GONE TO THE WOLVES by John Wray
General Overview / Vibe Check
Gone to the Wolves is about three teenagers in Florida in the late 80s who bond over metal music. The scene is their lifeline, enabling these three weirdos to survive through high school. After they graduate, they move to California, where the metal is more glam than death. The core stays connected, but the strands become twisted and knotted as they navigate life in early adulthood.
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Each character has their personal tie to metal, a way it informs who they are, who they are trying to be, and who they are trying to stop being. The relationships rise and fall multiple times, undergoing as many changes as there are sub-genres of metal. It culminates in one of the characters leaving during a death metal set in Norway and the other two finding out a year later that it wasn’t entirely voluntary. So the book shifts into almost a mystery novel where they have to figure out what happened to their friend and how to get them back.
It’s a coming of age novel dressed in black and wearing corpse paint. Metal runs through the book in a steady blast beat, driving the characters forward into irresistibly chaotic scenarios. I absolutely ripped through this book. It had been on my radar for over a year so I’m glad I finally dove into it.
It’s a love letter to metal specifically but also to intense music fandom at large. To steal from Homer Simpson, I would say the theme of this book is:
TO MUSIC! THE CAUSE OF, AND SOLUTION TO, ALL OF LIFE’S PROBLEMS!
Three Things I Liked
The Depiction Of Finding Your Place In A Music Scene — Our viewpoint character is new to the metal scene. In the opening chapters, we see him encounter his first metal albums and go to his first metal show. The author paints such a visceral image of what that is like that I was instantly brought back to when I discovered hardcore as a fourteen-year-old. I went to a show without having any real idea what I was getting into. The show changed venues after one act because a security guard tased a member of one of the bands who was dancing in the pit. I got home at midnight and then sat on the couch listening to the album I bought on headphones because I didn’t want the night to end. The way the main character goes from knowing nothing about metal to instantly having his life revolve around it is incredibly relatable.
The Way The Author’s Prose Evokes A Metal Album — The book has a tone that flirts between dream and nightmare. Dark, moody, intricate, expansive. It feels like the best metal albums, with all the tempo changes and recurring thematic explorations. There’s an ethereal quality to the way in which the characters find each other but then there is an undercurrent of the ways in which they are all messed up. Speaking of…
How The Author Handles Mental Illness — The author strikes a delicate balance. Mental illness is for sure a driver of the story but it doesn’t feel cheap. Each of the characters struggles in their own way but their struggles are never easily understood or easily fixed. It’s messy, just like real life. We see the characters succeed, grow, backslide, and everything in between. Nothing is particularly tidy. But the way they all self-medicate through music is, again, very relatable. These characters are people I knew from the hardcore scene growing up. I see myself in some of these characters, particularly the main character.
Three Comp Titles
(Yes, I chose two films because I’ve not read many books I could compare this to)
A VISIT FROM THE GOOD SQUAD (novel)— Because they are both intricate novels rooted in a music scene, though in this case, it’s more of the industry side of things.
ALMOST FAMOUS (film)— Because they are both about a character whose obsession with music compiles them to write about it a as journalist but also become irrevocably immersed in the scene.
BRICK (film)— Because they both have a moody teenager/young adult who is capable of violence and must ultimately solve a mystery.
