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Ghost Wall: A Novel
Ghost Wall: A Novel
Ghost Wall: A Novel
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Ghost Wall: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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A Southern Living Best New Book of Winter 2019; A Refinery29 Best Book of January 2019; A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 at The Week, Huffington Post, Nylon, and Lit Hub; An Indie Next Pick for January 2019

Ghost Wall has subtlety, wit, and the force of a rock to the head: an instant classic.”
—Emma Donoghue, author of Room

"A worthy match for 3 a.m. disquiet, a book that evoked existential dread, but contained it, beautifully, like a shipwreck in a bottle.”
—Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker

A taut, gripping tale of a young woman and an Iron Age reenactment trip that unearths frightening behavior

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?

A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the “primitive minds” of our ancestors.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 8, 2019
ISBN9780374719555
Author

Sarah Moss

Sarah Moss is the author of several novels and a memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her novels are Summerwater, Cold Earth, Night Waking, Bodies of Light (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), Signs for Lost Children (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), The Tidal Zone (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and Ghost Wall, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019. Sarah was born in Glasgow and grew up in the north of England. After moving between Oxford, Canterbury, Reykjavik and West Cornwall, she now lives in the Midlands and is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick.

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Reviews for Ghost Wall

Rating: 3.9171269226519336 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sylvie Hampton's father Bill rules his family with an iron fist and an ever-ready belt. Sylvie's mother is completely cowed; Sylvie avoids riling his anger.Bill is obsessed with the Iron Age Britons and, especially the bog people sacrifices. When he is invited by an experiential archaeologist and some of his graduate students to take part in a two week reenactment, Bill jumps at the chance and takes his family along.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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss 2018 Farrar, Straus, Giroux 5.0 / 5.0TRIGGER: extreme child abuse, detailed animal skinningThis 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 to comprehend. The depth and detail of writing in such a short novel is amazing.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.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I am completely underwhelmed by this book or maybe, since it seems to be getting really great reviews, I just didn't get it. I know it started it out strong and had, what seemed to me, a great premise for an intriguing story, but ultimately I was bored throughout the story and wondered what all the hype was about. I kept reading thinking I would be surprised with a great ending but I just found the ending weird and a bit unbelievable. Thanks go to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy and provide my honest opinion.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My first read by this author, but it certainly won't be the last. I'm not sure I can even adequately explain why. It takes place in Northumberland, an archeological expedition, trying to imitate those that lived during the Iron Age. Silvie is seventeen, her father a bus driver with a obsessive interest in ancient Britain, and a mother who is somewhat of a doormat. Joining them on the professional end is a Professor with three of his students, including Molly who treats this experiment as more of a lark. Silvies father is an abusive man, who beats his wife and daughter for minor transgressions, instilling fear as a means of control. Needless to say, I despised him. Molly, with her modern ways, will show Silvie a different way of living, and awakens her to new possibilities. The site they are in was the place where an actual bog girl was found, sacrificed by her fellow community members. This fascinates Silvies father greatly.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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    We have made assumptions about the lives that our distant ancestors lived based on what we've found of their settlements, their tools and utensils, and any writing they might have left behind. Whether we have made correct assumptions may never be known. This does not stop us from reenactments in museum dioramas or even in living history retreats or weekends. Slipping fully into the skin of people who went before us might help us appreciate the advances we've made to ease our lives, or it might bring us to a misguided idea of simpler times for which we yearn. In Sarah Moss' slight, powerful, and dark novella, Ghost Wall, we see the danger in embracing ideas and imagined morals from the past.Seventeen year old Silvie's family has joined with an experiential anthropology class in Northumberland to live like Britons did in the Iron Age. Silvie's father Bill is a violent, controlling, abusive man and he is determined that their family will live as authentically as possible, even if the anthropology professor and the students cheat at every turn. He wants to erase all signs of modern life, subjugating his wife and daughter in the way that he envisions the Iron Age people did to their women. As the group steps into the lives of the people they are studying, the lines start to blur and the threatening, menacing air gets more and more oppressive.This is a dark and suffocating work. The tension ratchets up and up as the quotidian gives way to the mystical, to dark history and domestic violence. The atmosphere is well drawn with the clear, detailed natural world counterbalancing Bill as he hides his abuse, lashing out in private, even as he convinces others to go along with him in his sacrificial delusion. It very much a political novel, showing the conservative, xenophobic, brutal, and brutish Bill to be wholly wrong in his desires for a purer time, people, and nation. Unfortunately he is very much a one dimensional character, as are most of the characters here. Only Silvie has any nuance to her character and much of her nuance is thanks to naivete. There are no quotation marks setting off dialogue and multiple characters can speak within the same paragraph, which adds to the confused multiplicity of voices, especially toward the end of the story. Reading this was suffocating and grim but also frustrating from a craft perspective. It was awarded many accolades so obviously my opinion is an outlier.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Silvie's father is a bus driver by day, but spends his holiday's pursuing his passion for the Iron Age. Particularly re-enacting how people lived in the Iron Age - hunting and gathering, the way they dressed and where they slept. He also drags his wife and only daughter along with him.

