This book throws you a curve, at least if you don't first read some of the nicely done reviews already on here. It begins with a scene of human sacrifice in Iron Age Britain, cuts to a group of students on an archaeology course trying (not too hard, mind) to re-enact Iron Age life whilst camping outdoors near the woods in northern England, and is titled "Ghost Wall", so, I was expecting some magical realism, some supernaturalism, in line with reading this book solely on someone's recommendation who said it was "spooky".

No angry two millennium old ghosts who were victimized by human sacrifice here, though. Instead, the twin horrors of contemporary working class nativism and domestic abuse. The students and their professor have teamed up with a local bus driver, Bill, who is a self-taught ancient history buff, and who brings along his teenage daughter. He likes old history because he's wedded his identity to a romanticized vision of an original British people (white, non-Catholic, natch) from whom he descends, walking the same ground they did. There's an awkward scene near the beginning of the book where his romantic view clashes with the professor's academic one:

The Britons had enough training that the Romans had to build the Wall, Dad said, they wouldn't have bothered with that, would they, if the British hadn't put the wind up them. Well, said the Prof, they weren't exactly British, as I said before, they wouldn't have seen themselves that way, as far as we can tell their identities were tribal. Celts, we tend to call them these days, though they wouldn't have recognized the idea, they seem to have come from Brittany and Ireland, from the west. Dad didn't like this interpretation... He wanted his own ancestry, a claim on something, some tribe sprung from English soil like mushrooms in the night. What about Boadicea, Dad said, she routed them an' all, didn't she. Boudicca, said the Prof, we call her Boudicca these days, it seems to be a more accurate rendition. For a while, yes, but she led the Iceni in the south, there's not much evidence that the people round here caused the Romans any major alarm, the Wall was much more of a symbol than a military necessity.

Naturally, the logical reasoning of the educated middle class worldview has little effect on the racialized and idealized worldview held by our white working class character, who would upend his already formed core identity and understanding of his place in the world if he accepted that his views were, factually, wrong. People don't generally care to do such a thing, of course, working class or not; psychological studies show that we rather tend to harden our pre-existing beliefs when presented evidence that they're wrong.

This reads, then, like a criticism of the people who voted for Brexit or Donald Trump, holding onto uneducated, incorrect ideas on race, tribe, and the like. We're a long way from events in the Iron Age. But then the story moves on to focus more on the domestic abuse our bus driver inflicts on his wife and daughter, an issue that as Moss nicely demonstrates lacks a class angle. The professor and one of his male students seem all too comfortable with Bill's obvious misogyny, building up to the end of the story where they literally join him in inflicting physical abuse on his daughter, knives and stones included in a miserable reenactment of the literal human sacrifice the story begins with.

Though not about what I thought it'd be about, it does build some spookiness, as you still know it's leading up to something... not good. It's well-written, fairly interesting, and a quick read, as well, though the ending is a bit undercooked, I'd say. ( )

Haunting. (No pun intended.) ( )

17 year old Sylvie's father is obsessed with ancient British history. With little formal education (he is a bus driver) but through independent reading and research, he has made himself somewhat of an expert in early Iron Age life. When the novel opens he has brought Sylvie and her mother to an encampment with a group of grad students and their professor in experimental anthropology to live two weeks as the Iron Age people lived, as hunter-gatherers.

Sylvie's father is also, we learn, not only obsessive, but also abusive, and soon he is carrying things too far. The grad students notice bruises on Sylvie, and things take an extreme turn when her father and the professor begin planning a human sacrifice ceremony.

This is another book in which the illogicalities and implausibilities disturbed my reading pleasure. How could Sylvie's father convince an established college professor to perform a human sacrifice ceremony, even a "pretend" one, although it is not quite so clear that it wouldn't end up with someone being harmed. It is clearly noted that the professor would not allow the female grad student to be the subject because of possible repercussions, but why would he allow the subject to be a minor child, and allow the full participation of his other grad students? Maybe all men are supposed to be awful? Or was the author trying to present this as a kind of Lord of the Flies situation, a descent into savagery. If so, the theme is woefully undeveloped.

And the novel ended abruptly, with protective services taking Sylvie away. I couldn't help but wonder what was going to happen to her--was she being removed from her family permanently?

This had an interesting concept, and I enjoyed learning about the gathering of various food stuffs and survival techniques. Too bad it wasn't encapsulated in a better story.

2 stars ( )

Wow.
Still gasping at the end of this very powerful book.
Sylvie is the terrified daughter of a brutal man who lives in an Iron Age past, or at least attempts to. She, her dad and mum, and several students join a professor for a reenactment course that quickly devolves into a series of unkindnesses that escalate into actual abuse.
This has a feeling of Lord of the Flies, as the students and the professor get caught up in the tales of the bog people, seek more and more to reenact their lives. The students do escape now and again for real food and beer and other sustaining elements, which leaves Sylvie and her mother at risk for even more attacks by her father.
By the end of the book things are spiralling out of reality, and as the men construct their ghost wall, Sylvie knows the fate that waits for her and is incapable of stopping it.
Breathtaking in the way she creates mood - I can feel the sun on my face even now, the pain in my feet from walking barefoot on rocks, the cool rushing of the creek water- Sarah Moss plants us into an increasingly confined environment and never lets us go until the end.
Extremely powerful, disturbing, and yet believable. So well done. I’d like to read more of Moss’ work but I must confess I am a bit afraid to. This is a high residue book- it will leave tracers in my mind for some time. ( )

Cntent warning for non-sexual child abuse/domestic violence as being the main theme of the book. There's only one scene explicitly depicting it, but it's enough. The way the tenseness and fear infects the rest of the book is very real. The feeling of being constantly on edge, constantly needing to please, knowing it's usually not enough anyway. It's intense and powerful.

The book is the exact right length, staying constantly taut. The ending is maybe a little pat and I can understand it being frustrating but somehow it didn't bother me. ( )