(courtesy Affirm Press)
The world is full, sagely observes a quote lifted onto the back cover of The Wolf Who Cried Boy by Mark Mupotsa-Russell, of magic and monsters.
Those words simultaneously delight and terrify, and they capture the brilliantly evocative duality of this novel which takes you into the fraught world of six-year-old Henry who is convinced he is Star Born, a prince of a galactic realm who has fled with his mother, the Star Queen, from the cruelly abusive clutches of the dark and terrible Wolf King.
His is a life steeped in carefully constructed myth and legend, all of it bolstered by breathlessly excitable stories spun by his loving mother of their once stories life beyond the stars, when the universe was at their feet and they had it all.
Everything except love and safety and the security of a loving relationship which, once Henry’s mother Lexi, got married turned out to be nothing but a violently threatening mirage.
The truth at the heart of The Wolf Who Cried Boy, hands down of the best titles to ever grace a novel, is far more horrific than the fairytale wonders that underpin Henry’s world, and while he believes he is part of a world of Marvel superheroes and royalty sprung to life, you also get the impression that he suspects, even if he can’t articulate it, that all is not well.
We’re going on an adventure. I’ll make friends, and see family, and find all the Starborns. And we’ll all fight together, like the Avengers!
And the best thing is I finally get to do my destiny. I’ll face my enemy, like superheroes are meant to.
I’m going to fight the Star King.
The truth of the matter is that Henry and his mother are on the run from an abusive father and husband, a man with connections at some very high levels who has forced this very tight twosome on the run for quite some time.
While Henry is protected by the fabulous stories his mother weaves, much like the son in the arrestingly affecting Holocaust film, Life is Beautiful, who is kept safe from seeing the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by a deeply loving, protective father, news that Lexi’s mother is sick and close to death, far up in Queensland, begins to crack open the tissue thin fictional facade that protects the young boy from an abhorrent truth.
As Lexi and Henry begin the journey back home through back roads and secret networks, Henry isn’t initially unafraid, convinced that he and his mother’s powers as Star Born royalty will keep them safe no matter what comes their way.
But then a series of events, all of them shocking to a kid who thought life was magical and not nightmarishly awful, shake Henry’s world to the core and he begins to wonder what is real, who he can trust and just who the real threat to him is, buffeted as he is by competing truths and stories from the Wolf King that make him wonder if anything his mother has ever said is true.
It’s a harrowing tale and The Wolf Who Cried Boy doesn’t shy away from the terrors of growing up very suddenly in a world that no longer seems to make sense and where Henry’s much believed-in powers no longer seem to work.
(courtesy official author site)
Original in a way that takes your breath away and reaffirms that while there might be nothing new under the sun, there are some strikingly one-of-a-kind ways to talk about them, The Wolf Who Cried Boy is a book that marries adventure and fun with real violence and fear and wonders how anyone can exist in the in-between messy vortex they create?
The truth is no one can, no for long and not in any kind of meaningful way, anyway.
As The Wolf Who Cried Boy moves through its heartbreakingly honest, magically laced story, you begin to appreciate that while stories have huge power and can offer strikingly unexpected protection for the psyche, if not the body, they are no match in the end for harsh realities on the ground.
Eventually, despite Lexi’s best efforts, the Wolf King must be reckoned with, and the cycle of “violence, misogyny and corruption”, broken if Henry in particular is to ever have a chance at a real life that relies not on the magicality of spun tales, powerful though they may be, but a life defined by peace, love and the unconditional embrace of family, born and created.
How that reckoning happens underpins the page-turning readability of The Wolf Who Cried Boy which goes to some truly dark and horrible places but always cloaked in Henry’s wide-eyed, if increasingly fractured view of the world and his mother’s deeply protective and endlessly embracing love which persists even under the immense strain she is shouldering.
Granny nods and waves the tissue. She breathes till she can be quiet again. “I’m proud of you, Lex. So very proud. But I’m also scared. I’ve got this terrible feeling I’ll lose you too.’
She does two more coughs before she’s quiet again.
‘Please darlin’, don’t come here. I love you, I love you, I love you.’
It is Henry’s voice that carries us through the wonders and horrors of The Wolf Who Cried Boy.
He is simultaneously trusting and enthralled, believing to his core that he is a boy out of place, possessed of powers that can shape a terrible reality that has forced he and his mother into hiding, and sadly a six-year-old coming to understand that there is a real darkness and that no matter of vibrantly imaginative storytelling and hopeful projection can protect you from it forever.
It’s desperately sad to see Henry having to come to grips with the reality of a world where he and his mother have always been cruelly earthbound, but also hopefully necessary, even when The Wolf Who Cried Boy, as it often does, pulls no punches and doesn’t promise that the happy endings Henry believes are his birthright will actually come to pass.
Reading this singularly brilliant, and wondrously moving book which takes a dark subject and sheds some thoughtful light on it, is a brilliant experience – yes, it shakes you to the core, as it does Henry, but it also helps you to understand the power of love (not the greeting card frippery but the the real muscular stuff that stares down hellish terror without flinching) and how powerful family and connection can be, especially when it is harnessed to take down, or attempts to take down, an evil which must be confronted if anyone is ever going to be truly free again.