A haunting tale from the heart of Northumberland
Having read several of her previous novels, we hoped that this latest offering would be the pinnacle of Sarah Moss's work so far. In "Night Waking' the author succeeded in bringing the wild beauty of a remote Scottish Island to life, would she be able to evoke the essence of Northumberland in her latest novel?
The novel opens with the sacrificial murder of a young girl, bound and naked, dragged out to a bog to face a long and lingering death. An echo from the ancient past, her pain buried in the peat of the moors for over two thousand years. Interest piqued, the main story takes place in modern day, All the ingredients were there for a hauntingly good history lesson on the Iron Age. The main character is Sylvie a young girl from a patriarchal northern family whose spare time is spent taking part in historical re -enactments. The family have been asked to help with a university field study, chiefly because Sylvie's overbearing father is renowned for his survival skills. They travel to the far North, yes it does sound like 'A Game of Thrones ' to The Wall, where they live as Iron Age people in a reconstructed round house. It was at this point that flaws in the plot began to emerge, why didn't the students and professor live in the round house with the family? If they truly wanted to experience life in those times surely they should all have lived together under one thatched roof rather than each enjoying the luxury of their own private, neon tent. A clear theme in the book is misogyny, the author compares the treatment of women and girls in the Iron Age to that of women today, Sylvie's father is a violent wife beater who turns his rage on his daughter as she develops into a young, independent woman. A worthy topic to tackle but a bit lazy to make the perpetrator an uneducated thug, domestic violence knows no social class and a slightly less monochrome abuser would have added depth to the narrative. Again there were plot holes, horrendous beatings in plain sight, a conspiracy of silence amongst a group of people renowned for their stance on equality and non violence. This just didn't ring true, a university professor would not suddenly abandon his moral code on a short summer holiday. Clearly the reader was supposed to believe that isolation and the mystic draw of the landscape turned reasonable well balanced people into monsters but the narrative failed to build to this crescendo. The characters were not well developed, the reader was not led to see the flaws in each that would lead them to perpetrate such a crime against Sylvie. We needed to feel the gradual decent into madness brought on by the attempt to live as Iron Age people, isolation and the rationing of food would have gone along way to explain this but the students had so many trips to 'Spar' that it was hard to imagine any kind of mind bending taking place.
Night Waking evoked the raw beauty of a Scottish Isle, the landscape almost became a character in the narrative. Northumberland is without doubt one of the most beautiful and diverse landscapes in the world, vast expanses of moorland, deep, dark forests, acres of sand dunes and secluded seaside bays. Perhaps it was the speed at which the author wrote this novel that robbed it of it's alure, the true essence of Northumberland sacrificed to Moss's haste to push out her latest work. The group were left wondering which part of Northumberland the story was set in.
The plot was interesting the setting should have been unequalled and the characters had the potential to make you feel pity and revulsion in equal measure. The reader was left feeling that they would like to know more about everyday life in an Iron Age round house. A very interesting example of one can be visited at .....
The Scottish Crannog Centre info@crannog.co.uk
The Hadrian at Wall provided the backdrop for our discussions of the book. Having been told the place was on the up and in line for an award we had high hopes. Unfortunately they were not to be realised as the food was over cooked and the coffee was cold. The waitress fulfilled our requests with a grudging hostility a mutual lack of respect flourished between served and server.
Our next book takes us to the opposite end of the country for an epic walk.
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
