“It seems there are just some things you can’t do seriously with liberated women.”

21. Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss

Silvie’s dad has a serious interest in British history and forces their family to take part in an Iron Age reenactment along with a handful of students and the professor overseeing the whole thing in a remote area. They have a hut. Silvie’s dad is also a pretty hardcore misogynist and doesn’t seem to think the lady students should be doing anything but what he’s forcing his wife and daughter to do, i.e. cook, clean, the usual tasks that take up so much time no one has any to make period appropriate art objects, unlike reality. His shadow and ideas about how brutal everything should be hang over the whole thing, especially via the narration of Silvie’s thoughts. Her comparisons of what the students do and how they’re kind of obtuse and what’s she’s living through outside the reenactment are compelling and sad. They also might be familiar to anyone who has tried to get someone to listen to accurate information only to hear it being re-summarized incorrectly to someone else in front of them later. There’s also a sinister undertone, Silvie’s dad’s the obvious sinister force right there and he seems to find a common thread with the professor that only pushes towards trying to amplify the brutal parts of history. They could have been making period appropriate art objects instead, it’s not like art making isn’t brutal sometimes.

Peregrine, seen here on a pumpkin wall, was the longest leader of my very hierarchical pig herds. She liked it matriarchal.