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    Wildlife
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    Wildlife
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    Wildlife
    Audiobook8 hours

    Wildlife

    Written by Fiona Wood

    Narrated by Candice Moll and Fiona Hardingham

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    During a semester in the wilderness, sixteen-year-old Sib expects the tough outdoor education program and the horrors of dorm life, but friendship drama and an unexpected romance with popular Ben Capaldi? That will take some navigating.

    New girl Lou has zero interest in fitting in, or joining in. Still reeling from a loss that occurred almost a year ago, she just wants to be left alone. But as she witnesses a betrayal unfolding around Sib and her best friend Holly, Lou can't help but be drawn back into the land of the living.

    Fans of Melina Marchetta, Rainbow Rowell, and E. Lockhart will adore this endearing and poignant story of first love, true friendship, and going a little bit wild.

    A Hachette Audio production.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateSep 16, 2014
    ISBN9781478955689
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Wildlife

    4/5

    38 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This was a good coming age book. I was disappointed in the end. Kind of anticlimactic.
    • 3/5
      When you're a shy, naive girl in high school, gaining a little popularity is pretty much the equivalent of throwing a lamb to the wolves; the only thing worse is having a best friend who is really a wolf in sheep's clothing. For Sibylla this is exactly what happens, but maybe if she can discover herself in time she may escape being eaten alive.Being the new student is like being a fish out of water, you instantly don't belong, no one seems to want you and your very existence is a fight for survival. For Lou surviving a new school is nothing, she doesn't care about belonging, she doesn't care about being wanted, it is only life she is fighting to survive, only her grief she is struggling to breath through.Wildlife is not about surviving the animals of the wilderness but the wildness in your fellow students. For these year 10 students, spending fourth term at Mt Fairweather, Crowthorne Grammar's outdoor educational campus, is more then an education on becoming self-sufficient, it is a lesson in becoming self-aware, of growing up and making discoveries on life, love and acceptance of ones-self.
    • 5/5
      Sibylla, Lou and their classmates spend the final term of Year 10 at their school's mountain campus. Dormitory living, compulsory hiking, no TV, no mobile reception, no physical contact between members of the opposite gender.Sibylla is expecting the outdoor education program demanding, but it's the social environment that she finds the most challenging, particularly the lack of privacy, and managing her recent appearance on the popular kids' radar.Lou's biggest challenges are ones she brings with her - she's still dealing with the recent death of her boyfriend, and is not ready to share her emotional rawness with her new house-mates.The back cover describes Wildlife as a book about "first love, friendship and NOT fitting it". That description applies not only to Sibylla and Lou, but also to their mutual friend Michael, and I like the way all three of them are dealing with those things in different ways. There are old friendships and new friendships, positive friendships and toxic friendships; Lou is grieving after the end of a relationship, Sibylla is cautiously embarking on a new romance and Michael is dealing with unrequited feelings; they don't always fit in for different reasons. The story is much richer for this - diversity of experience, for want of a better phrase, and for switching between Sibylla and Lou's perspectives.What struck me most was how real it all feels. The characters, the intensity of emotions, their dilemmas, their perspectives. The delight when I shared their cultural references. The zing of recognition when the characters put into words something I've experienced - or observed.The writing is gorgeous... and I wasn't surprised to discover that it had won the 2014 Book of the Year award for Older Readers.I just really loved this book.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful characters and a warm, funny, intelligent story.
    • 4/5
      This book alternates between Sib and Lou as they work through an outdoor education program. Filled with teenage drama, secrets and reveals, this is a book many female teenagers will enjoy. As a woman in my mid-thirties, I found the book less appealing but know that it will appeal to a certain age group.
    • 5/5
      This is yet another amazing Australian Young Adult book that knocks you over with its honesty and emotional impact.The story is told from the point of view of two sixteen year old girls in Fitzroy, Australia. One is Louisa (“Lou”), who is trying to come to grips with the accidental death of her boyfriend Fred; and the other is Sibylla ("Sib"), who must confront a slew of social pressures that include sexuality. They are thrown together as two of six bunkmates at a school nine-week wilderness experience.Lou wants to keep mostly to herself, but it’s not an environment conducive to privacy. She makes a connection with Sib’s oldest friend, a brilliant and reclusive (possibly Asperger’s) boy named Michael. Among the things about which they bond are bewilderment and frustration over Sib’s loyalty to her nasty best friend Holly, and Sib’s infatuation with Ben Capaldi, the school’s golden boy.The entry of Ben into Sib’s life presents a number of new dilemmas for her. One, he is in the “popular” group, and that group has an edge of cruelty that is not really part of who Sib is. (But who is she, she wonders? She has always been someone who just “goes along”… Things happen around her and she just reacts, rather than stand up for her beliefs. Is insensitivity to others the price for being with Ben?)Then there is the issue of sex, which seems to accompany a relationship with someone in the popular group. Sib has not yet had sex, but it looms large in her life:"…at sixteen, whether you have, or have not, had sex can sometimes feel like the Great Divide. It’s not like friends who used to be close are gone, it’s just that they’ve migrated to another country.”Sib is “dead keen to cross ‘sex’ off [her] to-do list.”She is fully aware of the risks and precautions involved. Her mother is a doctor who runs a Sexually Transmitted Infections Clinic in Fitzroy. Sib has memorized all of the “fun facts for teenagers” regularly promulgated by her mother, an excellent list