    The small family have joined a group from a University to recreate an Iron Age environment in Northern England for a summer. Silvie joins in the students' activities - primarily gathering food.

    The story is ultimately about Silvie's relationship with her obsessive, controlling, sadistic father. Tension builds throughout the story, and you can feel that something awful will happen. The ending was satisfying and I think provided the ultimate contrast between modern life and life in the Iron Age.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A smart, queer teenage girl under the thumb of an abusively chauvinistic and xenophobic father meets a confidently feminist young woman who teaches her that there are possibilities beyond the tiny world her father has prescribed for her. I see this novella as primarily a love story in peculiarly interesting circumstances. Loved it.

    Favourite quote:
    "No poetry in your soul," said Dan, "that's the problem with girls, they're always thinking about where to pee" [...] It was one of my father's themes, the way women allow their inferior plumbing to shape their relationship with the Great Outdoors.
    “Actually", said Molly, "it’s no harder for girls to pee than boys, the problem isn’t biology, it’s men’s fear of women’s bodies. If we were allowed to pull our knickers down and squat by a wall the way you’re allowed to get your dick out and piss up the wall there wouldn’t be a problem, it’s just the way you all act as if a vagina will come and eat you if it’s out without a muzzle.”
    "Hey, joke," Dan said. "I was joking, don't get upset."
    "That's the problem with boys", said Molly, "they're always telling people not to get upset."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Silvie and her parents join an archaeology professor and three of his students on a field trip to Northumberland. The trip is an experiment in "experiential archaeology" in the sense that its participants try to recreate and re-enact the living conditions of the Iron Age tribes which inhabited these remote areas. The professor's intentions are innocent enough, at least at the outset - a mixture of academic curiosity and a "Boys' Own" thirst for adventure which he seems to share with his students. Silvie's dad, on the other hand, has darker motives. We soon learn that he has supremacist fantasies about "Ancient Britons", whom he considers a pure, home-grown race, untainted by foreign influences. He idolises their way of life which, albeit nasty, brutish and short, is for him a test of manly mettle. And he has a morbid fascination with the Bog People, Iron Age victims of human sacrifice.

    At first the group dynamics make the novel feel like an episode of "Celebrity Survivors" as we sense the increasing friction between the disparate characters. However, things decidedly take a turn for the sinister when the men decide to build a "ghost wall" - a wooden barricade topped by animal skulls which the ancients apparently used as a means of psychological warfare against invading hordes.

    Ghost Wall is a slender novella which packs a punch. The narrative element is tautly controlled. There's a constant sense of dread, of violence simmering beneath the surface. These leads to a terrifying climax, in which the novel skirts the folk horror genre to chilling effect.

