Ghost Wall

by Sarah Moss (2018)

Goodreads

If you have ever been to a swampy area, you know this feeling: where the air is thick and constant hum of insects might be enough to drive you nuts, but there is something in the vibrant shades of green and the still pools of cool water that make these places alluring despite the sweat and stickiness. I have visited such a place in New Orleans, Louisiana, where I took a tour of the swamp and fed marshmallows to alligators and visited of all the city's most haunted buildings. The air was heavy with more than just humidity, there was an eerie history to every façade and foliage in sight. If you recognize this feeling, then you already have a grasp on the experience of reading Ghost Wall, a delightfully short and haunting read by Sarah Moss.

While I know how the saying goes, just look at this cover! Something to know about Cheyenne on a plate? I love green. When I first saw it I was intrigued enough to turn it over and found that the description on the back was just as delectable as the art on the front; this is what a good book cover is for!

Ghost Wall follows Silvie and her parents isolated from society, living in the bogs of northern England as the ancient Britons did: wearing itchy tunics, sleeping in suffocating tents, and foraging for their food all because Silvie's father is fascinated by the Iron Age and believes it is the superior way of life to the mundanity of modernity. Silvie is able to somewhat reconnect with the modern world when a group of anthropology students enrolled in an experimental course come to live with Silvie and her family for a week, learning from Silvie's father and studying the ancient Britons by living the way they did. This is creepy enough already, right? Read just 130 pages of pure eerie goodness and let it haunt you for the rest of your week.

Throughout the novel, Silvie is increasingly fascinated by the bog and the artifacts the group discovers there, including a Victorian girl's boot. She envisions sinking into the quicksand-like mud of the bog and being trapped forever, frozen in history exactly the way her father is forcing her family to live. I had the luxury of learning more about bogs at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, where I was able to see the bog bodies: eerily preserved human remains that had sunk into the bogs and were frozen in time exactly the way they were left. Ever since, I have been fascinated by the biome of the bog and its place in history, storytelling, and the impact the strange and suffocating climate had on all the societies that inhabited it.

The swamps of Louisiana, from my trip in 2017.

It's not often I come across a story that captures the feeling of a such a particular place so well, and that's what makes Ghost Wall very special. If you are intrigued, I recommend you give yourself a day to binge it and let it stew in your mind. And if you are feeling extra brave, check out the Bog Bodies page on the National Museum of Ireland's website; you'll get a taste of what I was able to see in the flesh (Warning: Gross! But very cool).

Happy reading and happy browsing! May Ghost Wall make the air around you feel heavy and your skin feel hot and sticky, and may the bog bodies haunt you as much as they have haunted me.

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★★★★

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss (2018)

-Cheyenne