Browsing can lead to unexpected finds. Such is the magic of bookstores. Most of the books I read are recommended to me either through online sources or from people who have an inkling of my tastes. Often such books are on the long side. While I don’t object to really getting into a book, like most people I wonder where the time goes and a short read gives you a sense of accomplishment. So it was that I was browsing a local bookstore for something brief. I came across Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss. The back cover bore no BISAC info telling the genre, but in this case the blurbs convinced me that I’d find this a rewarding read. It’s not horror, but it has a sense of doom about it. There may be some spoilers below but I won’t give away the ending.
Told from the point of view of Silvie, a teenage minor, it recounts a college anthropology experiment on the moors of northern England. Silvie isn’t one of the students, but rather a high-school-aged daughter of a bus driver enamored of Iron Age Britain. A professor has three students set to live part of the summer like Iron Agers, and Silvie’s father has brought her and her mother along to do “the women’s work.” Yes, he’s a chauvinist and he has violent tendencies. He clearly wishes he’d lived in “simpler” times. I suspect what makes a novel like this work is that many of us know people like the father. Hard, angry men. As the story unfolds we witness his abuses and the clueless professor simply continues play-acting Iron Age. Until they get the idea of sacrificing a victim like the bog people of northern Europe.
The style is spare, like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. As one of the blurbs says, there are echoes of Lord of the Flies as well. What do groups of men get up to when unleashed from civilization? It took me some time to figure out, since this is entirely first-person narrative, that there are only three students—one woman and two men. With the chaperones it’s two men and a woman. This uneven power structure raises its own questions. Meanwhile Silvie is coming of age, beginning to realize her own sexual awakening. Her best role model is the co-ed among the group since her working-class mother lives in fear of her husband. The story is compelling and a bit scary. It’s also a rewarding read that won’t take a month or more to finish.