Ghost Wall
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Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
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Narrated by:
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Christine Hewitt
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By:
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Sarah Moss
About this listen
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019
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.
Teenage Silvie is living in a remote Northumberland camp as an exercise in experimental archaeology. Her father is an abusive man, obsessed with recreating the discomfort, brutality and harshness of Iron Age life.
Behind and ahead of Silvie's narrative is the story of a bog girl, a sacrifice, a woman killed by those closest to her, and as the hot summer builds to a terrifying climax, Silvie and the Bog girl are in ever more terrifying proximity.
©2012 Sam Millar (P)2018 BolindaAtmospheric and engaging
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Unputdownable!
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The narrator did a very good job, flipping from one accent/voice to another with ease. I’ll even forgive her pronouncing nuclear as newkyoolar.
Hard to put down
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Sarah Moss writes exquisitely and in this short novella she has created yet another believable world where humanity's fault lines are ruthlessly exposed.
Silvie, the teenage daughter of a self-taught expert on Iron Age survival skills, accompanies her parents on a summer trip to a remote camp in Northumberland where an experimental archaeological project is taking place. We soon discover that Silvie's father is a brutish, bigoted, misogynistic, racist man who bullies his wife and daughter and physically abuses both of them. Both women will say and do anything for a quiet life but they still bear the marks of his violence.
During the camp it becomes evident that Silvie's father is determined to impose the harsh reality of hunter-gatherer Iron Age life on his family and the female students working on the project; he demands subservience from the women whilst the men enjoy an easier existence and are in charge. Silvie, who is named after an Ancient British goddess, is befriended by one of the students, Molly, who soon begins to question the motives and actions of the bullying father.
Tensions rise between Molly and Silvie's father and when Molly discovers that he and the Professor leading the project plan to subject Silvie to a re-enactment of a ritual sacrifice conducted by ancient Bog People, she intervenes to save her friend from the mens' ambitions and delusions.
A thought-provoking exploration of domestic abuse, family life and friendship set against an examination of the lives of ancient Britons.
A wonderful read. Tense, dark and shocking.
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well worth the time
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