After a night of trembling, Torak wakes up again and feels the fever left his body, his wound even does not feel sour any longer. He is looking out for food and is going round the traps he has set up. A woodgrouse is kept in one of these and if we hadn’t before, we now become aware of the fency habits of Torak’s. Michelle Pavers book obviously is meant as a child book but in this case it reveals revoltingly as a book for at least older children or grown ups. It’s just that she sums up in a sentence or two, how Torak “snapped its (the woodgrouse’s) neck, slit its belly and gulped the warm liver down raw” (p. 30).
As a kind of excuse she writes in the following sentence: “It tasted bitter and slimy, but he was too famished to care” (ibid.). I don’t actually know if a child the book is meant to be written for can handle with this raw gestures of Torak’s. As e. g. in Germany, the book does not have a sign mentioning for which aging groups of children it is meant to be read. Let’s don’t bother about this too long. This isn’t a really serious thought of mine, is it? Torak’s mind becomes clear again and he seems more and more to believe that the wolf cub, which does not even seem to behave like a cub any longer is the guide his father has told of that will find him.
Paver, Michelle, 2004: Wolf Brother. - Kent (UK): BCA.