully written. Myles writes evocative prose with a sensitive authenticity.”
— ANZ LitLovers
“Written with a meticulous sense of place and time… The Wolf Hour trades on the consequences of (neo)colonialism, civil war and the possibility of reconciliation both within a family unit and a larger geo-cultural space.”
— ARTS & CULTURE | SUNDAY AGE
“Balances evocative descriptions of Africa with thought-provoking ideas. Myles examines modern families and parenting, the damage war wreaks on generations, the burden of trauma on those who endure it, and the gap between western aid workers and those they seek to help.”
— Good Reading Magazine
“Throughout the novel, Myles’ writing is exquisite, walking a careful line between the psychological introspectiveness of her characters, and the unfolding events of the Ugandan Civil War and its impact on the lives of people living there. Tessa’s observations in particular are poetic and careful, illuminating Africa’s beauty against her own frailty… The Wolf Hour is an important work of fiction that continues to be timely, thought-provoking, engaging and impactful.”
— Compulsive Reader
Four young people invade and ransack an isolated house, stripping it of its contents. After the theft, mounting tension causes the group to fracture, bringing into focus an irrevocable violence both within and between them.
Elsewhere a man whose heart is failing awaits a transplant while his wife helplessly watches his decline.
Divergent strands of hope, rejection, loss and change unite these disparate characters in a novel which explores our dark side with arresting clarity in luminous prose.
“Sarah Myles’s first novel is startling in its confidence and sureness of purpose. It is everything a first novel should be: original in voice and intention.”
— The Australian Book Review
“What really pulls us deeper into the life of this novel is the intelligent, narrative observation. There are hundreds of moments where the reader stops to think about an idea, image or experience…Transplanted achieves a kind of love for its characters – inspired layered detail that gives each person a point of view, a past, a context, a childhood, parents and aspirations. All of the characters are facing the big questions about life. Everyone in the novel is on a journey; and their paths cross in unexpected ways. The symmetry is unobtrusive and, unlike many lesser writers, Myles is able to keep us believing that fiction can represent the strangeness of truth. Many coincidences lie sleeping in the narrative – they glow into life only when the reader looks for them. Read this one.”
— The Sydney Morning Herald
“Transplanted opens as a morality play, as raw and real as a fire in a 44-gallon drum. It has a steely scaffold of a plot, simple and strong – stagey almost. But it has a cast of dazzling authentic characters… Even more remarkably, the author has cracked their characters wide open. Without demeaning or romanticizing them Myles has isolated their individual pathologies.”
— The Big Issue
“What makes Transplanted better than most is the moving and uncompromising vision of its author, her belief that nothing is irrelevant, that everyday details matter, and that it’s possible to find contexts for understanding them if one is prepared to look closely enough… Transplanted begins as a story of crime and ends up a social X-ray.”
— The Age