Review: The Wolves of Willougby Chase by Joan Aiken

Wolves! Wolves stalking an orphan through the snow! Wolves wearing mother’s best dresses! Wolves holding children in servitude! Joan Aiken’s story is ruled by wolves. The rest of us just live in it.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase belongs to a favourite sub-genre of mine in children’s literature: the prison of grown-ups’ design. The world in which Bonnie and Sylvia live is, at best, indifferent to the needs of children. At worst (and it usually is), it means to kill them. Aiken moves us through this world expertly, at times relentlessly and, at others, without fear of staying in a moment for just longer than is comfortable. Yet for all the cruelty in its pages, this is not a cruel book. Through her gorgeous prose and unbreakable characters, Aiken earns the reader’s trust – promising not that everything will be alright but that it can be alright. That, to me, is the appeal of this category of children’s stories and this story’s greatest power.

A tale of adults’ cruelty and indifference told with incredible care.