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A review by dansumption
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
5.0
This is an extraordinary novel, one which will live in my bones for a very long time.
The Old English-style language in which it is written is, of course, the first thing you notice. Initially you suspect that this "shadow tongue" may be a piece of trompe-l'œil, clever, eye-catching, but obscuring a lack of real depth to the story. Gradually though, as events spiral out from the fenland home of its protagonist buccmaster of holland, the tale gets its claws into you, the characters become terrifyingly real, and the suspense builds towards an inevitable tragic ending of an England ruled by the French.
The language makes reading the book relatively hard work - more difficult than books like Riddley Walker or Vernon God Little simply because some of the words are not "soundalikes", so you will need to refer frequently to the glossary to decipher terms like fugol (bird), cenep (moustache), whit (animal) and wyrd (herb). But gradually these terms too become familiar, and you find yourself increasingly inhabiting both the landscape and the mindscape of the "angland" of 1000 years ago.
The Old English-style language in which it is written is, of course, the first thing you notice. Initially you suspect that this "shadow tongue" may be a piece of trompe-l'œil, clever, eye-catching, but obscuring a lack of real depth to the story. Gradually though, as events spiral out from the fenland home of its protagonist buccmaster of holland, the tale gets its claws into you, the characters become terrifyingly real, and the suspense builds towards an inevitable tragic ending of an England ruled by the French.
The language makes reading the book relatively hard work - more difficult than books like Riddley Walker or Vernon God Little simply because some of the words are not "soundalikes", so you will need to refer frequently to the glossary to decipher terms like fugol (bird), cenep (moustache), whit (animal) and wyrd (herb). But gradually these terms too become familiar, and you find yourself increasingly inhabiting both the landscape and the mindscape of the "angland" of 1000 years ago.