The Five Wolves by Peter McCarty is unlike any book we’ve seen before. It’s a wordless book, but presented at a very high level and is 285 pages long, so it’s not for the very young. The narrative is grand and has more in common with Beowulf or The Odyssey, than a graphic novel. However, one could categorize The Five Wolves as a graphic novel, albeit one that’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen. It’s also not entirely a wordless book. There are pages with words on them, but they’re pages with only words, hundreds of words, symbols or numbers with the phrases that are relevant to the story that are bolded. I tried to read The Five Wolves one time and got too frustrated with it. And while that’s not a good first impression for a book, I rebounded, took my time with The Five Wolves, looked over all of it and have a better impression.
There are five wolves sailing the ocean. They’re in a ship that looks like Norse warriors should be piloting it instead of them. All of the wolves are talented painters, except for Don Pedro Lupine, who is more famous and talented than the rest of them. A giant shark is on land, but waddles out to the water to catch up to their ship. They see the shark in the ocean and realize that it’s a wonderful time to paint something. Once the shark sees what they’re doing it asks them to see his portrait and like it so much it eats it and swims off.
The artists question why anyone would steal the things that they create. They wonder if that fish is dumb. Then they feel guilty for wondering if the fish is dumb and question if they’re the dumb ones. They think of the fish, never having seen art and being so enamored with what it saw that it simply had to have it. The wolves even feel envious of the shark and the level of joy it must’ve felt when seeing it. They suddenly want to hear music, so they get their instruments and start playing Bach’s Concerto in A minor. However, the wind starts to squall and blows their sheet music out into the water.
The Five Wolves is a challenging book to describe. At times, it will remind older readers of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. There are many of the illustrations that brought back Monty Python allusions. Kids who recently read Where the Wild Things Are will comment that The Five Wolves looks familiar to them. This book is all of that and nothing. It’s its own story, but is a grand allegory for life’s creative nature. This is a book whose plot is about the nexus of life and art and the degrees to which they intertwine with one another.
There are some audiences who will look at The Five Wolves and immediately love it. They will understand the nuances, the implied blanks in the illustrations and marvel at those who don’t get it. Some folks will look at the book, find the art curious, realize its talent, but ultimately find it to be too long and pointless. It’s the age-old argument discussing the merits of art and what art is.
The creativity and passion is obvious in The Five Wolves. The illustrations are hand drawn and offer an almost absurd level of detail. The text is all on opposite sides or pages from the illustrations. The words, and there are hundreds of them in each blurb, are delineated slightly by size and color so that it’s marginally easier to read what’s immediately applicable to the story. After you read those one or two lines, go back and read the smaller, meandering print that’s akin to Billy from The Family Circus. They are comprised of side ramblings that make up the side chatter that characters in a story would say when they’re trying to act tough, but are secretly questioning their decision.
The second time you read The Five Wolves it makes a little more sense. The third time you might take note of the delicate shading and the subtle eye movement characters make from page to page. It’s a minimalist, art-based, mostly wordless graphic novel with a surreal plot that ends in a curt fashion with hoards of rabbits and a dragon. It’s wildly creative, but some audiences won’t see the vision or latch onto it regardless of how many times they view it. I got it, and can see the beauty in it, but it wouldn’t be a graphic novel that I seek out to relax. The folks who would spend time alone with the book, figuring out its meaning and such are the art oriented crowd.
However, it’s shaped like an illustrated book, but can also be called a graphic novel, and it’s neither. Some people might call it both. For us it was like an interesting art exhibit or foreign film. It didn’t immediately resonate with us. We saw it again and understood more of it. But realistically, most people will give it a short window of opportunity and fish or cut bait in short order. Factor in that it’s a wordless book, intended for ages 9-14 and it’ll find a tough time getting an audience.
The Five Wolves is by Peter McCarty and is available on :01 First Second, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers.
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