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Wolfish, a very loose reimagining of the Romulus and Remus myth, centers on four key characters: a rising boy-king who receives a troubling prophecy; Alba, a young oracle-apprentice who, despite her best intentions, gives the king this prophecy; and the twins the king abandons in the wilderness in an attempt to escape his foretold fate. While one twin, a girl, is rescued by shepherds who name her Rae and raise her as their own, the boy is left to nature. Nursed by a she-wolf, re-stitched by insects, he becomes a wolf himself, and it is years before the twins—as girl and wolf—find each other again. When the king learns the twins have lived, he sets out in search of them, and as his hunt grows ever more desperate and cruel, Rae and the wolf must unite with Alba to try to stop his terrible reign.Visit Christiane M. Andrews's website.
While much of Wolfish is set in a realistic ancient world, it does incorporate some fantastical natural elements—in particular, the aforementioned mysterious stitching insects and the boy bound into wolf. Though I don’t envision actors or directors or cinematic elements as I write, I think David Lowery’s The Green Knight, in which the fantastical arises out of lushly filmed nature that highlights beauty and depth and mystery, is an excellent model. (This is visible to some extent in his Pete’s Dragon as well.) Guillermo del Toro’s films, too, that present the magical within the human world (The Shape of Water or Pan’s Labyrinth, for example) could be...[read on]
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--Marshal Zeringue