The Wolf Who Cried Boy: quick links
Fairytales are a fixture of any childhood, teaching life lessons through wonder and magic. But six-year-old Henry believes his whole life is one big fairytale. The Wolf Who Cried Boy asks: When do the fairytales that parents tell their children start endangering them rather than keeping them safe?
This novel is the follow up to Mark Mupotsa-Russell’s 2024 debut, The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt. Henry and his mother, Lexi, are in hiding in Gippsland at the start of the novel, but they’ve already been on the run all over Australia for five years.
When Lexi’s brother, Justin, tracks down the pair to tell them that Lexi’s mother has mere weeks to live, Lexi makes the risky decision to travel up to Brisbane with Henry to visit her mother while they still can.
Since Henry was old enough to ask questions about why they were always in hiding, Lexi has been telling him a fairytale. In this fairytale, Lexi is a Star Queen, fallen from the sky and bestowed with special powers that have been dimmed by her fall to earth.
Henry is the Star Prince, and together they are on the run from The Wolf King. In reality, Henry and Lexi are on the run from Lexi’s abusive ex-husband, Lucas.
Henry’s belief that he has hidden superpowers emboldens him, leading him to take risks and attempt to fight the ‘bad guys’ they encounter. The fairytale’s double-edged sword starts to show; in some ways, the fairytale spun by Lexi works to protect Henry, but in other ways, it puts him in grave danger.
The Wolf Who Cried Boy: themes of toxic masculinity
Mupotsa-Russell engages with themes of toxic masculinity, the cycle of violence, corruption, and the notion of truth. The cast of supporting characters that Henry and Lexi meet during their journey provide complex shading to these themes.
The depiction of Lexi’s endeavour to break the cycle of male violence by encouraging Henry to understand and express his emotions is particularly incisive; Lexi repeatedly reminds Henry that people yell because they didn’t let themselves cry, meaning those emotions eventually come out as anger instead. It’s one of the book’s most poignant lessons on how toxic masculinity is a central factor in cycles of violence.
We learn that Lexi kidnapped Henry from the custody of her ex-husband Lucas, meaning she’s not just on the run from Lucas, but from the Queensland police as well. Moreover, Lucas is a Senior Sergeant in the Queensland police. Mupotsa-Russell deftly portrays the power dynamics at play, and it’s all made even more confronting and difficult to read through a child’s perspective.
Henry is thrown into an emotional tug-of-war as his father switches between love bombing him and committing acts of violence both on the job and towards Lexi. It’s a poignant discussion in the wake of the 2024 review of the Queensland Police Service which revealed systemic discrimination against women and First Nations people.
This book’s release also comes just four months after a Queensland police officer was granted a permanent identity protection order and remained employed in a supervisory role with the Queensland police despite a ruling that found that he took part in a ‘pattern of predatory sexual conduct’ involving three junior female colleagues.
The parallels with Lucas’ story ring loud and clear.
At the centre of all of this is the brilliant and endearing Henry. This six-year-old, who has been subjected to innumerable traumas and whose entire reality is being shaken as he learns that his life might not actually be a magical fairytale, somehow never loses his big, bright heart.
His cleverness, empathy, humour and bravery means he leaves an indelible mark on the reader.
The Wolf Who Cried Boy: masterful execution of a child’s perspective
Mupotsa-Russell’s execution of a child’s perspective is masterful. He takes the reader into Henry’s interior world which is full of wonder, confusion, despair and hope. Used sparingly, the child-like misspellings and syntax help the narration to walk the line between feeling true to the character and possessing the depth to communicate the richness of the narrative.
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The novel’s pacing is expert. Clues about Lexi’s story unwind slowly at the start before the plot starts to unravel quickly, becoming utterly engrossing right through to a climactic ending.
The Wolf Who Cried Boy by Mark Mupotsa-Russell is published by Affirm Press.
