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Ghost Wall

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3.80 12,297 ratings 1,991 reviews
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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 ... More
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. Less

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Average rating 3.80  ·  12,297 ratings  ·  1,991 reviews

rated it really liked it
over 1 year ago

Shelves: modern-lit , 2019
A dark, horrible, and powerful novella.

Ghost Wall tells the tale of Silvie and her family, who attempt to live like Iron Age Britons in the North of England. Silvie's father is an angry and dissatisfied bus driver whose obsession with Iron Age tools and rituals leads him to
...more

rated it it was amazing
over 1 year ago

‘’Darkness was a long time coming.’’

This book is my first contact with Sarah Moss’s writing and it proved to be so fascinating...The word Ghost in the title, the bogs and Northumberland drew my attention to a novel that I read in a single sitting. It was mystifying, hypn
...more

rated it really liked it
almost 2 years ago

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 driv ...more

rated it it was ok
almost 2 years ago

In a nutshell, I like my feminism a lot more nuanced than this.

A short novel about a family who go into the wilds to recreate as best as possible the conditions of an iron age settlement. There's a lot of (good) descriptive nature writing to pad out this very uneventful tal
...more

rated it liked it
over 1 year ago

The line between past and present blurs in this brief narrative about seventeen-year-old Silvie and her family engaged in an archeological re-enactment of life in the Iron Age. Ghost Wall has been described as slim or spare, as mere bones, the charred remains of a book glitt ...more

rated it liked it
6 months ago

Shelves: 2019
Eerie and atmospheric, Ghost Wall brings to the surface a teenager's repressed resentment toward her patriarchal father. The novella follows seventeen-year-old Silvie as she and her conservative parents attend a campsite in northern England, alongside the students and profes ...more

rated it it was amazing
over 1 year ago

I've read so many fantastic short novels and novellas this year (On Chesil Beach, Convenience Store Woman, Tin Man) that I'm not sure why I insist on underestimating what can be accomplished in such a short page count. But the fact of the matter is, I picked up Ghost Wall wi ...more

rated it really liked it
over 1 year ago

Shelves: uk , 2018-read
Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019
What an atmospheric, haunting, and ultimately political read! Sarah Moss writes about teenage Silvie, whose father is obsessed with ancient British history, because he (incorrectly) envisions it as a time of racial purity, str
...more

rated it liked it
over 1 year ago

Sarah Moss is one of those authors I have wanted to get to for what feels like ages because I had this feeling that I would adore her work. But sometimes that feeling of a potential favourite author makes me too anxious to actually pick up a book (this is irrational, I know) ...more

rated it really liked it
about 2 years ago

Full review here
If there was a contest of writing, that will require telling a story using the least amount of words, this book would win it this year.
A borderline novella, Ghost Wall is a powerful story that could easily be read in one sitting.
I loved the idea behind this n
...more

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Book details

Hardcover, 152 pages
Published September 20th 2018 by Granta Books
ISBN
1783784458 (ISBN13: 9781783784455)
Edition language
English
Original title
Ghost Wall
Literary Awards
The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, Women's Prize for Fiction

About this author

844 followers
Sarah Moss is the award-winning author of six novels: Cold Earth, Night Waking, selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, Bodies of Light, Signs for Lost Children and The Tidal Zone, all shortlisted for the prestigious Wellcome Prize, and her new book Ghost Wall, out in September 2018.

She has also written a memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea, which was shortlisted for
...more

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Quotes

I shivered. Of course, that was the whole point of the re-enactment, that we ourselves became the ghosts, learning to walk the land as they walked it two thousand years ago, to tend our fire as they tended theirs and hope that some of their thoughts, their way of understanding the world, would follow the dance of muscle and bone. To do it properly, I thought, we would almost have to absent ourselves from ourselves, leaving our actions, our re-enactions, to those no longer there. Who are the ghosts again, us or our dead? Maybe they imagined us first, maybe we were conjured out of the deep past by other minds.
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.
Lights blind you; there's a lot you miss by gathering at the fireside.

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