I picked up Paul Kearney’s The Wolf in the Attic by chance when I was in Barnes & Noble one day with my mom. I was attracted by the title which interested me, and by the blurb on the back which featured CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. They weren’t huge parts of the story but they did clearly inspire some of the setting and I appreciated that.

The story revolves around Anna Francis, a refugee of the Great War, in England from Greece, where her village was destroyed by (IIRC) the Ottomans. Her mother and brother were killed, and Anna and her father managed to make it to England, where Anna was bullied for being foreign so badly that she was eventually pulled out of school. Aside from her tutor, her only friend is her doll, Penelope, who Anna is aware is not real but is still acknowledged to be her best friend. Penelope is the only one Anna can talk about her homeland and her mother and brother with; her father does not want to talk about it. Her father has become involved with a political group of Greek ex-pats and has taken to heavy drinking.

With little else to do when not studying, Anna explores the house in which she lives and wanders the streets of Oxford and the surrounding countryside. She eventually meets a boy with yellow eyes in the attic and then his family in the woods – and her life takes quite the turn.

This was a historical fiction and fantasy book which I truly enjoyed, even though books like this aren’t usually my jam. Anna is a wonderful character, childlike but still smart and insightful, and her loneliness pervades the entire story. The writing was quite beautiful. I read part of the book on the train to and from New York City, and remember vividly looking out the window, startled to find I was on the Hudson River in New York, not in Oxfordshire.

The book’s ending suggested a sequel and I would not hesitate to read another of Kearney’s books, especially one featuring Anna. I absolutely look forward to this, although it will probably be even further down the line than this review as I have so many other books to read.

That said, The Wolf in the Attic was a wonderful story and I highly recommend it.

Tagged: authors: paul kearney, books: the wolf in the attic, genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, genre: folklore, genre: historical fiction