    More importantly, however, the work is a timely indictment of patriarchal and racist prejudices which, though distinct, often fuel each other. It also seems to suggest that even monsters have redeeming features which endear them to their own victims, whilst seemingly innocent persons can commit grave acts when they give in to atavistic instincts. Perhaps what make this novel so disturbing is that these horrors are all too real.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Intense and fascinating story that led to me watching bog body inspired hair tutorials on youtube and getting unreasonably mad about millennia old murders. Pretty grisly descriptions of human sacrifice and accidental mummification and also animal dismemberment. There is also abuse and sexism happening that is not pleasant to read about...All of which makes this book sounds awful but it was a good read actually just with nasty parts also.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A tiny book, but dense and packs a punch. It's about a 17 year old girl from Northern England, who is camping with her parents and a college group, who are reenacting Iron Age life in the area. Gradually the book shifts to dark secrets from the girl's family, and how the college students and professor interact; while at the same time contrasting this modern story with life in Iron Age Briton, addressing class and gender issues, and human sacrifice.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Eerie short novel. A teenage girl is camping with her parents and a handful of college kids and their professor. They are re-enacting Iron Age hunter gatherers in the north of England. It's uncomfortable and no one really knows what they're doing, but this is her father's dream. He is fascinated by this ancient history and by how people lived in those times.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Boring. Such a disappointment
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An archeology professor and his 3 students on an academic field trip to reconstruct Iron Age life on the moors is joined by a bus driver and his grocery store clerk wife and their teenage daughter, Sylvie. The story is mostly narrated by Silvie. Her dad is obsessed by idea of living as the people of the Iron Age which is fueled by an idea of racial purity. Over the narrative it is slowly revealed that her father is also a deeply disturbed, sadistic man.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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a book I really wanted to like but it read like a tense narrative about domestic abuse combined with filler. It just doesn’t deliver.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book left a really bad taste. It was promoted as a story about a family that joins an archaeology class for a two week outing to "live like the ancient Britons". But the outing is really unnecessary to the primary focus: the terror Silvie and her mother experience around their abusive father/husband. The book is quite successful at depicting this. The mother is almost unable to function without direction, and both women are frequent targets for the father's rage and violence. Even Silvie, at age 17, still excuses his behavior, although she can't help pushing his buttons, so she's got a bit of spark in her still.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.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sarah Moss gives us a fascinating short novel with both coming-of-age and dark mystical qualities while also serving as a timely meditation on issues surrounding nativism. She uses the idea of walls to explore the latter: Do we confuse love (of people, country) with ownership? Does ownership require keeping things unchanged forever? Does preoccupation with ownership inevitably lead to pain for and constraint of others? Ancient walls (e.g., Hadrian’s, The Great Wall in China) and their modern counterparts (Berlin, Israel, US southern border) are metaphors for a myriad of passions surrounding safety, ownership, class, and ancestry. This novel questions the ultimate effectiveness of such structures at conserving these ideals.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.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Abusive father and husband drags wife and daughter on archeological expedition with a local professor. Three university students are along for the trip and the young woman among them guesses pretty quickly just how dreadful this father is. I honestly don’t know what else to say about this novel. It was very well written, and, thankfully, short because the abuse is palpable as this man lives his dream life of existing during Britain’s Iron Age while caring little for the welfare of those around him. I’m left with an icky feeling.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well, archaeology certainly wasn't like that when I was doing field work on Iron Age hillforts in Northumberland fifty years ago. Thank goodness.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sarah Moss' Ghost Wall is foremost a novel of toxic patriarchy. A boorish, prudish, and humorless father bullies and abuses his wife and Silvie, his teen daughter, and justifies himself by his consuming obsession for recreating the purity of pre-Roman Britain. Jim Slade, a clueless and spineless archeology professor, allows himself to be dominated and manipulated by Silvie’s father. 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
