Ghost Wall
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.7
(94)
Sarah Moss
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 YorkerA taut, gripping tale of a young woman and an Iron Age reenactment trip that unearths frightening behaviorThe 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.
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More Details:
Author
Sarah Moss
Pages
144
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published Date
2019-01-08
ISBN
0374719551 9780374719555
Ratings
Google: 4
Community ReviewsSee all
"The story and prose of this book were beautiful and made me enjoy reading modern literature again after years of only reading YA fantasy. HOWEVER the formatting choice to never use quotation marks or line breaks in dialogue was almost a deal-breaker. It made parts of the book nearly impossible to read and i ended up writing them all in myself. It was a huge turn-off when i picked up the book and I almost DNF in the first two chapters.
I want to recommend this book for the prose and the atmosphere but it is physically hard to read."
"Thought this was diligently written. Moss transports you to the scene and makes you evaporate the pages in curiosity."
F
Finlay
"Meh. I didn’t hate it. But I didn’t love it. "
C
Carissa