Ghost Wall

October 15, 2018
A teenager and her working-class family join a group of experimental archaeologists and must face the sinister connections between their own circumstances and the brutal lives of the Iron Age inhabitants of Britain.Seventeen-year-old Silvie's father has an unusual hobby. A bus driver by trade, her dad is an amateur expert in pre-Roman British history. He's taught Silvie how the ancient people would have lived--which roots can be eaten, which moors can be usefully foraged--and how they would have died, found preserved in bogs with ropes around their necks, hands, and feet. But his interest isn't especially benign. A violent, racist man, he reveres Iron Age Britain as a symbol of purity, believing it represents a culture before it was sullied by invaders from other lands. A local professor has invited Silvie's family to tag along on a summer archaeology course that will attempt to replicate the daily lives of the Iron Age Northumbrians. As the college students in the course get to know Silvie and get a closer look at her family dynamics--her tempestuous father, her cowed mom--Silvie is forced to both question her secret life and protect it from outsiders before the re-enactment goes too far. Moss' (Signs for Lost Children, 2017, etc.) unusual premise allows her to explore issues of class, sexuality, capitalism, and xenophobia in fewer than 150 pages. Her decision to use unformatted dialogue, without punctuation or paragraph breaks, can be frustrating and works against the plot's natural suspense, but it also shows Silvie's panic, confusion, and longing as strangers get too close. One can't help but wonder if there is a post-Brexit cautionary tale flowing not too far below the surface here.A thorny, thoroughly original novel about human beings' capacity for violence.

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November 1, 2018
Moss' slender novel follows a working-class family of three from Northern England as they take a proverbial trip back in time, joining an archaeology professor and three of his students on a journey to the wilds of the country to live in the fashion of Iron Age Britons. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie and her mother, Alison, are just along for the ride; it's Sylvie's father, Bill, who is truly passionate about the excursion and England's ancient history. Bill is a churlish man who controls his wife and daughter with brutal beatings. But Sylvie is quietly starting to question him, drawn to Professor Slade's trio of students, who are only a little older than she is. Beautiful Molly, with her golden hair and carefree nature, is particularly enthralling to oppressed Sylvie. The story builds to a primitive ritual teasingly foreshadowed in the opening pages that lays bare Sylvie's vulnerability and oppression at the hands of her father. Tackling issues such as misogyny and class divides, Moss (Signs for Lost Children, 2017) packs a lot into her brief but powerful narrative.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 1, 2018

In this latest from the acclaimed Moss (e.g., Night Waking), teenage Silvie from northern England is stuck in a family camping vacation from hell. Her domineering, amateur-historian father has brought her and her mother on a historical reenactment of Iron Age hunter-gatherers near the Scottish border in connection with a university archaeology class field trip. Aside from enduring his physical abuse, Silvie and her mother are burdened with foraging, cooking, and keeping the fire; domestic violence and gender roles are as old as time, after all. While the university professor and Silvie's dad ponder the mysteries of primitive female sacrifice among the ancient bog people, Silvie has firsthand knowledge of torture and scapegoating. As with much Brexit-era British fiction, the novel touches on issues of class and immigration. The posh professor and students are juxtaposed with Silvie's working-class family, and while Silvie's father seeks a historical justification for a pure Britain, an inconvenient fact is that the ancient world had its migrations, too. VERDICT This novella-length story is thought provoking on multiple levels, with insights into primitive and modern societies, and coming of age in the face of family violence. [See Prepub Alert, 7/16/18.]--Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA

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