Chasing the Wolf

Chasing the Wolf is like the cyclone from The Wizard of Oz--it picks you up and you stare through your window at whirling faces who transform from the ordinary into nightmares. Only in this case the cyclone sets you down someplace much darker than Oz. Although the plot involves time travel, it doesn't have a have a science fiction feel to it at all. Like Richard Matheson's Bid Time Return and Jack Finney's Time and Again, the focus is on the characters, not the mechanics of a time machine but this is far more dangerous. Octavia Butler's Kindred is the closest thing I've ever encountered: dealing with race relations and devotion beyond time. I'm not normally the type who wants to read a happy-ending version of King Lear or hope for Lear II: Regan's Revenge but in this case I would love to see more of these characters and the world of this novel. Just the theories of Time-walking that one Walker develops are better than any hard-pseudo-science explanation. We get a glimpse of something incredibly intriguing and it ends before I was ready to let go. It's like watching a beautiful woman begin to undress but then she sees you and yanks shut the blinds. I highly recommend Chasing the Wolf but don't start it at night if you have to wake up early in the morning.

Chasing the Wolf reads like a chase, with a writing style, and page layout that forces a reader to keep turning, keep looking, keep chasing, as our main character first stumbles, then chases through time. A love story, an artist's story, a fantasy, an ode to Robert Johnson, and oh yeah, there's time travel too, all crafted together with bits and pieces of everyday sarcastic goodness. The highlight of the storytelling is the dialogue. Writing conversations realistically, to the point where the conversations are believeable is a difficult thing....but Nathan makes me feel like I'm eavesdropping. I'm not sure if Nathan was on speed, or heavily caffeinated when he wrote this book, but the story moves at a pace that leads me to believe that must have been true. And, as the story jumps from NYC to little towns in Mississippi, from present day, to Depression-era, the reader just goes along for the ride. Nathan writes with the flavor and color and humor of Vonnegut, and the images fall into place without overly excessive detail. Hot shot, hipster, high-art-society New York City....to rural, small town, dirt roads....and this is just the first ten pages. "Everyone in New York is "neo" something" - well Nathan Singer is a neo-literary-genius.

A modern-day Billy Pilgrim (Eli Cooper from twenty-first century New York City) meets 1930's Mississippi blues heroes, friends, and eventually foes while searching for answers in pre-modern times. Similarites between past and present cultural issues surface in surprising ways to make this book an important read for people from all ages and walks of life.

Like a Robert Johnson guitar lick, Nathan Singer's writing cuts right to your soul. Chasing the Wolf is tight, effortlessly juggling multiple characters and a plotline that moves seamlessly between the Bohemian NYC artist's life to depression-era Mississippi (with various other side journeys). Singer's writing is theatrical - indeed, Chasing the Wolf was originally done as a stage play, though I'm not sure if the plan was for it to be a play or a book first - and you cannot help but be drawn into these characters, doing their best to keep it together in situations that are at best emotionally overwhelming and at worst utterly incomprehensible. It's a powerful work by a powerful writer, and like the Howlin' Wolf, it demands that you pay attention. (Full disclosure: I have met the author and have seen the play.)

This story unfolded in surprising ways. Singer has a real gift for walking the reader first through fantasy,then reality,then fantasy, etc at a pace that keeps quickening. At some point the reader is so drawn in that he/she must surrender and ride it out. This story takes us through the depths of love and hate, sometimes in the same paragraph! I loved it. This book will stay in my collection for a long time. I know that I will want, no, NEED to read it again.