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The light blinds you; there's a lot you miss by gathering at the fireside. In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age. For two weeks, the length of her father's vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. They are surrounded by forests of birch and rowan; they make stew from foraged roots and hunted rabbit. The students are fulfilling their coursework; Silvie's father is fulfilling his lifelong obsession. He has raised her on stories of early man, taken her to witness rare artifacts, recounted time and again their rituals and beliefs--particularly their sacrifices to the bog. Mixing with the students, Silvie begins to see, hear, and imagine another kind of life, one that might include going to university, traveling beyond England, choosing her own clothes and food, speaking her mind. The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of their own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice?… (more)
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Ugliness lies just beneath the surface. When Silvie’s father reveals his true nature, she tries desperately to cover up his behavior. Her mother looks on helplessly but Molly, the lone female student, knows something is not right. And as the men bond together, the focus of their conversation and activity turns toward Iron Age fighting methods and violent rituals. Suddenly, a somewhat offbeat summer holiday has turned into something frightening. The suspense in this short novelis palpable, and the ending just right, leaving much to think about.
Silvie Hampton is a 17-year-old working class girl who is spending time with her family in a re-enactment of bronze/iron age life in rural Northumbria. She has low self-esteem and confusion about her place in the world while being sensitive to her father’s physical abuse of her and her mother.
Silvie’s father, Bill, is an amateur expert on pre-Roman history. He harbors a disdain for the modern world and believes that the ancestors of the early Britons (of course Bill is one of these) are the privileged ones. All people who came later he considers to be interlopers. In essence, he is a racist with brutal tendencies.
Moss wonderfully captures the Northumbrian setting where a group of college students are participating in a course on experimental archeology lead by their professor. These kids serve to emphasize issues related to a privileged class vis a vis the workers as exemplified by Silvie and her family.
Moss cleverly weaves archeology with British ancient history to provide the reader with a tense, eerie but ultimately enlightening narrative about misogyny, gender bias, nativism, child abuse, and class in the modern world. Ultimately it asks whether mankind has truly evolved very far from its ancient roots.
This idea of living as the ancients begins as an academic experiment, while slowly the obsessions of Sylvie's father influences the professor and the idea of reenactment takes a dark turn. At first I questioned the idea of the academic allowing this very un-academic family to accompany the group, but as the story progressed it became clear that the professor had consistently poor judgement.
I've read almost everything Sarah Moss has written. She has an uncanny way of creating a story that reflects current events, and using that story to cause the reader to reflect the meaning of those events and their place in history.
I liked this book and definitely recommend it, though I thought the story could have been better explored with some added material. But, then again, I prefer long books - if you like your novels succinct I think you'll be happy the way this was written.
This is very intimate and while set in wide open spaces, it is impossible to escape the feeling the Sylvie is so trapped in her situation that she and her mother are incapable of making any move to change how they live. It takes a really quite shocking proposal to trigger the final events. After which nothing will be the same again. Bizarrely, this is a hopeful ending.
Ghost Wall occurs during a two week field trip as part of an undergraduate course on ”experimental archaeology”. Professor Slade admits that ”after all, authenticity was impossible and not really the goal anyway, the point was to have a flavour of Iron Age life”. Silvie’s father maintains his tiresome adherence to an ill-conceived idea of pre-Roman authenticity, hoping to recreate the glory days of ancient Britain before its dilution by the Romans and other invaders. The action in Ghost Wall occurs largely in the interstices between Sylvie’s father rigidity, the abused Sylvie and her mother, the fungible views of Professor Slade, and the relaxed attitudes of the students, just trying to comfortably live through their two week field assignment.
Ghost Wall is told through Silvie’s first person teen voice, which is economical, measured, and highly effective. Silvie, named for Sulevia, the ancient Northumbrian goddess of springs and pools, hovers between loyalty to her father, embarrassment for him, and fear. Silvie’s father is largely portrayed in off-hand observations and in reflections by the students. Here’s one of the students: ”Is he always like that, Silvie? I mean, sorry, I know he’s your dad and all but. Like what, I said, a show-off and given to brutality, yes, actually, mostly he is, sorry.” In Silvie’s mind, the students are rich and disrespectful, she and her family are poor and disrespected. Here’s an interchange about Silvie’s mother’s accent: ”sorry, Silvie, I shouldn’t have imitated her, I just really like the way it sounds. Well, it’s not the way you sound, I said, so don’t. She touched my shoulder and I flinched. Sorry, she said again. Really, Silvie, don’t be cross. It’s OK, I said, just don’t laugh at people’s accents, you do know yours sounds weird to me, posh.”
Moss is a fearsome stylist and she maintains narrative tension throughout. She sets up a difficult narrative task for herself, since she starts Ghost Wall by foreshadowing its climactic scene: ”They bring her out. Not blindfolded, but eyes widened to the last sky, the last light. The last cold bites her fingers and her face, the stones bruise her bare feet. There will be more stones, before the end.” Throughout Ghost Wall, the reader wonders not so much what happens as when will it happen and to whom. We know it happens to woman, but we don’t know which one of four women. Moss maintains an undertone of impending threat, although the exact nature of the threat is left unexpressed.
I would like to thank Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley in providing me with an e-copy in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 stars
I honestly don’t know what else to say about this novel.
I really enjoyed the story, but would have loved quotations or something to indicate when people were speaking (just
Silvie's father is one such enthusiast, self taught and eager to participate with a college professor and his students on a two week field trip, bringing along his daughter and wife to do the dirty work. He wishes to make the trip as authentic as possible and is sometimes restrained by the Professor. He has an ugly disposition which, sometimes, makes for a difficult read. Most readers will be satisfied with the conclusion.
