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A review by abetterjulie
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
5.0
This book will not be for everyone. As the author explains, it is written in pseudo-Old English, a type of shadow language. It requires some patience at the beginning, but it reads like swimming in wild water. There is a pull and glide with effort rewarded in muscles stretched and smoothed. There is a brief appendix for those words that don't untangle easily, but it was rarely needed.
The unreliable narrator is beautifully done. The story itself is simple, and the reader knows things will not end well, but the mystery comes in the parsed language. There is little punctuation. The description is sparse. The dialogue is clipped. There is just the stroke of one sentence leading to the next and next drawing the swimmer to the far shore. The old gods are brought into a dark light. The French are there to stay. The English ways are gone. It is a solid perspective on life under oppression, and the land and people never fully recovering.
The unreliable narrator is beautifully done. The story itself is simple, and the reader knows things will not end well, but the mystery comes in the parsed language. There is little punctuation. The description is sparse. The dialogue is clipped. There is just the stroke of one sentence leading to the next and next drawing the swimmer to the far shore. The old gods are brought into a dark light. The French are there to stay. The English ways are gone. It is a solid perspective on life under oppression, and the land and people never fully recovering.