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a dark little tale: an Iron Age reenactment being carried out one summer in North England with two sets of players: an "experimental archeology" professor and three 20-something grad students in it for the class credit and a lark, and a family there to satisfy the father's obsession with the time period and a "pure" England. More than a tale of old ways vs. new, it's a class conflict story above all, town and gown in particular. The professor and his students are breezy and often sloppy, with the implication that they can afford to be, but for the bus driver father, and the wife and daughter he drags along in his wake, this is grimly serious business. That combination of class and cultural nostalgia as the driving force for dysfunction made me think of a less wan (and damp) [Elmet], with a little [Lord of the Flies] thrown in. The abusive, obsessive father was drawn in too-broad strokes, I thought, but the 17-year-old narrator, Silvie, is complex and interesting, a terrific voice. The writing is nice throughout, and the story is uncomfortable and at the same time engaging.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ghost Wall is narrated by the teenage daughter of a Northumbrian bus driver who takes part in a reenactment of pre-Roman life as part of a class in experimental archaeology. Sylvie and her mother are there, wearing tunics and obeying Sylvie's father as he joins with the professor in guiding the project. As the two men become more and more involved in exploring possible spiritual rites practiced by early Britons, her father's controlling behavior amplifies. 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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A short and dark book about a small group of people, including a family, that are part of an archaeological experiment where the group lives as if they are in the Iron Age. TW: abuse.I really enjoyed the story, but would have loved quotations or something to indicate when people were speaking (just a personal preference).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    17-year-old Silvie and her parents are spending the summer living like Iron Age Britons, her father having talked his way into joining a professor and his three students on an “experiential archaeology” course. Silvie’s father is obsessed with ancient Britain, and under his tutelage Silvie has acquired considerable knowledge of outdoor survival techniques, like foraging for food. Although socially awkward, Silvie’s knowledge earns her credibility with the students, who routinely escape the camp to buy modern conveniences in a nearby village. Silvie doesn’t dare cross her father; her mother is also cowed by his strict enforcement of Iron Age practices.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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Overall, I enjoyed this book, a little bit different and certainly an interesting subject matter. Here, in the United States, most everyone is familiar with Civil War re-enactments but apparently, re-enacting ancient civilization in Britain is a thing. The reader is introduced to it in this novella which suggests that dark doesn't only belong to the dark ages. Modern civilization contains its secrets just as the ancients had theirs. 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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sara Moss' Ghost Wall is a wildly interesting short novel about a girl whose archeologist parents take her on a dig field trip. It explores themes of parental abuse and the intentions of parents and how said abuse and intentions affect children. The storytelling is affecting and heartbreaking and at times funny. It is more troubling than anything else but this is the nature of childhood. It also is about the intentions of others who seek to help those who are victims of abuse and how that plays out. I thought that this short novel was engaging and addicting to read. However it may appeal more to those who had especially troubling childhoods. I found myself really connecting with the entire story line and parts that highlighted the girls struggle with her family and making excuses for the abuse brought me to tears. The writing is also beautifully connected to the research and details of the story. A totally engaging but troubling read. The story line itself is not for everybody but being that this was my first time reading Sarah Moss I will for sure be looking to read more of her work because I found the wring and story to be just stunning. Ghost Wall is heartbreaking and shocking. A good read for those can cope with themes reading about themes of parental abuse and the anguish that that brings.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Seeing so many positive reviews of this book is really baffling. As I read them, I see most arrive at four and five star reviews because the story seems interesting. I do have to agree that this portrayal of a true sadist and the effects of his behavior on his family is an interesting read. As a short story, it would qualify for its 4 or 5 stars. But short stories are excused for not being full fledged. They can develop characters through general descriptions, and they can get away with plots that provide only enough detail to help the storyline and theme develop.
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Loved it. Powerful, gut-wrenching, and pointed. Worth the read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A teenage girl and her cowed mother are dragged along by a bullying history enthusiast father on an 'experiential archaeology' holiday in Northumberland. Along with a professor and three students, the group are busy foraging, hunting and experiencing Iron Age life. Builds to a dark crescendo- powerful writing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Thought-provoking short novel about the thin veneer of civilization, as a teenage daughter goes on a university re-enactment camping trip with her enthusiast father and beaten-down mother.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This year I've read some dark books, but this novella is the most harrowing of them all. Silvie and her family live in Northumberland, in the north of England. Her father is obsessed with the way of life of Iron Age Britons. In summer, a professor of archaeology brings students to a camp which Silvie's dad helps run, where they can experience this way of life for themselves. Silvie participates as well but also meets students who expand her view of life behind that narrow vision her father is trying to instill on her.
    This book is loaded with symbolism about our relationship with history, the shallow and unfounded glorification of past and the rituals we are forced to enact for whatever reason.
    The writing is outstanding as well. Five stars.

