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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
The reeds stood tall and dead: I had the oddest feeling they wanted me gone. The light was failing. I caught a swampy smell of decay. Behind me something rustled and I saw the reeds part for some unseen creature. I thought: No wonder Maud’s mad. All her life in a place like this?
Rating: 5 stars.
Full review available on my blog here from 13/12/19 here.
I've been trying to read more of Waterstones' book of the month picks, because they've yet to steer me wrong, so I picked up Michelle Paver's Wakenhyrst and it completely suckered me in. I love gothic thrillers, and this had all the eerie earmarks of a true gothic story, mixed with a curious format that had me fascinated from the first page.
This book is eerie as hell. From page one, we know a gruesome murder took place at Wake's End all those years ago, but what nobody knows is why. Maud's father was arrested for it and has been held in an asylum since that day, where he's been painting pictures of demons that have drawn public acclaim. When suspicion is shifted to Maud, she finally allows access to the journals that she has kept hidden and reveals the truth about her father and the horrors of her childhood. The narrative shifts between traditional prose and her father's journal entries and it creates an incredibly interesting and spooky atmosphere. Between Maud and Edmund, the reader gets most of the information we need to start putting the story together but not all of it, and it's in that tiny middle ground that Michelle Paver has created an intoxicating and claustrophobic sense of supernatural presence. As a reader my imagination was running wild and I was creating all kinds of crazy theories to explain what was happening, some of them perfectly logical and some of them entirely ridiculous. All of them dark.
Maud's character was the most compelling part of this book. She's brave and interesting, and utterly trapped in a society that devalues her because she's 'plain' and odd and, of course, because she's a woman. No matter how much proof she has that her father is dangerous, she's dismissed and accused of attacking her father's flawless reputation, and her mission to protect the beautiful wilds of the Fen get her cast as a witch. She knows she can't control her father as he devolves into a madness she can't comprehend, but she also knows she has no choice but to try.
As a piece of historical fiction, the storytelling in this novel is beautiful, if frustrating as hell to read. No wonder Maud was so perpetually frustrated by her limitations. She faces the misogyny every day in her own interactions, and in the loss of her mother after repeated miscarriages and still births left her weak - but Edmund ignored the doctor's advice and chased his own sexual pleasure until it killed her. If it wasn't the misogyny of Maud's situation, it was the class inequalities faced by the characters living in Wakenhyrst, and the othering that occurred every time anyone strayed from the strict socially and religiously acceptable paths. Overall, it created a detailed and rich world as a backdrop to Maud's horror story, and I was utterly enraptured from the first page to the last.
Rating: 5 stars.
Full review available on my blog here from 13/12/19 here.
I've been trying to read more of Waterstones' book of the month picks, because they've yet to steer me wrong, so I picked up Michelle Paver's Wakenhyrst and it completely suckered me in. I love gothic thrillers, and this had all the eerie earmarks of a true gothic story, mixed with a curious format that had me fascinated from the first page.
This book is eerie as hell. From page one, we know a gruesome murder took place at Wake's End all those years ago, but what nobody knows is why. Maud's father was arrested for it and has been held in an asylum since that day, where he's been painting pictures of demons that have drawn public acclaim. When suspicion is shifted to Maud, she finally allows access to the journals that she has kept hidden and reveals the truth about her father and the horrors of her childhood. The narrative shifts between traditional prose and her father's journal entries and it creates an incredibly interesting and spooky atmosphere. Between Maud and Edmund, the reader gets most of the information we need to start putting the story together but not all of it, and it's in that tiny middle ground that Michelle Paver has created an intoxicating and claustrophobic sense of supernatural presence. As a reader my imagination was running wild and I was creating all kinds of crazy theories to explain what was happening, some of them perfectly logical and some of them entirely ridiculous. All of them dark.
Maud's character was the most compelling part of this book. She's brave and interesting, and utterly trapped in a society that devalues her because she's 'plain' and odd and, of course, because she's a woman. No matter how much proof she has that her father is dangerous, she's dismissed and accused of attacking her father's flawless reputation, and her mission to protect the beautiful wilds of the Fen get her cast as a witch. She knows she can't control her father as he devolves into a madness she can't comprehend, but she also knows she has no choice but to try.
