MAN BOOKER SHORT LIST 2018

GHOST WALL by Sarah Moss

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publishing date January 19, 2019
British Literature

Description

A taut, gripping tale of a young woman and an Iron Age reenactment trip that unearths frightening behavior

Ghost Wall takes place in the moody Northumberland countryside and follows 17 year old Silvie who, along with her mother and her abusive father, finds herself joining a professor and three of his students on an archaeological experiment to live how people lived in Iron Age Britain.

Her father is mentally and physically abusive, and is obsessed with the brutality of the Iron Age. He thinks of that period history as a period before immigration – when everything was only British – despite the fact that the country was divided into various pre-Roman clans and cultures during this time, so ‘the good old days’ of Britain without immigration is a place that simply never existed at all. Naturally, he doesn’t quite see it this way.

He’s particularly fascinated by the idea of human sacrifice, something he’s taught Silvie about, and Silvie herself finds herself relating more and more to these ‘bog girls’ who were sacrificed by the people who were supposed to love them. There’s a heartbreaking moment in which Silvie justifies her father’s love for her through these sacrifices, because people only sacrifice, and therefore hurt, the things that they love.

My View 

Ghost Wall is my first experience reading author Sarah Moss and certainly not the last. The first few pages began a bit slow, describing Northumberland, Britain, where a professor and his three students, Molly, Pete and Dan set up an academic research study camp on the Iron Age. Near the students camping ground, a family on a two week vacation join in. The father, a brutal man, his wife, a woman long ago given into her husbands moods and Silvie seventeen year old overshadowed by her father.

The author's narration is  thight, every character is developed in depth, a real pleasure to read and become entwined within the tale.

It was hard to put the book down to the very end...and what an end...

A must read, you will not be disappointed.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Thank you to NetGalley

2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS LONG LIST Fiction

Fiction Longlist

• Jamel Brinkley, A Lucky Man(Graywolf Press)
• Jennifer Clement, Gun Love(Hogarth / Penguin Random House)
• Lauren Groff, Florida(Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)
• Daniel Gumbiner, The Boatbuilder(McSweeney’s)
• Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking(Soho Press)
• Tayari Jones, An American Marriage(Algonquin Books / Workman Publishing)
• Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers(Viking Books / Penguin Random House)
• Sigrid Nunez, The Friend(Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)
• Tommy Orange, There There(Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House)
• Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Heads of the Colored People(Atria Books / 37 INK / Simon & Schuster)

2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS LONG LIST Translated Fiction

Translated Fiction

• Négar Djavadi, Disoriental
  Translated by Tina Kover
  (Europa Editions)
• Roque Larraquy, Comemadre
  Translated by Heather Cleary
  (Coffee House Press)
• Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq
  Translated by Max Weiss and Dunya Mikhail
  (New Directions Publishing)
• Perumal Murugan, One Part Woman
  Translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
  (Black Cat / Grove Atlantic)
• Hanne Ørstavik, Love
  Translated by Martin Aitken
  (Archipelago Books)
• Gunnhild Øyehaug, Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life
  Translated by Kari Dickson
  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers)
• Domenico Starnone, Trick
  Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri
  (Europa Editions)
• Yoko Tawada, The Emissary
  Translated by Margaret Mitsutani
  (New Directions Publishing)
• Olga Toka
• Flights
• Translated by Jennifer Croft
  (Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)
• Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial Worlds
  Translated by Anya Migdal
• (Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House)