Review - The Man Who Lives With Wolves by Shaun Ellis, Penny Junor

The Man Who Lives with Wolves by Shaun Ellis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time Taken To Read - 1.5 days

Blurb From Amazon

What would compel a man to place himself in constant danger in order to become a member of a wolf pack? To eat with them, putting his head into a carcass alongside the wolves' gnashing teeth? To play, hunt, and spar with them, suffering bruises and bites? To learn their language so his howl is indistinguishable from theirs? To give up a normal life of relationships and family so that he can devote himself completely to the protection of these wild animals?

In The Man Who Lives with Wolves, Shaun Ellis reveals how his life irrevocably changed the first time he set eyes on a wolf. In exhilarating prose, he takes us from his upbringing in the wilds of Norfolk, England, to his survival training with British Army Special Forces to the Nez Percé Indian lands in Idaho, where he first ran with a wolf pack for nearly two years.

Offering an extraordinary look into the lives of these threatened, misunderstood creatures, Ellis shares how he ate raw kill–and little else; washed rarely, and only in plain water; learned to bury his face into the carcasses of prey–and, when necessary, to defend his share of the kill; communicated with the pack by his howls and body language, which over time became seemingly identical to theirs; and observed from this unique vantage point how wolves give birth to and raise their young, and enforce order among the pack.

After years of living in the wild, Shaun Ellis was barely able to recognize the feral face that stared back at him from the mirror. And in The Man Who Lives with Wolves, we discover the life of a rare and fascinating man who abandoned civilization but never lost touch with his humanity.

My Review

If your looking for something real life and a bit different you have found it. Who in their right mind would walk away from their family to go live in the wild and try to integrate himself with a pack of wild wolves (and stay alive), that would be Mr Ellis.

The book starts with his childhood and every so often focus on him and his life but mostly it is about his love of animals and being with and around wolves. It is quite informative and really interesting to learn so much about these wonderful beasts and how they live, there are also some beautiful pictures of wolves featured in the middle of the book. Shaun has an interested and somewhat tested theory about some of the similar behaviors between dogs and wolves and how to use that when picking and training your own dog.

Some of the book is disturbing in that you are reading about a man who basically walks out on his family to pursue a life with wild animals, him eating some pretty disgusting things but you learn so much about the wolves way of life that you can get by the more unappealing parts. I really enjoyed it and find myself looking at wolves in a different light, 3/5 for me.

This book was recommended by Jodi Picoult at the end of her new book Lone Wolf, this is who she got a lot of her research from.

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