Wild Life

Longlisted for the 2026 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction

“Brilliant, precious, incomparable. Beautiful, wondrous, affirming. These words immediately come to mind when I think of Wild Life, and still they do not fully express how I feel about this book. This novel moved me in ways I haven’t been moved by a book in years. Amanda Leduc uses the fantastic as a lens through which to examine her characters’ most personal, vulnerable feelings and fears. Yet, even amongst the likes of talking hyenas and mysteriously appearing doves and beanstalks, we never lose sight of the importance of even the smallest, most seemingly mundane moments. After all, as this novel so deftly reminds us, these are the types of moments that make up the tapestry of each of our lives, from which we inevitably derive meaning. With her use of innovative forms, imaginative stories and unforgettable characters, Leduc helps us to understand the beauty and significance of each of our own wild lives. If there is any justice in this world, this book will be hailed as a modern classic for decades to come.” —Alicia Elliott, author of And Then She Fell

“A brilliant work of modern myth-making, Amanda Leduc’s newest novel invites us to embrace the ferocity, vulnerability and tenacity that is at the heart of what makes us human. Wild Life should be savoured and devoured.” —Karen McBride, author of Crow Winter

“I was enthralled. Leduc hasn’t just penned a terrific tale she’s introduced us to a remarkable new literary species: the novel of the human-as-animal. Wild Life is wild and woolly and marvelous, a feral fable about the outsider who’s been inside of us all along: our own creaturely nature. Handle with wonder.” —Thomas Wharton, author of The Book of Rain

“Wild Life surprised and exhilarated me at every turn. As each new chapter reshaped my vision of the book, I felt like one of the characters Amanda Leduc summons so powerfully into being, for whom reality produces a continual sense of estrangement, reorientation and re-enchantment. There is another world, as they say, and it is this one.” —Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead

“In these times, when metaphorical leopards roam free to eat peoples’ faces—a meme never more timely— when it is too easy to supply examples of trusted institutions under attack or subverted, misinformation rampant, and malign actors empowered, the implications of denying or suborning the wild in us are clear and close. Amanda Leduc’s Wild Life may be appreciated for its intrinsic craft and beauty; it may be read also as meeting our historical moment.” —BC Review

“Mystical and at the same time deeply realistic…. At its core, Leduc’s novel is about something we share in common: our animalness and our wildness.” —Winnipeg Free Press