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    Ghost Wall: A Novel
    Ghost Wall: A Novel
    Ghost Wall: A Novel
    Audiobook3 hours

    Ghost Wall: A Novel

    Written by Sarah Moss

    Narrated by Christine Hewitt

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    **Winner of a 2020 Listen List: Outstanding Audiobook Narration award**Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award**

    A taut, gripping tale of a young woman and an Iron Age reenactment trip that unearths frightening behavior.

    The light blinds you; there’s a lot you miss by gathering at the fireside.

    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.

    Praise for Ghost Wall:

    "Narrator Christine Hewitt's insightful characterizations bring greater depth to Moss's nuanced and gripping novel... She's especially effective as Sylvie, whose internal dialogue is biting but whose spoken interactions are colored by fear of her father." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

    “I have never read a novel this slender that holds inside it quite so much. Wild, calm, dark yet hopeful, a girl with a smart-mouth narrates her own difficult history as well as that of Britain...This book ratcheted the breath out of me so skillfully that as soon as I’d finished, the only thing I wanted was to read it again.” — Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

    “I stayed up half the night gulping down Sarah Moss’s slim, unnervingly tense novel. Ghost Wall has subtlety, wit, and the force of a rock to the head: an instant classic.” — Emma Donoghue, author of Room

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateJan 8, 2019
    ISBN9781250204806
    Author

    Sarah Moss

    Sarah Moss is the author of several novels and a memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her novels are Summerwater, Cold Earth, Night Waking, Bodies of Light (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), Signs for Lost Children (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), The Tidal Zone (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and Ghost Wall, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019. Sarah was born in Glasgow and grew up in the north of England. After moving between Oxford, Canterbury, Reykjavik and West Cornwall, she now lives in the Midlands and is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick.

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    Reviews for Ghost Wall

    4/5

    208 ratings13 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Brilliantly written and atmospheric enough to make you wish it were longer, dark and bone-chilling enough to be grateful it isn’t.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This book was not at all what I thought it was going to be about. It covered family dynamics, male/female roles, domestic violence, and Iron Age archaeology - really an interesting mix. The character of Sylvie was well drawn and very authentic to a girl of her age and situation. The book gets more and more sinister as it goes on, and I thought that was well done as well. All in all, a very well written and original story. I'd absolutely recommend it. I enjoyed listening to the audiobook and hearing the different English accents as well.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Lyrical descriptions of the Northumbrian countryside against which something like Lord of the Flies (almost) unfolds. I'm new to Sarah Moss's work and this book won't be the last of hers I read. Audiobook recommended for the diverse British accents.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A story of a teenage girl and her mum that are being forced by an abusive "father" and a "husband" to take part of an experiment living like stone age Northumbrians. What a despicable human being. To pharaphrase him "that bastard got what was coming for him".

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Excellent audiobook. But the content itself was just okay. Beautiful writing
    • 4/5
      Engaging story. Good characterization of how a victim struggles between placating and rebelling in an abusive relationship,. The interwoven Iron Age history is compelling.
    • 5/5
      Amazing first chapter that haunts you throughout the book. The build up to the final scene in the bog is excruciating. I loved it!
    • 5/5
      Atmospheric. Excellent pace, slow but building tension. Despicable misogyny and some faithful sisterhood.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written and very atmospheric. I felt transported and happened to learn a lot along the way. Though the story is emotionally harrowing, I'd place this more along the lines of coming of age fiction than straightforward horror. Excellent narration, one of then best audiobooks I've listened to all year
    • 5/5
      Stark, biting portrayal of abuse and power. Striking imagery of the normalization of familial violence.

    • 1/5
      Terrible. This book actually made me angry. It was mercifully short.
    • 4/5
      This was by turns infuriating and depressing. For such a short novel it deals with so many deep, complex topics such as sexism, racism, national identity, gender roles, domestic abuse and sexuality. As a general archaeologist I know only a cursory amount about experiential/ experimental archeology and historical re-enactment as it is not something I am personally involved with. It is generally a legitimate field and does not often degenerate into human sacrifice, as far as I know! Using particular interpretations of the past to support and justify bad behaviour in the present is one of the most heinous and insidious uses of archaeological data, whether by an individual, a group, or a nation and this little tale explores all these levels. This story was most definitely thought provoking and it made me uncomfortable all the way through. The narration was very good. I enjoyed hearing the accents and dialects.
    • 4/5
      Perfectly narrated. Powerful story of misogyny, abuse, trauma, and survival. Loved it.