"Tell the Wolves I'm Home" by Carol Brunt Is A Seminal Coming of Age Tale that Rages with Emotions

Carol Brunt's debut novel "Tell the Wolves I'm Home" deserved being named "one of the best books in 2012 by the WSJ".  Brunt's integrity into the heart & mind of 14 year old Greta make this Bildungsroman scale inner demons howling to be exorcised.  Greta is the gangly, awkward younger sister to June.  June is blonde, beautiful, talented and heading off to college next year.  The two sisters were close but June is distancing herself from Greta. Greta realizes she's a complete loser with foolish hopefulness of making friends, being accepted or even normal.  It's hard not to feel sympathetic towards Greta as a lone wolf longing to fit in.  Uncle Finn is the one person with whom she's in simpatico.  This is an understatement in Greta's view & that of her sister & mother.  Greta's believes her love for her uncle crosses into wrong love - embarrassing love - and perverse love.  Yet, this is a 14 yr. old who knows she doesn't understand the people she's with nor understood who she is to other people.  The story is set in & around NYC during the 80s; the epoch of the AIDS outbreak.  Brunt immerses the novel in the period with its cultural pop phenomena & the fear & repulsion directed towards people suffering with AIDS.  Uncle Finn is a renowned painter, doting uncle & dying of AIDS.  Finn has his nieces pose together for a painting he titled "Tell the Wolves I'm Home."  Uncle Finn dies shortly after finishing the painting and leaves it to Greta & June.  The painting becomes infamous & highly sort after by collectors & art museums.  Greta's grief for uncle is overwhelming to the point of being incomprehensible & immobilizing.  Her mother, Finn's sister tells Greta she's reacting being macabre & inappropriate mourning her uncle at her age.  "Like 14 was some kind of turning point in my great journey to becoming a fully grown woman."  Finn also leaves behind his lover Toby shunned by Greta's family for "causing" Finn's death.  Toby is completely alone and beseeches Greta's companionship.  In this seminal year of reckoning, Greta discovers the power in being needed and having a driving purpose by clandestinely caring for Toby.  She also unsheathes the darker truths within herself.  "All I wanted was for Toby to hear the wolves that lived in the dark forest of my heart.  And maybe that's what it meant.  Tell the Wolves I'm Home.  Tell them where you live because they'll find you anyway."  Brunt's searing portrait of a young girl's quilt and sensitivity bays both pain & tenderness.  "That all the jealousy and envy and shame we carried was our own kind of sickness.  As much a disease as Toby and Finn's AIDS. "  "Tell the Wolves I'm Home" was nominated for a Good Reads Choice Award ('12).  I recommend this book for teens & adults alike.