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A review by corinnekeener
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
5.0
We read Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss for episode 46 of The Bookstore Podcast. You can listen to our review and discussion wherever you get your podcasts.
Well excuse me while I add all of Sarah Moss's back catalog to my TBR.
Sylvie is a teen girl spending a few weeks with a college's practical archaeology course, her mother, and her ancient British history obsessed father pretending to live like it's the Iron Ages. Things start out fairly bucolic; foraging for food, wearing simple dress, and sitting around the fire at night. But soon Sylvie's thoughts, conversations with one of the college students, and the men's ever escalating attempts to make the experience more authentic to Iron Age culture make it clear that her father is abusive.
It's a tiny novel that packs an enormous visceral punch. The scenery is described so vividly you can feel the closeness of the air and the brutal sun on skin. Sylvie's thoughts become more frantic as time goes by, as she realizes she's having a hard time defending her father to Molly, a female college student who is worried about Sylvie's safety. I found it to be an incredibly effective look into the psychology of an abused person. I finished nearly a month ago and I still can't stop thinking about it.
I'm not sure that I buy that the events could have escalated quite the way they did in the amount of time that they did, but even so the narrative was incredibly compelling and I was driven along with the plot for this remarkably compassionate and powerful little book.
Well excuse me while I add all of Sarah Moss's back catalog to my TBR.
Sylvie is a teen girl spending a few weeks with a college's practical archaeology course, her mother, and her ancient British history obsessed father pretending to live like it's the Iron Ages. Things start out fairly bucolic; foraging for food, wearing simple dress, and sitting around the fire at night. But soon Sylvie's thoughts, conversations with one of the college students, and the men's ever escalating attempts to make the experience more authentic to Iron Age culture make it clear that her father is abusive.
It's a tiny novel that packs an enormous visceral punch. The scenery is described so vividly you can feel the closeness of the air and the brutal sun on skin. Sylvie's thoughts become more frantic as time goes by, as she realizes she's having a hard time defending her father to Molly, a female college student who is worried about Sylvie's safety. I found it to be an incredibly effective look into the psychology of an abused person. I finished nearly a month ago and I still can't stop thinking about it.
I'm not sure that I buy that the events could have escalated quite the way they did in the amount of time that they did, but even so the narrative was incredibly compelling and I was driven along with the plot for this remarkably compassionate and powerful little book.