During the extraordinary recent surge of fantastical fiction, much has been made of the supernatural as a metaphor for alienation: the lonely vampire, the banished witch, the tormented ghost unwilling to move on. The werewolf is a stronger, wilder figure: if vampires, witches, and ghosts represent the emotional and spiritual aspects of contemporary life, werewolves allude to our physical nature.
Armstrong’s books highlight the ways in which our power, physical and otherwise, is challenged, compromised, driven from us and into the woods. “People are reduced to technological slaves, dutifully pumping data into computers,” complains a lonely researcher in Stolen, the follow-up to Bitten. She then asks Elena to bite her so she can become a werewolf, too. “No more kowtowing to men, pretending I’m dumber than they are, weaker, less important. I want to be everything I have the potential to be,” she declares.
Armstrong further seems to question, through her werewolves, why and how it is that humans forsake certain necessary aspects of our nature. In Stolen, after Elena has escaped a compound where she was held captive by an evil billionaire, she encounters competing desires during her reunion with her lover, Clay. Mid-coitus, he plucks sliced ham and pancakes from a bedside tray, tenderly offering the food so she will not be forced to choose between her two desires. What follows is a sentence that would probably not work in any other kind of book: “As I closed my eyes again, grease dripped onto my cheek, and a slice of ham pressed against my lips. I opened my mouth and chomped it down in a few bites, then sighed and lifted my hips to meet Clay.”
The consumption of pancakes happens a lot in these books. It’s a leitmotif that seems to come up every few pages: at clan gatherings, after a hunt, or simply whenever it’s time to cram in much-needed calories. As Armstrong reminds us, werewolves have gargantuan appetites to go with their gargantuan strength; their time is spent “engaged in the three Fs of basic survival: feeding, fighting, and . . . reproduction.” Like pillow fights or running naked through a sprinkler, pancakes seem to be a metaphor for a pleasure we’re meant to give up in childhood. When you encounter a scene like Elena and Clay’s reunion, it’s hard not to think of how long it’s been since you last ate pancakes, let alone while in bed with someone you love. The older we get, the less frequently such treats find their way to the table. Pancakes are so filling, so high carb, so indulgent in this world of Atkins and organic muesli. And yet we still uphold them as one of our favourite foods, wishing we could eat them the way a werewolf does: without self-consciousness or guilt.
Armstrong’s novels render the less-tangible aspects of werewolf life, such as friendship, in an equally visceral yet no less poignant and relatable way. Most humans leave behind the tight cliques we form in high school for marriages and careers; not so the members of the Pack, whose bonds remain sealed by right and by nature. A Pack mate would not only lend you a cup of sugar for your soufflé; he would kill to avenge your name. In fact, day-to-day existence is so violent for Pack werewolves that they must learn to dispose of bodies — mostly those of tabloid reporters, hospital technicians, local cops, and especially “mutt” or non-Pack werewolves — without leaving any evidence. Their intensely shared concerns make for the kind of bond you see in buddies who have come back together from war.
Social intimacy also extends to sexual fluidity. Unexpectedly running into a friend, Elena receives a kiss that sweeps her off her feet: “It’s not asexual — nothing is asexual with Nick — but it’s completely non-threatening,” she muses. “I’m his friend and his best friend’s wife, and while that doesn’t stop him from kissing me or slipping into our bed and getting friendlier than a friend should, he means nothing by it . . . It’s nothing more than it appears to be — another level of the physical play and intimacy that cements Pack bonds.” Titillating sex scenes appear at regular intervals, in any number of inventive positions (though rarely, if ever, doggy style; read into that what you will). These interludes are essential to the books’ pacing, and integral to their appeal.
And what does werewolf sex teach us about human sex? That we don’t have enough of it, for one, and that we are too choosy about where and when it should happen. We boast of the mile-high club, but a werewolf would kill time in an airport tucked away down one of those shadowy, enigmatic corridors you see marked off with Slippery When Wet signs. In the werewolf world, you can hate someone, sleep with them, and then go back to hating them again. Sex can also be the equivalent of expense account dining among urban professionals, serving as a bridge between two independent beings or competitors, allowing someone to come home and think, well, he’s not such a bad guy after all.
Recommended Reading
“Where the Wild Things Were”: A retrospective on werewolves in popular culture by Emily Landau
Most of us have to negotiate — with our partners, with our bosses — between what is good in the sense of what brings pleasure and what is good in the sense of what we should do. Werewolves don’t sacrifice one form of good for another. Nor do they apologize for bodily functions left unmentioned in polite company, never mind polite magazines. Armstrong’s overarching thesis is the age-old notion that, behind our codes of etiquette and our post-secondary educations and our copies of He’s Just Not That Into You, we’re all animals — and we might do better to acknowledge it more often.
Mind you, some things remain strange and unknowable, even to werewolves. Armstrong’s Otherworld, like our world, is coloured by alien occurrences, equal parts frightening and suggestive: the stereo that turns on by itself in the middle of the night, the room that doesn’t quite feel right, the old friend seen crossing the street who happens to be dead. Her characters react (ironically but understandably, given their physicality) to supernatural phenomena with great skepticism: “You still realize how this sounds,” Elena inquires of a couple of witches who have initiated contact with the werewolves. “You bring me here, issuing B-movie lines like ‘We know who you are.’”
Wisely, Armstrong doesn’t try to explain the whys and wherefores of her magical realm — much like J. K. Rowling’s approach with Hogwarts, where kids simply can fly around on broomsticks, or C. S. Lewis’s with Narnia, where fauns lead the way and play flutes. Instead, she allows the books’ humour and humanity to flourish amid escape, setting mystery and reality against one another in the same universe. Her world is certainly not one humans would want to replicate, as her vivid depictions of the violent side of werewolf life make clear. But it does offer the tantalizing promise of a better answer to those anxieties and half-formed questions that gnaw at us. It says that there are creatures at work there, and they are . . . like us, only more so.
