Wolf Road

Professor Alice Roberts is a distinguished scholar of the Ice Age and much else in the early past. She has now tried her hand at fiction, and despite a warm endorsement on the front cover from Philip Pullman the end result is not a success. The physical details of the small prehistoric tribe making its way to new territory in preparation for the Arctic Spring are clearly and authoritatively described, and Keith Robinson’s moody black and white illustrations provide an extra bonus. But the many accounts of dragging sleds over rough ground, preparing food, hunting deer, sewing and carving do become repetitive, and might well have been better suited to child-friendly non-fiction.

But what really does for this story is the treatment of its main characters. Twelve-year-old Tuuli and her best friend Wren seem as far away from any Ice Age reality as it is possible to be. They chatter like today’s teenagers, enjoy the warmth of their fur ‘sleeping bags’, describe another character as ‘a pain in the backside’, worry whether their aunt’s adult relationship ‘would ever make out’  and exchange numerous hugs with each other and with their relaxed and approving  parents. Shamans and sacred dances make an appearance, but there is no real sense of how utterly different experiencing the world must once have been at so remote a period of history.

Tuuli also comes across a boy who has become separated from his tribe. He is of Neanderthal origin, and along with an adopted wolf cub is in danger from those around them less tolerant of taking in strangers and wild animals. Their fate is uncertain, and here the story becomes a little more realistic. But even the youngest reader may wonder quite why characters who have lived so very long ago still come over exactly like children now.