![]() She is dragged around Northern England and shown examples of the pestilence of the modern world (this includes everything from run-down buildings to black people) and is constantly told that everything was so much better ‘back then’. From early childhood, Silvie is taught to be the perfect Iron Age maiden: she can live off the land, skin dead animals without flinching and tell which plants are poisonous and which are not. Silvie’s Dad, a bus driver, is obsessed with the Iron Age, and naming his child Sulevia after an ancient British goddess is by far his least horrendous way of showing it. ![]() Silvie (short for Sulevia) is the adolescent daughter of a battered, submissive mother and an abusive father. Reconstruction of an Iron Age roundhouse at Chiltern Open Air Museum. In this work about a group of people participating in an experiential archeology project, Moss uses a strikingly lucid stream of consciousness narrative to demonstrate how the love of ancient history can become a dangerous refuge for people with antiquated ideas about power, survival, and who is deserving of either. ![]() ![]() It’s an idea that has been explored to great effect by William Golding and Donna Tartt, but Sarah Moss’ folk horror novella Ghost Wall offers a perspective on the issue that resonates much more in a world that has seen far-right extremism come back into fashion. Obsessive love of ancient societies can lead to human sacrifice. ![]()
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