Ghost Wall

A Novel

By: Sarah Moss

Narrated by: Christine Hewitt

**Winner of a 2020 Listen List: Outstanding Audiobook Narration award**Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award**

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

The light blinds you; there’s a lot you miss by gathering at the fireside.

In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age.

For two weeks, the length of her father’s vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. They are surrounded by forests of birch and rowan; they make stew from foraged roots and hunted rabbit. The students are fulfilling their coursework; Silvie’s father is fulfilling his lifelong obsession. He has raised her on stories of early man, taken her to witness rare artifacts, recounted time and again their rituals and beliefs—particularly their sacrifices to the bog. Mixing with the students, Silvie begins to see, hear, and imagine another kind of life, one that might include going to university, traveling beyond England, choosing her own clothes and food, speaking her mind.

The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of their own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice?

A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the “primitive minds” of our ancestors.

Praise for Ghost Wall:

"Narrator Christine Hewitt's insightful characterizations bring greater depth to Moss's nuanced and gripping novel... She's especially effective as Sylvie, whose internal dialogue is biting but whose spoken interactions are colored by fear of her father." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

“I have never read a novel this slender that holds inside it quite so much. Wild, calm, dark yet hopeful, a girl with a smart-mouth narrates her own difficult history as well as that of Britain...This book ratcheted the breath out of me so skillfully that as soon as I’d finished, the only thing I wanted was to read it again.” — Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

“I stayed up half the night gulping down Sarah Moss’s slim, unnervingly tense novel. Ghost Wall has subtlety, wit, and the force of a rock to the head: an instant classic.” — Emma Donoghue, author of Room

Critic reviews

"Narrator Christine Hewitt's insightful characterizations bring greater depth to Moss's nuanced and gripping novel." -AudioFile, Earphones Award Winner

Disturbing but worth the read

The story is haunting but well created and definitely worth the listen! Fair warning that the content is not for all.

Strange.....

I tried to read the actual book and just could not get past the extremely strange writing style. So.... I decided to listen. Still very strange but i managed to get through it. I didn't hate the book but i would definitely say it's not a favorite. Funny thing, i purchased the US AND UK editions of the book because i loved the covers so much.

Amazing!!!!

I absolutely adored this story and it’s beautiful writing style that truly brought every scene to disturbing life

weird

i didnt know what to expect from this story, and it was hard to tell where it would end. I didnt know what was going on really, but couldnt stop listening.

Wonderful writing , captivating story

This novel is not very long, but it was so poignant, perfectly narrated, and captivating. The story is one that young women in their early to late teens may find they relate to or that they understand. It underscores how unrecognized feelings of inferiority in an adult can translate into behavior that is mean, chauvanistic, and supercilious. How a teenaged girl deals with her mother's disempowered belief in herself has consequences. This book is not a downer, by the way. Very well written.

Great and quick read!

This story is an affecting parable about Brexit, consent, and masculinity gone awry. It is also a critique of the nostalgia for earlier times and the implications those earlier times carried.

weird

not sure why I couldn't stop listening. The story was anxiety-making throughout. the resution at the end was not fulfilling - I dont wanna give it away but I really wanted more to happen. like BAM. instead it went out like "ping"

Clumsy and cartoony

The father was such an absolute villain from the beginning, there was no point in listening to the end — he began at the end-point of cartoony vileness. Because the first-person narrator is the villain’s daughter, she details what an awful, unreliable person he is, while simultaneously going along with him because she doesn’t understand what she has just told us about him. She reproduces dialogue between other characters verbatim and describes their gestures and details of her surroundings as if transcribing and annotating a videotape. She doesn’t sound like a kid, or even like an adult recalling events from her adolescence, but like an omniscient third-person narrator. The clumsy narrative technique repeatedly jerks the listener out of the story, which is particularly problematic with such a far-fetched premise.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed it

A short but really enjoyable story involving a family spending their vacation living as Britons did 3000 years ago, as they join a college anthropology field trip for 2 weeks. I thought it would be interesting, but it was far better than I thought.

A little confusing at times, but I recommend it.

Audiobooks have a tough audience sometimes because we don't see the way the book is written, and sometimes our eyes are distracted by other things going on in our lives. This was one of those where you need to pay attention. You think you're at one place, and then there is a flashback. Also, the ending felt just a little unfinished, like a sequel would be in order. Having said that, I greatly enjoyed the story and performance.