which Sib runs through when thinking about what her mother would say about her having sex.Lou’s agonies are of a more tortured nature. She is “dead keen” as well, you might say, but in her case it is to honor Fred’s memory. She misses him terribly, and worries that even taking an interest in the people around her would be like “cheating” on him. Why should she feel any happiness out of living if he is dead? She reflects: "I love you by remembering you. If I don’t think of you every time there’s something important, then doesn’t that mean you are no longer important to me? And how can I let that happen when you were so very much the important one to me?”But she also understands, although it hurts her to do so:"And if I don’t keep you always in my mind, won’t memory walk away? Or stave thin? Don’t memories need maintenance? The trouble is that keeping it alive, giving it all that energy, will, determination, stops me from being alive in the present.”Although Michael is rejected or ignored by most of the other kids, Lou thinks he is a lovely person - kind and thoughtful. He is, however, as besotted with Sybilla as Sybilla is with Ben. Nevertheless, he does so much to help Lou. At one point, he introduces her to the snow gum trees:"They have to survive such harsh conditions, such extremes of weather, bits of them die. And they are able to grow new wood around the old dead wood. That’s how they get to be such strange and beautiful shapes. They are hardier and more complicated than, say, the messmate or peppermint eucalypts farther down the mountain, which are protected by a softer climate.”Lou is caring and smart too. She has affection for Michael, and is concerned about Sib, wanting to “save” her from the detrimental influence of her new crowd. She doesn't feel free to speak, however, until the actions of some mean and vicious kids create a crisis. Lou exhorts Sib:"The only person you should be is yourself. You can’t control perception. All you can control is how you treat someone else.”Sib is forced to try and figure out at last who she wants to be. Discussion: There are so many aspects to this story that deserve mention, but the most significant is the treatment of sexuality. The author takes us through the gamut of attitudes toward it, especially the differences between how the boys and the girls think about it, and how, within those groups, those with good self-esteem differ from those without it. The author also puts into relief the heteronormative assumptions so characteristic of the majority.Evaluation: This is a moving and memorable story. The two issues it explores in depth - grief and sexuality - are handled expertly and with keen insight. As for the sexuality, I’d say it is about the best YA book I’ve seen for presenting the pros and cons of premarital sex with intelligence, understanding, and without didacticism. This book has won a number of well-deserved awards, including Book of the Year (Older Readers), Children’s Book Council of Australia.
    • 5/5
      Wildlife is Fiona Wood's companion novel to her popular young adult contemporary debut, Six Impossible Things.Sibylla is used to people looking past her, around her, through her even, but that all changes the day her face appears on a 20-metre billboard and Ben Capaldi, the most popular boy in year 10, kisses her."So the Earth must be spinning of it's axis by now, plummeting headlong towards a new universe, oceans sloshing and spilling, icecaps sliding, trees uprooted. Because somehow I've stepped over the line to stand with the popular girls. Only I haven't. The line must have moved without me realising."Coping with her shift in status is disorientating for Sibylla, despite her best friend's coaching, especially as year 10 have to spend the next nine weeks camping together at their Grammar school's outdoor education camp in the highlands of Victoria."Now all I have to do is blend in, zone out and start crossing off the days on my cell wall"Lou (from Six Impossible Things), new to Crowthorne Grammar, couldn't care less about Sibylla, Ben or the whole social milieu. Still grieving the accidental death of her boyfriend, Fred, she aims only to endure the term bunking with five strange girls.Contrasting Sibylla's tentative negotiation of love, sexuality and friendship with Lou's grief and hard earned self awareness, Wildlife is a thoughtful coming of age story.It explores the dynamics of self image and self esteem, highlighting how vulnerable teens can be to the perceptions of others. Sibylla in particular struggles with her desire to fit in and be considered as worthy of Ben's interest. Woods captures Sib's conflicted thoughts and behaviour wonderfully and it is this insightful comment from Lou that articulates the lesson Sib needs to learn.“Sometimes I think I see you, Sibylla, but then you get all blurry about what people think about you, how you should act, what everyone expects of you, who you are pleasing, or not... The only person you should be is yourself. You can’t control perception. All you can control is how you treat someone else.”The complexities of teen relationships also comes under scrutiny in Wildlife. Holly's fickle friendship and Michael's devotion highlights the extremes of loyalty. Again it is Lou's wisdom that helps Sibylla recognise the value of friendship."A friend brave enough to be truthful-very different from Holly's "honesty"."The budding relationship between Sibylla and Ben is treated with refreshing candour. While Sib agonises over boyfriend/girlfriend etiquette and tries to reconcile lust with love, Ben maintains a casual attitude to the relationship which is realistic (and frighteningly familiar). I like that Wood chooses to recognise this common dynamic with equanimity and confronts desire and sex with candid honesty.While Sibylla is experiencing a slew of firsts, Lou is mourning the memory of hers. Wood lays bare Lou's grief, anger and fears in poignant diary entries as Lou tries to reconcile her loss with the ordinary task of living. Though she tries to hold herself apart from everyone, sheer proximity eventually forces Lou to engage with her fellow students. Her strongest connection is with Michael, Sib's genius childhood friend, whose complete lack of artifice suits her, but she also becomes embroiled in the relationships between Sibylla, Holly, Michael and Ben despite herself. Unexpectedly, the muddled situation leads Lou to discover she can move forward with her life, without leaving Fred behind."You will always be a part of me, and how I see the world."Wildlife is wonderful and easily one of the best contemporary young adult novels I have read. It's authentic, honest and teens will be able to relate to the characters and their circumstances.