As a piece of historical fiction, the storytelling in this novel is beautiful, if frustrating as hell to read. No wonder Maud was so perpetually frustrated by her limitations. She faces the misogyny every day in her own interactions, and in the loss of her mother after repeated miscarriages and still births left her weak - but Edmund ignored the doctor's advice and chased his own sexual pleasure until it killed her. If it wasn't the misogyny of Maud's situation, it was the class inequalities faced by the characters living in Wakenhyrst, and the othering that occurred every time anyone strayed from the strict socially and religiously acceptable paths. Overall, it created a detailed and rich world as a backdrop to Maud's horror story, and I was utterly enraptured from the first page to the last.
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I can’t put my finger on what exactly I loved about it but gosh, did I
This is a wonderfully creepy, compelling & atmospheric tale. A young woman named Maude attempts to understand her distant and difficult but brilliant father amidst love, loss, fear, religion, demons, and the power of nature at the beginning of the 20th century.
I wish I could give this more than 5 stars. I listened to the audio book on Spotify (which is really well done) but now I think I’ll buy a copy of the book to read so I can have the full experience, no distractions.
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
{3.5 stars}
“Like a witches lair in a fairytale, the ancient Manor House crouches in its tangled garden." What an opening line! Too bad that the rest of the book doesn't quite stand up.
“The man who painted the Doom believed in Hell as completely as he believed in his own existence. Such conviction is almost enough to make me believe in Hell myself.”
Yes, because hell's devils and demons are central to this story - though sadly not the fun, juicy kind of devils and demons we see in more contemporary interpretations.
This book starts off juicy - talks of witches and witchcraft in a great manor house in the fens (marshes) of Suffolk, murder inspired by something... infernal. But it doesn't quite come together. In the author's note, Paver admits that she pulled her inspiration not from one or two sources, but four or five - cobbling a story together from many different avenues, leaving things a little... jumbled.
I love everything gothic, everything devilish, and most things feminist. This book should appeal to me - after all, the main character becomes convinced that hell and therefore devils are real (so far, we're on the same page, ;) ) but then he goes on to think they are evil imps possessing people to be anti-Christain or whatever (no real reason given) which is decidedly less interesting to me.
This book flirts with feminism through Maud and her father's fraught relationship - he's a misogynistic arsehole and she hates him but does little to change her fate. The book is very anti-religion too - after all, Maud is a self-proclaimed atheist and all of the baddies in the book are also devout (particularly the father). Normally a book that looks down on religious zealots and sexists would be right up my alley but I think maybe Paver almost went too far - there was no way in hell anyone would ever maybe find the father likeable or redeemable so instead of wanting to hate him, he becomes an almost comical villain.
Maud's father is a sex addict who treats women like dumb objects, he's a religious zealot obsessed with 15th-century mysticism and exorcism, he's a coward and a murderer. He chooses to let his wife suffer (and die) by leaving her in a constant state of pregnancy. He later finds a weird painting outside a church, a medieval Doomsday painting full of little demons that haunts him.
His daughter, plain Maud who is intelligent but under-appreciated and lonely, seeks his approval but once she realises that's not going to happen, basically does not a whole lot besides snooping and fuming, at least until the very end when she finally finds it in herself to actually act (though afterwards she locks herself in Wake's End mannor and doesn't come out again so...yeah, she's not big on action).
I love the concepts but I think the story tying the various elements together don't really work. The witch thing was just awkwardly tacked on at the end - why? The relationship with Clem was so short that it was like, blink and you'll miss it, except oh wait you can't because Maud will obsess annoyingly about it for about 200 pages. The earlier parts of the book - Maud's childhood - feel distant and not totally needed. I feel like her childhood could have been cut out and the relevant bits filled in through flashbacks; instead, starting the book around the time that the father finds the Doom. The father's paintings thing was also tacked on at the end and didn't seem relevant at all - the story would not have changed by omitting them (this was one of Paver's many inspirations so I guess she felt like she had to include it?).
It's also quite a slow read. I'm not sure why, but it just isn't a page-turner, and though the syntax isn't complex, long paragraphs and slow plot make for slow reading.
I will say though that the atmosphere and setting were spot on - I loved the setting in the fens, Maud's love for it and her desire to protect it. I loved the idea of a big old creaking house on the road to nowhere, surrounded by a great marshy wilderness and occupied by devils, fairies and of course lots and lots of eels. Eel pie, anyone? ;)
So overall, Wakenhyrst (the title doesn't mean a whole lot either - I would have called it The Wakenhyrst Doom I think) was a middle-range addition to the modern gothic. If you're a lover of the genre then it's worth reading but if you just want to dip your toes into the gothic every so often, there are other gothic tales out there that will resonate more.
