The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan (Knopf, $25.95 hardcover, 978030759508, July 12, 2011)
As this remarkable novel comes out, many will be the reviewers and readers who note that one of its themes is how a person comes to terms with who he or she is. That's because, of course, protagonist Jacob Marlowe is a werewolf.
However, the modifier in the title points us to the most important part of author Glen Duncan's story. Whether or not Jacob (or "Jake," as he calls himself) accepts his werewolf status won't matter much when he's gone, and since for reasons not precisely known, werewolves no longer live forever, his time left to grapple with his beastly nature isn't limitless.
Darn. Damn! Because Jacob's wolfishness has down-and-dirty animal appeal, and I do mean "dirty;" this is a book for grown-ups, preferably those who don't mind thinking about the darker sides of sensuality. Since, in Jacob's world, werewolf libidos go into overdrive during full moons, there are lots of scenes of coupling in lots of different positions and orifices. Why not fiddle as much as you can if Rome's burning and you're the next-to-last of your kind?
At the novel's start, Jake hears that the penultimate werewolf has been killed, and finds himself a creature very much wanted by the World Organization for the Control of Occult Phenomena (WOCOP), a sort of checks-and-balances governing body for a world that has werewolves, vampires, ghouls, witches and more cohabiting with human beings. He goes on the run, and the consequences of his flight will be good and bad, horrific and amazing.... While Jacob is alone for the moment, he tells us about past loves, friends, and enemies, relationships that are filled with beauty, terror, and regret. We know this because Jacob is given to reflecting on his past, present and even future (if he has one).
Along with the naughty bits we also get plenty of literary allusions, including everything from Marlowe's name itself to Shakespeare, Nabokov and Eliot. For a while, it seems as if Jacob Marlowe, tired to death (geddit?) with his moon-go-round immortality, will simply write himself into some sort of somatic torpor, since much of the backstory comes to us through his diary entries.
But let me return, for a moment, to the word "remarkable." From the very first paragraph, you'll be mesmerized by Jake, a combination of erudite academician and big horndog, both suffering from grande malaise. Even late in the novel, when the action is running wild, this vital and original voice carries The Last Werewolf well out of the overcrowded supernatural beasts genre and clearly into the realm of literary fiction. Fortunately, there's still fun to be had, especially when Jake's keen nose sniffs out Talulla Demetriou, a gorgeous creature, we know that there will be a bit of a love story, too (it could never happen with, say, a female vampire; in Duncan's world, vamps smell disgusting to a wulf).
Duncan maintains the immediacy that allows his novel to shine. As Marlowe tries to outwit the WOCOP agent who wants to wreak vengeance on him (Marlowe killed his father), his complicated, self-conscious but also self-aware voice is the thing that makes the story work. Duncan makes it work so well that it is a little too easy to forget how Jacob's musings on appetites versus restraint, creativity versus brutality, and so on are echoes not just of long-running literary arguments, but also of man's struggles with the divine.
One of the biggest advantages to having a 210-year-old main character is showing off that character's absorption of the societies in which he's lived through his narration--and that's why reading Jacob Marlowe never gets old: he literally doesn't, and Duncan has sustained a young man's view of history not only through the years that Marlowe lives, but past them, into his volatile present. It's an authorial feat that works and will give many readers a smart, sexy, satisfying summer read. --Bethanne Patrick, editor, Shelf Awareness
Discover: An adrenaline-pumping, intellect-bracing thriller about a werewolf whose status as the last of his kind proves less important than the cast of his mind.