Shiver
by Maggie Stiefvater
Months spent reading YA novels (ostensibly for a YA Materials Library class) and a preexisting passion for vampires and werewolves has spoiled me...I no longer desire to expand my knowledge of the (adult) cannon, to finally read all the modernist classics I have missed. Instead, I want to read, read, read about teenagers in love--when one (or the other) is a monster.
Shiver complicates this formula, for although the focus is indeed upon a human girl and her love for a boy-turned-wolf, the structure is expanded to include the world of wolves that aren't were-. The werewolves here instead gradually transform fully into wolves--their lifespan mirrors that of the natural wolf, their human-to-wolf transformation successively shortens in accordance with the seasons and the weather, their emotional composition steadily loses its sharpness. As each human turns into the wolf, over time the memories of being human fade, their capacity to understand speech and human emotions fades also.
This transformative background sets the stage for the relationship between Grace the girl and Sam the near-wolf. When she was a little girl, Grace had been attacked by a pack of wolves that wandered the vast woods behind her house; since that event, Grace feels a strong kinship to wolves generally, and an even stronger connection with one yellow-eyed wolf in particular. (Grace also does not feel an overwhelming connection to her parents, her schoolmates, and the culture around her, but she just attributes these feelings to being a loner.)
Her fascination with the yellow-eyed wolf deepens into solidarity as the wolves begin being hunted by local angry humans, and Grace becomes entrenched in protecting the pack. At the risk of giving anything away, when the yellow-eyed wolf becomes a yellow-eyed boy named Sam, Grace falls madly in love, and any chance for disengagement from her all-encompassing wolf-love falls away.
The couple's burgeoning love is commingled with the greater structural characteristics described earlier, producing a narrative and emotional dilemma that deepens in relation to the couple's intimacy.
Beautifully and heartbreakingly told, Shiver is narrated in alternating chapters by Sam and Grace; and although the tone and style of the voices is really not that different from the other, the alteration allows for emotional identification with both figures. This decision wonderfully reflects the reciprocity, symbiosis, and equanimity between the couple, rendering the heartbreak on the horizon all the more devastating.
