I had the same reaction you had when I started reading the comments here. Every theory has its merits and just muddles your mind up more.

1. The interpretation of this book depends on the age of the reader. For instance, I’m fourteen, and if someone older than me (Micah was 17) tells me something, I’m probabaly more apt to believe it than someone who’s above 17 and calling Micah a crazy kid. I think that if you are 14, your interpretation will vary from someone who’s 17, who’s 30, and so on. It really depends on if you’d tend to look up to Micah for being older, or down upon her for just being a mental teenager. For me, it’s hard to think that this girl who is older and maybe wiser was lying to me this whole time.

2. What if Micah was the only character in the book? Think about it… Sarah was almost like Micah’s opposite. Rich, pretty, popular: what Micah might have wanted to be. Maybe she’s trying to tell the reader that being Sarah was a secret desire, and maybe it showed that she did have a feminine side that Zach would have dated with no question. Tayshawn was the only boy who was ever nice to her. If she was really confused about her gender, or really insane, than maybe creating Tayshawn was a part of her that really was masculine, but a good masculine. Or maybe Tayshawn just made her feel better about herself so she tweaked how someone she’d known had actually treated her. Zach was Micah’s love. To me, Zach is the part of Micah that Micah liked. The athletic side. She said running made her feel free. And she referred to Zach as making her feel free. As far as the murder goes, I agree with a previous comment about how Pete is creeated to tie together the deaths of Zach and Jordan. Back to Zach: Micah could have made him up easily. Think about it: he was Sarah’s boyfriend, and Micah admitted an attraction towards Sarah. Maybe the inconsistent heart thing was about how Micah was mad at herself (the Sarah part) for loving Zach in two different personas… I don’t know. I’m not going to continue because my comment already has me confused. Let me know if you want to hear the rest of my theory.

I think there must be a reading where the werewolf thing doesn’t matter. Maybe if her father killed Zach and probably Jordan, too. Hard to know when her mother talks to her about this stuff. People often blame the victim; “You made dad mad and the chair he threw at you hit Jordan in the head” as the underlying accusation wouldn’t be too hard to believe in a family seriously scared of a violent man. Let’s say she’s not a wolf and Pete is real. Maybe she’s a neglected child that has had to spend far too much time fending for herself, and her wolf side is her selfish running away side. She may well fit in better in the country with her strange relatives.

She says she takes pills and has a cage at home. I think it’s obvious that she has had some kind of psychiatric treatment in the past, anyway, but that could be for any number of reasons. The pills that stop her from turning into a wolf could be anti-psychotics rather than birth control.

If Jordan is a figment, perhaps she killed him off in her mind. Or she’s transgender and killed off her maleness. Or introduced herself as Jordan at her last school. If she isn’t a wolf, she could be telling the truth about her motivations and feelings through that lens.

Somehow, I’m inclined to believe that she’s in college at the end and that her teacher visits her. I really need to re-read the thing carefully like I’m doing a college English paper, writing down notes and page numbers. There isn’t any reason to believe that events actually occurred in the same order as they did in the book, and I’d like to re-read and see what I think about that. If I were teaching English, I’d pick this book to illustrate what post-structuralist literature is, since it requires a certain amount of interpretation from the reader to make sense of it.

So many ideas I’ve read here never occurred to me while I was reading the book, though. I wonder if Justine ever peeks in here to see what theories people come up with. I doubt I’d be able to resist. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

And this is a great discussion. I especially liked comments from Ariel (38), Jenny (42), Kate Marshall (43), Caitlin (44), Darcy (46), Tricia Sullivan (60), and Linda Frasier (63). Especially-especially Darcy’s suggestion that Micah was actually Jordan; I really like that. I had wondered whether Micah was actually biologically male, but I like the Jordan theory better.

I’m in the “wasn’t surprised by the werewolf thing” camp. I guessed maybe a quarter of the way through that that’s where it was headed: Micah’s sense of hearing and smell and her running ability pointed that way, and then I remembered the fur bit from the beginning and became convinced. But I loved the reveal anyway. (There were half a dozen places where Micah says “You’re probably wondering about x” and I was delighted because I had indeed been wondering about exactly that.) pAnd I think various people’s comments about genre expectations are really good points; part of why I guessed the werewolf bit was because everything I’ve read of Justine’s so far has been fantasy.

Regarding interpretations:

I very much want to interpret this book in the surface reading: Micah’s a werewolf, Pete killed Zach, Jordan died in an accident, age 10. And most of the book works in that interpretation. But I can’t figure out a way to make the prison-and-pills line (that several of y’all mentioned) fit into that reading.

