Mixing family drama, social commentary and sinister folklore, Cherie Dimaline’s Empire of Wild is a strange and beautiful novel exploring life, love, grief and fear in a small Métis community in Canada. Nearly a year after her husband Victor walked out and never came back, Joan still refuses to give up hope, despite her heartache and the unsubtle exhortations of her family. The last thing she expects, however, is to stumble upon Victor in a group of traveling preachers, with a new identity – as the Reverend Eugene Wolff – and no apparent awareness of who she is. As she searches for a way of bringing him back to himself and back into her arms, she turns to folk tales and old lore to combat the darkness that has claimed her husband.
One of those books that sneaks its fantasy elements in under the radar, this really brings to life the quiet fringes of life in Canada for Joan and her community, and the deep connection that the Métis have with the land and their history. Dimaline’s lovely prose – beautifully crafted while remaining easy to read – imbues everything with a rich, vivid sense of place and a slightly creepy normality that hides something strange and sinister beneath its familiar veneer. With hints of Gaiman at his subtlest, this starts off grounded and modern feeling, before gradually exchanging its everyday reality for shadows and blood and salt bones, folk tales and horror stories and medicine passed down through the generations and never quite forgotten.
Without spoiling exactly what’s happened with Victor, suffice to say it’s all tied in with the bogeyman-slash-werewolf figure of the rougarou from Métis folklore, set against the demands of small town life – intolerance and prejudice, the lack of jobs, the pressure from big business looking to plunder the land’s natural resources and take advantage of the people, and all the everyday trials of indigenous life. It’s dark, bloody stuff, like the folk tales it draws upon, and while it’s not necessarily a happy story the light and shade is brilliantly balanced. At times the pacing slows down a touch, especially with a secondary POV character who’s undoubtedly important but not as well developed as Joan is, but for the most part it’s tense and gripping and genuinely hard to put down. Ideal for anyone after some darkly compelling folk horror full of sharply-drawn characters with a great balance of personal stakes and bigger picture.
Many thanks to Cherie Dimaline and Weidenfeld & Nicolson for sending me a review copy of Empire of Wild in exchange for my honest opinions.
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