Silvie’s father is an extreme example of someone searching for an ideal form of citizenship which retains a cultural purity without any outside or foreign influences. Since the vote for Brexit there’s been a lot of discussion about what Britain means as a country and a concept. For such a short novel, this book builds up to a thrilling and memorable conclusion. The values that Silvie’s father holds are skewed towards an outdated ideal of masculinity and gender dynamics which Silvie gradually comes to question. It also includes antiquated rituals like building a wall out of skulls and other unsavoury acts which grow increasingly alarming and bizarre. This means wearing nothing but burlap sacks, foraging for what food they can in the forest and living in primitive shelters. Rather than searching for artefacts they seek to recreate the feeling of living in Iron Age Britain as closely as possible. Teenage Silvie is taken on a unique archaeological trip in Northern England by her parents along with a few students and a professor. She uses a similar technique in her new novel “Ghost Wall” but in a much more compressed form that combines a tense story with a strong statement about issues in modern Britain. Like many people, I was hugely impressed by Sarah Moss’ previous novel “The Tidal Zone” for the way its story meaningfully drew the past into the pressing concerns of its characters in the present.
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