“Tenderness” Trumps “Restless”

Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves, a thriller “set in 19th-century Canada [and] written by a former agoraphobic who ventured no further than the British Library to research it,” has won the 2007 Costa Book Award, according to the UK’s Independent newspaper. Wolves beat out the much-favored Restless, William Boyd’s wartime spy saga, as well as Keeping Mum, a memoir of childhood by Brian Thompson, to capture the coveted Costa (formerly known as the Whitbread Book Award).

As interesting as her fictional tale is, author Penney’s personal story rivals it for curiosity. The Independent remarks on both:

[The Tenderness of Wolves] is a thriller about the murder of a hunter in a small community in the bleak Canadian wastelands and the simultaneous disappearance of a 17-year-old boy, the adopted son of Scots who fled their homeland as a result of the Highland clearances.

Penney, herself a Scot who now lives in London, has never been to Canada. She scoured historic documents, including the papers of the Hudson Bay Company, to write the book after first producing a screenplay about the clearances. She felt there was more to be done with the characters forced out of Scotland at the end of her film.

Penney said last night she could not believe she had won. Asked about whether her agoraphobia had helped or hindered her writing, she said: “ Just because you go somewhere doesn’t mean you have a peculiar or vivid or insightful take on that place. Any story takes place in a landscape of the imagination.”

She may now visit Canada and said that it was possible for her to travel, adding that there were many places she hoped to see. When she first moved to London, after studying at Bristol University, her phobia meant it was two-and-a-half years before she was even able to travel on a bus.

And the rest of us think we face obstacles in writing our novels ...