The Belly of a Wolf
by Julianne Negri
UWA Publishing
Red and Wolf had been best friends for 10 years. Ever since the characters they played in the Prep school production of Little Red Riding Hood anointed their friendship as Red and Wolf.
At the beginning of this powerfully moving verse novel, fifteen year-old Red goes back to high school after a six month absence. Her life had been on hold while everyone else had moved on … everyone else except Wolf who would be forever 15.
Red is pretending that everything is fine but, with the ghost of Wolf walking beside her, she knows she is broken. With their lives entwined for the last decade, Red and Wolf sheltering each other from the harsh realities surrounding them.
They were going to change the world, but the world was bigger and fiercer, and Wolf found that her dreams were being shattered. Wolf wanted to “leapfrog adolescence, time, gender, family … all the boundaries.”
It destroyed Wolf to have to wait, to be knocked back, to have her big dreams stifled by small town mentality, and each disappointment became a stone in Wolf’s belly. Now Red is weighed down by the memories.
Julianne Negri’s mesmerising free verse is a love letter from Red to her soul-mate who was no longer at her side. How could she create a new life when the grief is so overpowering? How could she not punish herself for not knowing that her one and only friend intended to commit suicide?
“My life is a ladder of missing rungs.
I lurch along,
Reaching, grasping,
And sometimes falling
With sudden fear …”
Prose writing would not have been able to do justice to what Red is feeling, as the dark residue lingers and draws her back every time she attempts to go on living and recast herself someone other than Red.
Lezly Herbert
