Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss - Published September 2018 by Granta - ⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆
If you've been around these parts any length of time you'll know that I love Sarah Moss. She weaves these beautiful, quiet narratives that lay bare the most fragile, exposed bones of family life, class, and British culture. After heaving myself to the end of a 1124 page book at the beginning of February, I couldn't wait to sit down with Ghost Wall, a slim novella about a family attempting to recreate Iron Age life as part of an archaeological experiment.
The layers and depths that Moss builds into only 150 pages is staggering. Ghost Wall follows Silvie, an insightful seventeen year old along with her father, a bus driver whose unfulfilled life leaves him boiling over with aggression, and her downtrodden mother who seems to exist purely to appease her father's temper. The three of them join an archaeology professor, and three students, who spend a hot summer acting out Iron Age living in the countryside of Northumbria.
I adored this novel, I read it in a single, gut-wrenching sitting, as the tension wound tighter and tighter with every page. Moss creates three infuriatingly human characters in Silvie and her parents. Each lives in abject misery, and yet all three have consigned themselves to the idea that that's 'just how it is'. Silvie rationalises and justifies her terrible circumstances, her mother meekly collapses into little more than a servant, and her father escapes into an ethnogenesis-fuelled fantasy of ancient times, fetishising the scarcity and hardship suffered by early civilisations.
As the novel progresses we see that glamorisation of death and cruelty reach boiling point, egged on by emotionally ignorant teenage boys, and a professor who can't see where the academic ends and reality begins. Countering this are the bonds of female friendship, and the ways in which meeting people alien to yourself can offer you a way out, if only you are willing to let go of identities that no longer serve you.
The layers and depths that Moss builds into only 150 pages is staggering. Ghost Wall follows Silvie, an insightful seventeen year old along with her father, a bus driver whose unfulfilled life leaves him boiling over with aggression, and her downtrodden mother who seems to exist purely to appease her father's temper. The three of them join an archaeology professor, and three students, who spend a hot summer acting out Iron Age living in the countryside of Northumbria.
I adored this novel, I read it in a single, gut-wrenching sitting, as the tension wound tighter and tighter with every page. Moss creates three infuriatingly human characters in Silvie and her parents. Each lives in abject misery, and yet all three have consigned themselves to the idea that that's 'just how it is'. Silvie rationalises and justifies her terrible circumstances, her mother meekly collapses into little more than a servant, and her father escapes into an ethnogenesis-fuelled fantasy of ancient times, fetishising the scarcity and hardship suffered by early civilisations.
As the novel progresses we see that glamorisation of death and cruelty reach boiling point, egged on by emotionally ignorant teenage boys, and a professor who can't see where the academic ends and reality begins. Countering this are the bonds of female friendship, and the ways in which meeting people alien to yourself can offer you a way out, if only you are willing to let go of identities that no longer serve you.
My only qualm with Ghost Wall is that Moss does not use speech marks, and so dialogue is not clearly marked out. I realise that this is meant to create a sense of perpetual motion and/or blurring of identities, but for me it jars my ability to read smoothly and I just don't get along with it. I still gave the book five stars because if I can enjoy a book, even written in a format that I hate with the fire of a thousand suns, then I know it's really, really special.
I absolutely recommend Ghost Wall as a short, gripping read that will leave you desperate for just a few more pages.
Let me know if you've read it, and what you thought. Thanks for reading!!
Let me know if you've read it, and what you thought. Thanks for reading!!
This is quite encouraging for upcoming reviewers. I must look for the book and read it. I also review books and articles @ Professorsportal.com
ReplyDeleteActually you encourage cheating and poor academic conduct. Please don't spam my comments again.
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