Trudging through an Iron Age re-enactment

Ghost Wall is advertised as the story of a group of people who spend two weeks re-enacting life in the Iron Age as part of a university course.

I expected a kind of ghost story, or a crossing over between the past and present. Maybe the main character would become in tune with the spirit of an Iron Age girl her same age and see flickers of an ancient time.

I’d also hoped for plenty of interesting tidbits about ancient tools and techniques.

Instead this story was about an abusive man. He is violent and controlling towards his wife and daughter. The story is told from the daughter’s perspective.

Apart from being very different to my expectations, I also found a lot of weak spots throughout the story.*

The set up of the Iron Age re-enactment added little to the book, other than allowing room for a ‘sacrifice’ scene to occur.

All scenes seem to be cobbled weakly towards the end goal: putting the main character into the ‘sacrifice’ scene, where she serves the purpose of being the story’s victim.

Most disappointingly, the author chose not to allow the main character to achieve self growth or a sense of freedom. So, the book lacks a solid narrative arc as well as character arc.

There were a few intriguing points about the character of the father. He misappropriates archaeology to justify his racist and sexist values. This interested me, but was not expanded on enough.

Sacrificing a vulnerable female character is not an original storyline. And letting the character tell the story from her perspective does not make it empowering to women. Sure, the character is rescued afterwards by female friends. But this book does little to add anything new to a discussion of patriarchal ideology, if that was even its intention.

Thankfully this is a very short story, otherwise I would not have finished it.

A sad 1 out of 5.

*What went wrong:

• Character motivations did not make sense (such as the professor allowing abusive behaviour, or the main character deciding to swim naked and fondle herself only metres from the camp).
• Having the main character attracted to the same sex seemed like a half-baked way of making the book more in vogue.
• It was often repetitive (surely there are only so many times the main character can kneel down and sensuously dip her fingers in the water).

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