The author has chosen to forego quotation marks, sometimes dialog runs together with narrative which gives the story a disconcerting and uneasy feel, maybe foreshadowing what is to come.
At any rate, I was really disappointed and put off at the story that emerged. The ending seemed highly unlikely and was distasteful, and I'm sorry I read it. The rating, such as it is, is for what is successful about the book, not for how much I appreciated it.
Bill is obsessed with the Iron Age Britons and, especially the bog people sacrifices. When he is invited by an experiential archaeologist and
Although the graduate students take the reenactment less than seriously as they sneak into town for a beer or a shower, Bill insists his wife and daughter remain authentically in their support roles.
They forage for food, and create a ghost wall - a barrier with skulls along the top to act as a warning to other tribes.
As they chant and sing and drum, something seems to awaken within them and Bill wants to go to the next step, trying out some of the pre-sacrificial techniques he has read about and learned. And his daughter can't say no ….
I found this quite creepy with the suspense building up like the beating of a drum or a frightened heart. I gulped it all down in one sitting – good thing it was short! - as I couldn't bear to put it down before I learned the ending.
by Sarah Moss
2018
Farrar, Straus, Giroux
5.0 / 5.0
TRIGGER: extreme child abuse, detailed animal skinning
This left me absolutely numb-its written so well and so cohesively, its hard to believe its fiction. The subject of extreme child abuse and violence were so hard to read and difficult
In the north of England, Silvie and her family join an anthropology class for 2 weeks one summer. It is living out a lifelong obsession of her father. They re enact and live as they did in the time of the ancient Britons during the Iron Age, in a remote area of the country. Using only tools available then (none, except your hands and feet), foraging for roots and hunting rabbits are daily events. The details of catching and preparing the rabbit to eat were very detailed and i had to skip that part....
Also hard to read was the extreme violence and abuse against Silvie by her father. He is violent, and chauvinistic, vicious and cowardly. His attitudes were hard to read, for me. But written so well.
This is outstanding, with great flow. This is not for the sensitive, but it is good to see such abuse being written about.
There are mesnings here, and contrasts, some because I don't live in Britain that I didn't get. The history they are living now has an underlying meaning, the ghost wall they build symbolizing the Berlin Wall contrasting with the barriers Molly tries to remove around Silvie, or so I think. The thing is, this is another book short on pages but chock full of symbolism, intriguing. In fact I found her writing to be excellent, and this story to contain fascinating looks at history past and present, combined with a family strory, a young girls awakening, and at the very last a thriller.
I loved the end, though I was holding my breath hoping it wouldn't go where I thought it was. Where it went in the end, made complete sense, fit the story perfectly. So now I'm searching out this authors previous works to see if I find them just as intriguing.
ARC from Edelweiss.
But this book is presented as a novella and as such, it ought od do a more full sized development of characters and plot.
The plot in this book appears to be about a college class on a "field trip" to try to live as people in the 13th century lived. But this plot is only scantily referred to or developed with almost no explanation as to why the sadist and his family have been included in this field experience.
The father in this novel is a cruel and vicious sadist, but we don't learn much more about him. The mother is victimized by him as is his daughter, both of whom retreat into cowering in fear and submission.
Other characters in the books professor supervising this field experience and the students participating in it, just seem to be there in the plot, there is little attention paid to developing their character of fitting most of them into meaningful and important roles in the story.
Rather than an actual plot and storyline, this novel meanders through a series of episodes, each intending to demonstrate the cruelty of the father of the terrified young daughter.
I think the real problem with rating books as we do here on goodreads is that there are not real criteria which everyone rating a book can follow. Personally, I do like a good story well-told, but I also expect the book to fulfill some or most of the criteria for good writing, be it fiction or non-fiction.
This book does tell a good story, but far the reasons I just discussed, this novel simply is not good enough to spend hard earned money buying.
But this book is presented as a novella and as such, it ought od do a more full sized development of characters and plot.
The plot in this book appears to be about a college class on a "field trip" to try to live as people in the 13th century lived. But this plot is only scantily referred to or developed with almost no explanation as to why the sadist and his family have been included in this field experience.
The father in this novel is a cruel and vicious sadist, but we don't learn much more about him. The mother is victimized by him as is his daughter, both of whom retreat into cowering in fear and submission.
Other characters in the books professor supervising this field experience and the students participating in it, just seem to be there in the plot, there is little attention paid to developing their character of fitting most of them into meaningful and important roles in the story.
Rather than an actual plot and storyline, this novel meanders through a series of episodes, each intending to demonstrate the cruelty of the father of the terrified young daughter.
I think the real problem with rating books as we do here on goodreads is that there are not real criteria which everyone rating a book can follow. Personally, I do like a good story well-told, but I also expect the book to fulfill some or most of the criteria for good writing, be it fiction or non-fiction.
This book does tell a good story, but far the reasons I just discussed, this novel simply is not good enough to spend hard earned money buying.
Sarah Moss has here written a short novel that is exactly as long as it needs to be. There is a lot packed into the pages of this book, but it never feels rushed or condensed. Sylvie is a wonderful character to follow, combining an innocence with a knowledge of the world a seventeen year old should not have. There's a lot of subtle menace here, and the reactions and the interactions between the participants in this field trip are sharp and wonderfully written.
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