Sarah Moss's new novel "Ghost Wall": review by Richard Thomas

Sarah Moss’s latest book is a miracle of economy and compression.  In its 152 pages she creates a world of emotions that gradually build up into threats, fears, and finally actions, which combine to create a shocking climax, relieved only partially in a morally ambiguous coda.  This all takes place In a few acres of Northumbrian moorland, involves only eight people, and is all over in a couple of hot, summer days.  This suggests more a short story than a novel, but the book’s power belies its brevity.

We are confronted by the conflicting forces of domestic violence and family love, the North-South divide, the posh and the unposh, laddish arrogance and feminine good sense, bullying and submissiveness.  The tale is told by Silvie, the 17 year old daughter of a bus driver with a fanatical and racially chauvinistic obsession with reconstructive archaeology.  Read it, and see whether you agree with the Financial Times’s critic, who detected in it a Brexit parable.  I found it powerful, and disturbingly thought-provoking. RT