Description: "Thought provoking on multiple levels, with insights into primitive and modern societies, and coming of age in the face of family violence." -- Library Journal , starred review "The novel''s highlight is Silvie, a perfectly calibrated consciousness that is energetic and lonely and prone to sharp and memorable observations . . . This is a haunting, astonishing novel." -- Publishers Weekly , starred review "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 "I love this book. Ghost Wall requires you to put your life on hold while you finish it. It draws you into its unusual world and, with quiet power and menace, keeps you there until the very last page. Silvie''s story isn''t one you will ever forget." --Maggie O''Farrell, author of I Am, I Am, I Am and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox "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 "A novel as tightly woven as the baskets its heroine plaits, Ghost Wall is a startling and bloody blade of a book. A teenage girl, her parents, and a group of students agree to reenact life in Iron Age England over the course of a holiday, and slide into sacrifice. Elements of The Secret History combine with The Witch, plus bog bodies, patriarchal and class violence--it''s a slender, scathing fable for today, made of the ingredients of the past thousand years." --Maria Dahvana Headley, author of The Mere Wife "Ghost Wall grabs you by the guts and never lets go. Dazzling." --Elizabeth Day, author of The Party "A thorny, thoroughly original novel about human beings'' capacity for violence." -- Kirkus "Tackling issues such as misogyny and class divides, Moss packs a lot into her brief but powerful narrative." -- Booklist "The curious allure of re-enactment is cleverly explored in Moss''s short, potent novel . . . A Brexity tale to send shivers down your spine." --Rebecca Rose, The Financial Times , "Best Books of 2018" "Ghost Wall . . . is further proof that [Moss is] one of our very best contemporary novelists. How she hasn''t been nominated for the Man Booker Prize continues to mystify me - and this year is no exception . . . a gripping narrative . . . It''s an intoxicating concoction; inventive, intelligent, and like no other author''s work." --Lucy Scholes, The Independent , Five-Star Review "Ghost Wall , a slim but meaty book, is like nothing I have read before; its creepy atmosphere has stayed with me all summer . . . Moss combines exquisite nature writing, original characters and a cracking thriller plot to make a wonderful literary curiosity. It deserves to pull her out of the bog of underappreciation and on to the prize podiums." --Alex O''Connell, The Times (UK) "Stunningly good, a tightly written, powerful book about archaeology and Englishness." --Alex Preston, The Observer "Moss truthfully conveys the way teenage girls make friends . . . In just 149 pages Moss does a remarkable job at building an engaging, textured world and Silvie is a likeable heroine. You root for her -- and she might just surprise you." --Susannah Butter, Evening Standard "[Sarah Moss is] this divided country''s most urgent novelist. Her themes: the cycles of history, male absurdity, the forms female subversion may take, in irony, sickness and sacrifice. It helps that she''s absurdly topical, and that she''s funny." --Daniel Swift, The Spectator , "Books of the Year" "Reading Ghost Wall in the context of contemporary Britain only serves to highlight the folly of wishing for the good old days . . . The book can be read as a Brexit fable, where seppuku levels of self-sacrifice are forged with lemming-like gusto . . . There is a spring-taut tension embedded in the pages . . . Moss''s brevity is admirable, her language pristine. This story lingers, leaving its own ghosts, but with important lessons for the future of idealising the past." --Sinead Gleeson, The Irish Times "Moss slowly ratchets up the tension, much as the Iron Age people they are studying used to slowly twist a length of rope around the necks of the human sacrifices they made, up on the nearby moors." -- Roger Cox, The Scotsman "[Combines] the components of a thriller with a nuanced understanding of history, its fluctuating interpretations and its often traumatic effect on the present . . . Moss''s sensual writing recalls the late Helen Dunmore . . . A bold, spare study of internecine conflict." -- Catherine Taylor, New Statesman "Characteristically intelligent . . . both subtle and devastating . . . Moss is the author of five acclaimed novels but in this short volume has, I believe, produced her best fiction to date." -- Totally Dublin "The ''ghost wall'' of the title becomes a powerful metaphor for the invisible boundaries that exist between different groups of people, not just in the past but also at the present time. Sarah Moss combines her research interests in food, place and material culture to good effect." --Lucy Whetman, Press Association/The Telegraph "Moss''s finely balanced novel combines a strong sense of the natural world with a growing atmosphere of menace, interspersed with wry humour." --Anthony Gardner, The Mail on Sunday "Certain to give you the chills and the creeps . . . Ghost Wall addresses issues of gender and class, British identity and borders, in 160 pages." - Sana Goyal, LiveMint "Sarah Moss is fascinated by bodies and isolation, and by bodies in isolation . . . Here, [she] is again drawn to an adolescent female body . . . Moss appears to collapse layers of history, to render skin and knife and rope identical across millennia. What provokes and perpetuates that capacity for harm, and what powers a mystical belief in its propitiatory value, remains eerily unclear, but no less urgent a concern for us than for our ghostly forebears." --Alex Clark, The Observer "What I admire . . . is Moss''s ability to find an emotional connection with characters in the far distant past . . . Eerie and gripping." --Editor''s Choice, The Bookseller

Please Wait