Looking for gothic recs? Here are a few modern gothic tales I enjoyed: The Widow of Pale Harbour, The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde, Once Upon A River, Melmoth (Parry's modern retelling), The Devil and the Dark Water, The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankestein or Coraline or even Ambrose Parry's series. Or go classic gothic with books like Dorian Grey, The Woman in White, Carmilla, the Brontes, Rebecca (or Jamaica Inn or My Cousin Rachel) or Lady Audley's Secret.
“Like a witches lair in a fairytale, the ancient Manor House crouches in its tangled garden." What an opening line! Too bad that the rest of the book doesn't quite stand up.
“The man who painted the Doom believed in Hell as completely as he believed in his own existence. Such conviction is almost enough to make me believe in Hell myself.”
Yes, because hell's devils and demons are central to this story - though sadly not the fun, juicy kind of devils and demons we see in more contemporary interpretations.
This book starts off juicy - talks of witches and witchcraft in a great manor house in the fens (marshes) of Suffolk, murder inspired by something... infernal. But it doesn't quite come together. In the author's note, Paver admits that she pulled her inspiration not from one or two sources, but four or five - cobbling a story together from many different avenues, leaving things a little... jumbled.
I love everything gothic, everything devilish, and most things feminist. This book should appeal to me - after all, the main character becomes convinced that hell and therefore devils are real (so far, we're on the same page, ;) ) but then he goes on to think they are evil imps possessing people to be anti-Christain or whatever (no real reason given) which is decidedly less interesting to me.
This book flirts with feminism through Maud and her father's fraught relationship - he's a misogynistic arsehole and she hates him but does little to change her fate. The book is very anti-religion too - after all, Maud is a self-proclaimed atheist and all of the baddies in the book are also devout (particularly the father). Normally a book that looks down on religious zealots and sexists would be right up my alley but I think maybe Paver almost went too far - there was no way in hell anyone would ever maybe find the father likeable or redeemable so instead of wanting to hate him, he becomes an almost comical villain.
Maud's father is a sex addict who treats women like dumb objects, he's a religious zealot obsessed with 15th-century mysticism and exorcism, he's a coward and a murderer. He chooses to let his wife suffer (and die) by leaving her in a constant state of pregnancy. He later finds a weird painting outside a church, a medieval Doomsday painting full of little demons that haunts him.
His daughter, plain Maud who is intelligent but under-appreciated and lonely, seeks his approval but once she realises that's not going to happen, basically does not a whole lot besides snooping and fuming, at least until the very end when she finally finds it in herself to actually act (though afterwards she locks herself in Wake's End mannor and doesn't come out again so...yeah, she's not big on action).
I love the concepts but I think the story tying the various elements together don't really work. The witch thing was just awkwardly tacked on at the end - why? The relationship with Clem was so short that it was like, blink and you'll miss it, except oh wait you can't because Maud will obsess annoyingly about it for about 200 pages. The earlier parts of the book - Maud's childhood - feel distant and not totally needed. I feel like her childhood could have been cut out and the relevant bits filled in through flashbacks; instead, starting the book around the time that the father finds the Doom. The father's paintings thing was also tacked on at the end and didn't seem relevant at all - the story would not have changed by omitting them (this was one of Paver's many inspirations so I guess she felt like she had to include it?).
It's also quite a slow read. I'm not sure why, but it just isn't a page-turner, and though the syntax isn't complex, long paragraphs and slow plot make for slow reading.
I will say though that the atmosphere and setting were spot on - I loved the setting in the fens, Maud's love for it and her desire to protect it. I loved the idea of a big old creaking house on the road to nowhere, surrounded by a great marshy wilderness and occupied by devils, fairies and of course lots and lots of eels. Eel pie, anyone? ;)
So overall, Wakenhyrst (the title doesn't mean a whole lot either - I would have called it The Wakenhyrst Doom I think) was a middle-range addition to the modern gothic. If you're a lover of the genre then it's worth reading but if you just want to dip your toes into the gothic every so often, there are other gothic tales out there that will resonate more.
Looking for gothic recs? Here are a few modern gothic tales I enjoyed: The Widow of Pale Harbour, The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde, Once Upon A River, Melmoth (Parry's modern retelling), The Devil and the Dark Water, The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankestein or Coraline or even Ambrose Parry's series. Or go classic gothic with books like Dorian Grey, The Woman in White, Carmilla, the Brontes, Rebecca (or Jamaica Inn or My Cousin Rachel) or Lady Audley's Secret.
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes