Review: The Call of the Wild

London's evocative classic recalls the bitter harshness of life during the late 19th century gold rush in Canada. The principal character is Buck, a dog who is abducted from his home and sent north to work pulling sledges.

It is a character study which attempts to show how wilderness and despair can strip away civilisation to uncover a more primitive instinctual being. But it's also that we have an innate longing for this earlier nature. Darwin's theory of natural selection and in particular the "survival of the fittest"; a fairly recent idea at the time is another theme explored.

London does a superb and disciplined job of getting inside the mind of a dog while remaining a detached observer. It's hard to imagine many of today's authors not choosing first person to tell a similar story, but it would have overcooked it in this case.

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive."

Lastly, be warned. This is a brutal and visceral book at times.

Verdict: Buck stops here.