Book preview

Ghost Wall - Sarah Moss

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.

She stumbles. They hold her up. No need to be rough, everyone knows what is coming. From deep inside her body, from the cord in her spine and the wide blood-ways under the ribs, from the emptiness of her womb and the rising of her chest, she shakes. A body in fear. They lead the fearful body over the turf and along the track, her bare feet numb to most of the pain of rock and sharp rushes. Chanting rises, the drums sound slow, unsyncopated with the last panic of her heart. Others follow, wrapped against the cold, dark figures processing into the dusk.

On arrival, they strip her. It is easy; they have put her into a loose tunic. Against the low red light of the winter sunset, her body is white as chalk, solid against the wisps of fog and the tracery of reed. She tries to cover herself with her hands, and is not allowed. One holds her while the other binds her. Her breathing is accelerating, its condensation settling on her face. Exhaled breaths hang like spirits above each person’s head, slowly dissolving into the air. The men turn her to face the crowd, they display her to her neighbours and her family, to the people who held her hands as she learnt to walk, taught her to dip her bread in the pot and wipe her lips, to weave a basket and gut a fish. She has played with the children who now peep at her from behind their mothers, has murmured prayers for them as they were being born. She has been one of them, ordinary. Her brother and sisters watch her flinch as the men take the blade, lift the pale hair on the left side of her head and cut it away. They scrape the skin bare. She doesn’t look like one of them now. She shakes. They tuck the hair into the rope around her wrists.

She is whimpering, keening. The sound echoes across the marsh, sings through the bare branches of rowan and birch.

There are no surprises.

They place another rope around her neck, hold the knife up to the setting sun as it edges behind the rocks. What is necessary is on hand, the sharpened willow withies, the pile of stones, the small blades and the large. The stick for twisting the rope.

Not yet. There is an art to holding her in the place she is entering now, on the edge of the water-earth, in the time and space between life and death, too late to return to the living and not time, not yet, not for a while, to be quite dead.

DARKNESS WAS A LONG TIME coming. The fire crackled, transparent against the trees, its purpose no more, no less, than ceremonial. We had been pushed away from each other by the heat that no one wanted. Woodsmoke stung my eyes and the rock dug into my backside, the rough tunic itchy under my thighs. I slipped my foot out of its moccasin and pointed my toes towards the fire for no reason, to see how it felt. You can’t be cold, my father said, though it was he who had lit the fire and insisted that we gather around it. I can, I thought, if I’ve a mind, but I said, no, Dad, I’m not cold. Through the flames, I could see the boys, talking to each other and drawn back almost into the trees as if they were thinking of melting into the woods and creeping off somewhere to do some boys’ thing at which I would probably be more skilled. My mother sat on the stone where my father had told her to sit, tunic rucked unbecomingly above her fat white knees, staring into the flames as people do; it was boring and my father was holding us all there, bored, by force of will. Where do you think you’re going, he said as I stood up. I need, I said, to pee, and he grunted and glanced towards the boys, as if the very mention of biological functions might incite their adolescent passions. Just make sure you go out of sight, he said.

Within a few days, our feet would wear a path through the trees to the stream, but that first night there was moss underfoot, squashy in the dim light, and patches of wild strawberries so ripe and red they were still visible in the dusk, as if glowing. I squatted to gather a handful and wandered on, picking them out of my palm with my lips, kissing my own hand. Bats flashed through the space between branches, mapping depth into the flat sky, their calls brushing the upper range of my hearing. It was odd to walk in the thin leather moccasins, only a layer of borrowed—stolen—skin between my feet and the sticks and stones, the damp patches and soft places of the woods. I came to the stream and squatted beside it, dipped my fingers, listened. Water over rock and peat, leaves stirring behind me and over my head, a sheep calling on the hill. Fresh dew came through my shoes. The stream tugged at my fingertips and the heather explored my legs, bare under the tunic. It was not that I didn’t understand why my father loved these places, this outdoor life. It was not that I thought houses were better.


WHEN I RETURNED to the fire, my mother was kneeling at its side, not propitiating the gods but hefting slabs of green turf from a pile. Give us a hand, Sil, she said, he says if you do it right you can cover it for the night and pull the turfs off in the morning, he says that’s how they always did it, them. In the old days. Yeah, I said, kneeling beside her, and I suppose he didn’t say as how there was someone to show you, in the old days, how they didn’t just give out instructions and bugger off. She sat back. Well, she said, but they’d have known, wouldn’t they, back then, not have needed telling, you’d have learnt it at your mam’s side, and don’t use language like that, he’ll hear you.

