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A review by kathedron
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
3.0
What a strange and difficult book... and not because of the fake Old English it's written in. (I read a couple of pages out loud when nobody else was around and soon got into the swing of it.)
Billed as a "post-apocalyptic novel set a thousand years ago" I was struck by the grief and rage of a man whose world has ended. Yet Buccmaster is thin-skinned, delusional and self-aggrandising. He is a broken man: he is also a gobshite.
I think I must have expected more post-apocalyptic action because I'm left thinking, "Is that it?" Buccmaster and his few followers spend most of the book skulking about in the woods. They kill the odd Norman here and there as the opportunity presents itself. Buccmaster supplements these actions with frequent communion with the old gods and with temper tantrums whenever someone brings up the name of Hereward the Wake. After he finally takes decisive action, the book stops, rather than concludes, and I'm left confused as to the author's intentions.
If, as seems to be the case judging from the afterword, this is a "take back control" narrative, why put this weight upon the shoulders of such an anti-hero as Buccmaster? It becomes apparent that the Norman conquest lets his personal demons out of the bag, but the demons were already there. He has seen little of the atrocities that supposedly drive him: he comes upon the aftermath of them or hears of them secondhand. Add to this the distancing effect of the language, and its role in deadening the force of Buccmaster's own violent actions and the one thing standing out in relief is *his* grief, *his* rage, *his* accelerating mental disintegration.
What am I to make of this? I'm really not sure.
Billed as a "post-apocalyptic novel set a thousand years ago" I was struck by the grief and rage of a man whose world has ended. Yet Buccmaster is thin-skinned, delusional and self-aggrandising. He is a broken man: he is also a gobshite.
I think I must have expected more post-apocalyptic action because I'm left thinking, "Is that it?" Buccmaster and his few followers spend most of the book skulking about in the woods. They kill the odd Norman here and there as the opportunity presents itself. Buccmaster supplements these actions with frequent communion with the old gods and with temper tantrums whenever someone brings up the name of Hereward the Wake. After he finally takes decisive action, the book stops, rather than concludes, and I'm left confused as to the author's intentions.
If, as seems to be the case judging from the afterword, this is a "take back control" narrative, why put this weight upon the shoulders of such an anti-hero as Buccmaster? It becomes apparent that the Norman conquest lets his personal demons out of the bag, but the demons were already there. He has seen little of the atrocities that supposedly drive him: he comes upon the aftermath of them or hears of them secondhand. Add to this the distancing effect of the language, and its role in deadening the force of Buccmaster's own violent actions and the one thing standing out in relief is *his* grief, *his* rage, *his* accelerating mental disintegration.
What am I to make of this? I'm really not sure.