Feral and other stories is an electrifying debut from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland writer Isabel Haarhaus. These vivid and beautifully written stories explore desire, exclusion, loneliness and friendship, often from the viewpoint of girls, women or migrants – outsiders by virtue of circumstance or temperament – who yearn, with passionate and dangerous intensity, to belong.
Set in Aotearoa New Zealand and abroad in Europe, the UK and the US, Feral and other stories is a poignant and moving commentary on risky rites of passage at every stage of life, and the redemptive balm of friendship and creative purpose. This is extraordinarily insightful writing, roiling with disturbing undercurrents, that stays with the reader long after all pages have been turned.
They were so happy! Ruth stared at them ravenously. She coveted their leisurely teenage limbs, their slow animal unfolding at dusk, and their full awakening at night. She stared at their bodies and the way the girls lay, tumbled together in a warm slovenly mess. The way they were so tempting, these young girls, as well as confounding, to the boys circling them. They were gorgeous, these girls, even when they weren’t especially; gorgeous because they were young and occupied their leisure in the way of a sated animal … – from ‘Feral’