We were sleeping in the roundhouse, my parents and I. The students had built it earlier in the year, as part of a course on experimental archaeology, but they had been firmly resistant to my father’s view that everyone should sleep in it together. There was no reason, my father said, to think that Ancient British households had been organised like modern families, if the students wanted a real experience they should join us on the splintery bunks they had built and padded with three deerskins donated by the anachronistic local lord of the manor. Or at least, since he lived in London and certainly didn’t spend his summers in Northumberland, that he had allowed someone to donate on his behalf. Professor Slade said, ah well, after all, authenticity was impossible and not really the goal anyway, the point was to have a flavour of Iron Age life and perhaps some insight into particular processes or technologies. Let the students sleep in their tents if they prefer, he said, there were almost certainly Iron Age tents also. Skin tents, Dad said, none of this fancy nylon stuff. The tent we used on our holidays was made of canvas the colour of apricots and possibly left over from the Second World War.

I had noticed that the students had pitched their inauthentic bright and waterproof nylon tents in the clearing below our hut, screened by trees and hillside from both the roundhouse and the Professor’s larger tent nearer the track where he kept his car. I could sleep in one too, Dad, I said, give you and Mum some privacy, but Dad didn’t want privacy, he wanted to be able to see what I was up to. Don’t be daft, he said, of course you can’t sleep wi’ the lads, shame on you. Anyway, privacy’s a fancy modern idea, exactly what we’re getting away from, everyone trying to hide away and do what they want, you’ll be joining in with the rest of us. I did not know what my father thought I might want to do, but he devoted considerable attention to making sure I couldn’t do it.

The bunks were exactly as uncomfortable as you’d expect. I had refused to sleep wearing the scratchy tunic that my father insisted, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, to be the Ancient British nightdress as well as daywear, but even through brushed cotton pyjamas the straw-stuffed sack was prickly, smelt like a farmyard, and rustled as if there were small mammals frisking in it every time I moved. The darkness in the hut was complete, disconcerting; I lay on my back moving my hands in front of my face and saw nothing at all. My father turned, sighed, and began to snore, an irregular bovine noise that made the idea of sleep ridiculous. Mum, I whispered, Mum, you awake? Shh, she hissed back, go to sleep. I can’t, I said, he’s too loud, can’t you give him a shove. Shh, she said, go to sleep, Silvie, close your eyes. I turned onto my side, facing the wall, and then back because it didn’t feel like a good idea to have my back to the darkness. What if there were insects in the straw, ticks or fleas, what if they crawled inside my pyjamas, what if there was one now, on my foot, maybe all the way up my leg, jumping and biting and jumping, and on my back, coming through the sack, several of them, on my shoulders and my neck—Silvie, hissed Mum, stop wriggling like that and go to sleep, you’re getting on my nerves summat proper. He’s getting on my nerves summat proper, I said, they can probably hear him in Morbury, I don’t know how you put up with it. There was a grunt, a shift. The snoring stopped and we both lay still, frozen. Pause. Maybe he’s not going to breathe again, I thought, maybe that’s it, the end, but then it started again, a serrated knife through cardboard.

WHEN I WOKE UP there was light seeping around the sheepskin hanging over the door. They probably didn’t actually have sheep, the Professor had said, they were hunters, not farmers, but there’s a limit to how far we can pretend farming never happened. To some extent we would have to take what we could get and sheepskins are a lot easier to pick up on the open market than deerskins. While I was glad we weren’t going to be hacking the guts out of deer in the woods with flint blades, I thought the Professor’s dodging of violence pretty thoroughly messed up the idea that our experiences that summer were going to rediscover the lifeways of pre-modern hunter-gatherers. He’s right, you can’t reverse farming and land ownership, there’s been no wilderness in Britain for centuries and, as Dad sometimes said, no real hunting for the likes of us since the Norman Conquest, but the replacement of

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