“Bars surround me. Prison guards bind my arms, bring me pills several times a day.” At first I assumed it was metaphorical (because it’s immediately preceded by “I’ve been kept hostage by lies all my life. Imprisoned by them”). But I don’t see a way to read the “bring me pills several times a day” bit as metaphorical.

It could, of course, just be an outright lie. But there isn’t enough detail to support it as a lie, and I don’t see a reason for her to throw that particular lie in at that particular place.

So I’m wondering: those of you who do believe in the werewolf reading (or even see it as one among multiple plausible readings), how do you interpret that bars-and-pills line?

read the whole book translate by google.
I really have not formed a theory.I think that’s what Micah wanted from the beginning.

sorry me the bad english

Kawinkydink, much?

Anyway, I believe that Micah’s lycanthropy was a metaphor for her mind. Still not sure if she had a brother though.

Micah accidentally killed her brother, but not as a werewolf. She takes the pill and keeps her hair short and tries to pass as a boy at the beginning of high school to make up for what she did to her parents, to give them the son that they lost. She grew delusional as the result of this trauma, and the whole werewolf identity is in her head.

The “white boy” (who supposedly killed Zach) is her shadow: he’s white, she’s biracial; he’s a boy, she’s a girl; he’s uneducated and homeless, she’s college-bound and has a big family. He probably only exists in her head, as a way for her psyche to “re-integrate” with a disowned part of herself, to become whole.

She is writing the story from a mental institution, hence the reference to prison bars fairly early in the book.

I had a lot more written by it came out more like a rambling so I deleted. I’ll try to come back and post more when I can figure out what it is I’m trying to say.

i think her parents did abandon her. and her teacher did take her in. but i think micah killed all 3 of them.
micah states at some point ‘you think i killed both of them, maybe five’… so i think that’s the extra 3.

found herself in zach but since he kept asking

her about why she lied about being a boy she

killed him and pete is just one of her

personalties that she made up so she is

schizophrenic and in a mental institution and

the whole wolf thing is a lie i also think that

jordan her brother was real and she killed him

which is why the parents are so quick to

accuse her of killing zach and by her claiming

that pete is a wolf shes just using her other

personality as an excuse, the cage can also be

taken as a symbol of the parents trying to get

her to figure out who she is like literally

trapped by their way of thinking how

everything should be. i think the family is all a

figment of her imagination and that they are

just the doctors and patients in the institution.

and lily the cousin that was like flirting with

pete shows how she is kind of a little kid at

heart that is still confused about who she is

gender wise. does she like boys or girls is

micah a boy or a girl? the teacher could also

be made up and just be how she views her

mother since the dad is the one that is very

abusive towards her. sarah and tayshawn are

troubling because i do believe they are real as

is zack; i feel that they just add to the gender

confused part of the story and nothing else

and so that zack felt more real. zach might not

have paid attention to her nd she probably

was like stalking him which is why she knew

he was running at 4isham in the morning nd

killed him. the dogs were mentioned for a

reason maybe they’re scared of her cuz they

sense her inner demon so maybe she sneaked

in that night grabbed one and let it lose on

zack? so many different scenarios!

I myself would not like to think of Micah as a killer, she is the relatable girl bullied in school without seeming like a victim. I find myself in her, even the lying aspect. But when you take out the syfy aspect of the book you’re left with:

Abusive parents
Pills
Gender disorder
Dead brother (very much hated)
Dead boyfriend (after school boyfriend)
a liar

I think that adds up to a murderer.

I still suspect her father is the killer. Don’t ask me why.

Do you mean where she says, “this is my life, the beginning and the end of it?” You could interpret that as from now on, she will be someone else, I suppose. She obviously isn’t going to contact her parents, so it’s a new life.

One nagging suspicion: once she says, “promise fulfilled,” is she allowed to lie?

Justine is a very clever writer, & the way she messes with your mind like this just sends shivers up my spine because you never really know if ‘the pretty picture Micah the liar has painted’ is true, or if she’s just a mental impulsive liar & everything is just covered with lies to make a world of her own.

I was never really able to buy into the werewolf thing, even though it fit so beautifully with so many earlier details of Micah’s story. (And I’m a geneticist, and let me tell you, horizontal gene transfer could never account for someone changing from human to wolf. Sorry.) I’m much more inclined to believe that Micah is mentally troubled and the Farm is an institute or a juvenile detention center. I think she was responsible for Jordan’s death, one way or another, and possibly others.

But as everyone else has pointed out, there isn’t really one “correct” solution, is there? That’s what makes the speculation so enjoyable. The fact that Micah is so lovable despite being so unreliable testifies to Justine Larbalestier’s talent.