![]() “A stew would be a whole lot easier than setting up a spit,” Silvie’s mom suggests, “and surely more authentic.” Another camper, in order to avoid eating grub from bare hands, urges the group to collectively imagine their early forebears using a prototype of the wooden spoons they’ve brought along. ![]() But their desire to reproduce history is undercut by the temptation of late-20th-century amenities, and these amateur archaeologists have a habit of disguising their modern shortcuts as plausible historical acts. The group aims to live as prehistoric people did: Shapeless, handwoven tunics will be worn food will be hunted and gathered and precious objects will be sacrificed to the peat bogs that dot the terrain. In British writer Sarah Moss’s sixth and latest novel, Ghost Wall, Silvie and her family (father Bill and mother Alison) join Professor Slade and a handful of his students-the outspoken Molly and the forgettably boyish Pete and Dan-for over a week of “experimental” Iron Age reenactments on the moors of northeastern England. ![]() ![]() Seventeen-year-old Silvie Hampton is haunted by this realization as she anxiously inhales a grocery-store popsicle before returning to the woods. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |