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The Wake
The Wake
The Wake
Audiobook8 hours

The Wake

Written by Paul Kingsnorth

Narrated by Simon Vance

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

In the aftermath of the Norman Invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror was uncompromising and brutal. English society was broken apart, its systems turned on their head. What is little known is that a fractured network of guerrilla fighters took up arms against the French occupiers.
In The Wake, a postapocalyptic novel set a thousand years in the past, Paul Kingsnorth brings this dire scenario back to us through the eyes of the unforgettable Buccmaster, a proud landowner bearing witness to the end of his world. Accompanied by a band of like-minded men, Buccmaster is determined to seek revenge on the invaders. But as the men travel across the scorched English landscape, Buccmaster becomes increasingly unhinged by the immensity of his loss, and their path forward becomes increasingly unclear.
Written in what the author describes as "a shadow tongue"-a version of Old English updated so as to be understandable to a modern audience-The Wake renders the inner life of an Anglo-Saxon man with an accuracy and immediacy rare in historical fiction.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 9, 2016
ISBN9781515971429
The Wake
Author

Paul Kingsnorth

Paul Kingsnorth is an acclaimed author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. His books include One No, Many Yeses, Real England, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Beast and The Wake, which won the Gordon Burn Prize and was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

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Reviews for The Wake

Rating: 3.712230342446043 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Could not make it through the first chapter.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was both solid and interesting! (And disappointing!)Solid, because this worked very well as a work of historical fiction. [The Wake] deals with the run-up to and the fallout of the Norman conquest of England in 1066, as experienced by a conquered people attempting guerilla war. It is also a portrait of the narcissist that is its main character, Buccmaster of Holland. At the beginning of the story he is a prideful freeholder, one of the few in his village deep in the marshy fens, where most farmers are unfree thralls. His psyche is obsessed with his own superiority over those on lower social rungs, those who work for him, and the other members of his household, where he will not tolerate even imagined slights against his god-given patriarchy. He hateful of any kind of attempted control over him (real or imaginary), and driven by a constant need for validation and admiration. When the Normans come and conquer England, Buccmaster loses his lands and, worse, his status. He becomes an outlaw instead, nurturing delusions of infamy and obsessed with maintaining control over his little band of merry men, usually through bullying, manipulation and self-serving biases. His only measure for people’s worth is how high he ranks in their estimation. Where this gets interesting is the language this book is written in. In order to set his novel in an Anglo-Saxon world that was lost with the Norman conquest, Kingsnorth has produced what he calls a “shadow tongue” of Old English: present-day English re-spelled and purged of French-derived vocabulary in order to make it feel like Anglo-Saxon. It is easier to illustrate than to explain: i stands on a long seolfor strand it is night all is deorcness but the mona thynne lic a sithe blaed the sea is cuman in and risan and fallan on the strand lic the beatan of a heorte (p. 76). It may take a few pages to get used to, but this “shadow tongue” is mostly just unusually-spelled regular English, and adjusting to it shouldn’t be hard. (Though see the tangent below.)So. If you feel like you can deal with a violent narcissist as a main character, written in English dressed up as its eleventh-century forebear, I think the book is definitely worth your effort.

    ***

    Ok, super nerdy tangent here, probably irrelevant to most of you reading this. You see, I have two MAs in historical linguistics, I am working towards a PhD in this field, I have studied older versions of several Germanic languages and I may or may not have published papers on these subjects. In other words, I think I have a few more things to say about the language in this book. They are not things that are likely to matter to many others, but they do to me. Frankly, I was actually pretty disappointed with Kingsnorth’s “shadow tongue”. I do realise that a) I am in a very atypical position here, b) this is, realistically speaking, the best fake Old English I am going to get in a traditionally published work of fiction, and c) this book was written pretty much to cater to my interests. But still. I have to admit that what Anglo-Saxon flavour there was in this re-spelled Present-day English, it wasn’t nearly enough! And it fell short of its goals in some pretty obvious ways, too. My biggest complaint is that I would have liked to see a greater variety of word endings. Nominal morphology is bare-bones, adjectival morphology is non-existent. But it is verbal morphology that is particularly poor: Kingsnorth uses one single ending for the simple present paradigm (I is, thu is, he/she is, we is, thu is, they is); one for the simple past; and one for all non-finite forms. This is so completely unlike Old English that it was a major disappointment. Especially for I is, wtf was he thinking there? Also, the auxiliaries used for tense, aspect and mood were straight-up modern English -- annoyingly so. Also also, I don’t think I can forgive Kingsnorth for doing away with case distinctions in the 2nd person pronouns in exactly those places where Present-day English has none. Secondly, Kingsnorth’s attempt to simultaneously shun words with French origins and to (mostly) avoid Anglo-Saxon words that require a glossary has a predictable result: the language ended up way too simplistic. While the limited, oft-repeated vocabulary kinda helped in illustrating Buccmaster’s thoughts going round and round in the same rut, it also made Kingsnorth’s fake Anglo-Saxon feel too impoverished to be a proper language. And I think that may have been the opposite of what he was going for. And finally, and this is more of an anachronism than anything else, Kingsnorth uses the word fuck(ing) quite a bit (spelled as fucc or fuccan). And while Present-day English may use a sexual taboo word as an all-purpose swear word, none of the reasons why that is the case are really valid in the era in which this novel is set. (Much of this goes for other four-letter words, too.) Similarly, Buccmaster (and others) are often very sarcastic in how they express themselves -- again, that feels more like 21st-century speech patterns rather than eleventh-century ones. In his afterword, Kingsnorth professes impatience with historical fiction written in Present-day English for imposing contemporary speaking patterns on historical eras. In some superficial ways he may have succeeded in avoiding this, because the language used in this book does look and sound a little like Anglo-Saxon. But in others the grammar and the speaking patterns of modern English are so unnecessary and so dominant. And in yet other ways (the limited vocab, having characters say I is, argh!), he makes his characters sound like simple-minded “Dark Age” folk, a caricature that’s the bane of medievalists’ existence. So yeah: speaking as a professional historical linguist: Kingsnorth's "shadow tongue" was frustrating: it had the right ideas, but ended up under-delivering. I am disappointed :(
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    'English history... seems the work of a temperate community, seldom shaken by convulsions. But there are moments when history is unsubtle; when change arrives in a violent rush, decisive, bloody, traumatic; as a truck-load of trouble, wiping out everything that gives a culture its bearings - custom, language, law, loyalty. 1066 was one of those moments.'― Simon Schama, A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3500 BC-AD 1603 (2000)Imagine the world described above as seen through the eyes of an angry, prideful, domineering, foul-mouthed, violent, desperate, delusional, and (though he would never admit it) conquered Anglisc man. Then imagine him telling you the story of his world falling apart in a language you only half recognize but which seems eerily familiar. Innovative, earthy, and shocking, The Wake will surely challenge you like it did me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the story of the Norman Conquest of England, told by one landowner called Buccmaster of Holland. He tells of seeing signs and portents, of being reluctant to send his sons to battle because he needs them at home, of despairing as his possessions (including his wife) are taken from him by the French, and of his determination to seek revenge and reclaim England for the English. Buccmaster is certain he has been chosen for this task. At first, he just seems full of himself, but as the book progresses, you slowly realize that he is an extremely unreliable narrator.The book is written in a sort of fake Old English, which takes some getting used to, but the prose is very repetitive so that makes it easier to get used to it. At first I thought the repetition was just a crutch for the reader, but by the end of the book I realized it was a reflection of the narrator's sanity. I listened to the audiobook, and, as always, Simon Vance is an excellent narrator. The language was probably easier to get used to in audio than print, because I only had to adjust to vocabulary, not spelling.The book is a slow burn. It is very ominous at the beginning, and then becomes almost comedic in the middle, as Buccmaster hides in the woods with his tiny band of followers and his delusions of grandeur. But there are surprising revelations at the end that completely change the tone of the entire book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Protagonist Buccmaster is a farmer living with wife and two children in 1066, when Guillame, Duke of Normandy (William the Conqueror) crosses the sea to defeat King Harold II and his Anglo-Saxon forces at the Battle of Hastings. The Norman invasion vastly changes the old ways of life. Buccmaster’s world is crumbling around him, and he feels impelled do something about it. He becomes the leader of a band of resistors (“green men”) seeking to drive out the invaders. He is fearful and angry. He is also suffering from delusions and grows increasingly unstable.The elephant in the room is the manner in which it is written. The author employs what he calls a “shadow tongue.” It is more comprehensible to a modern reader than Old English but still requires a quite a bit of work to decipher. For example:“aefry ember of hope gan lic the embers of a fyr brocen in the daegs beginnan brocen by men other than us. hope falls harder when the end is cwic hope falls harder when in the daegs before the storm the stillness of the age was writen in the songs of men so it is when a world ends who is thu i can not cnaw but i will tell thu this thing be waery of the storm be most waery when there is no storm in sight.”I would have enjoyed reading this book more if the invented language had been toned down a bit. This is obviously an artistic choice by the author, but I think it will be off-putting to many readers. The advantage is that it definitely puts the reader into a different time and place, but I have read other novels that simulate an older language more successfully. I switched from e-book to audio and found listening a much more positive experience so if you are an audio fan, it is definitely the way to go. This is a character-driven story, and the main character is extremely unpleasant. Buccmaster is boastful, vulgar, violent, self-centered and, I presume, mentally ill. I do not mind a flawed protagonist, but there is not much positive in his personality (or in the entire story). I assume Buccmaster is supposed to be an anti-hero. The other characters serve as foils for Buccmaster – no one else is developed to any extent. It gets points for creativity, and I was curious to find out how it ends. I am glad to have read it but also glad to be finished.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth After the English were defeated at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 the occupying Normans raped and pillaged on an unprecedented scale and subjugated the English with a brutal yoke. This is a book about a small group of men led by one man, Buccmaster of Holland, who narrates this tale of woe.

    This is a challenging book in more ways than one. It is written in a pseudo form of Old English which at first seems daunting but soon becomes easy to read. The descriptions of the harm inflicted by the French are both gory and graphic. The tale is told by one man who is less than likeable.

    The book opens with this quote:

    "I have persecuted the natives of England beyond all reason. Whether gentle or simple I have cruelly oppressed them. Many I unjustly disinherited; innumerable multitudes perished through me by famine or the sword.Having gained the throne of that kingdom by so many crimes, I dare not leave it to anyone but God."
    Deathbed confession of Guillaume le Bâtard, 1087


    here is an example of the pseudo Old English followed by a translationsum frenc preost named odo or sum thing he is brothor of the bastard he is eorl of cent now by the bastards will. it is saed he is a man of blud macan his brothor loc lic the crist and what his brothor toc now he tacs again. there is frenc all ofer now cwellan who they will tacan what they can beornan if they will fuccan all our wifmen and efen the bastard wolde not let his new cyngdom be beorned in succ a way as this

    some french priest named odo or something he is the brother of the bastard he is earl of cent now by the bastards will. it is said that he is a man of blood making his brother look like the christ and what his brother took now he takes again. there is french all over now killing who they will taking what they want burning if they will fucking all our women and even the bastard would not let his new kingdom be burnt in such a way as this

    There is nothing forgetable about this book, written in a factual historical context, the larger events mentioned really happened as told. A time when English ways that has existed for centuries were swept away completely in just a few years. If the idea that 95% of the wealth is owned by 5% of the population seems familiar then this is where it all began. Prior to the Norman invasion tracts of land was owned by individuals, families and villages across the whole nation. After the invasion the land was confiscated and fell into very few hands who have held on to it to this very day. None of the new rulers spoke English, their dislike and disregard for the English people was shown clearly in their brutal methods of subjugation. Once free men and women were enslaved with no hope of mercy, freedom or justice. Unlike the shaggy English the invaders had shaved heads and their smooth shiny skin made them look like frogs. It would be 300 years until an English speaking king sat once again on the throne of England.


    One of the subtexts of this story is the supplanting of the old religion by Christianity. The main character is steeped in the ways of the old religion whereas most people around him are Christians. The priests spoke loud and long on how the old religion was devil worship and would take you to hell. One of the interesting reflections on this is that the old reliogion was based in Nature and the land itself, along with trees, birds animals and plants, were imbued with the essence of the gods themselves, every living thing, the march of the seasons, all of it was the gods manifestation. By contrast he sees that the new religion is based on man and not nature and therefore leads people away from Nature making a separation that allows them to defile the earth.


    A sad and harrowing tale told directly through one flawed man who, like his compatriots had lost everything, his whole world, in one day. A world that had existed since time immemoriable and was now suddenly gone. This is the story of their doomed and pathetic attempts to turn that tide and restore glory to England.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I did get into the rhythm of the odd "shadow language" Kingsnorth employed for this novel, and after a while found it perfectly readable, in it way ... but the story never really came together very well for me, and I was ready for it to be over. An interesting conceit for a novel, but I'm not really sure he pulled it off.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The best novel, and best book, that I read in 2017.Imagine if Robin Hood was real, but was a member of the 1066 version of British National Party, and instead of stealing from the rich, he just murdered a couple of French soldiers and spent most of his time trying to survive winter in the Lincolnshire Wolds.Then imagine if this story was written in a daring approximation of Old English, excluding all modern and French-derived words, and was the first crowdfunded book to be longlisted for the Booker Prize.I loved everything about this book, and the news that Mark Rylance has bought the rights for a potential film felt like the literary equivalent of finding £20 in an old pair of trousers.Want to understand angry, disenfranchised, British men? Then read this, especially if those particular men happen to have been born before the Edward the Second.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this book almost as a companion book to the History of English podcast that I follow. The book was mentioned there, so I had to attempt to read it. At first, the language was a little hard to handle, but the more I read, the more natural the language became for me. The book is in English but uses only letters found in the Old English alphabet and using only words that have their origin in Old English, for the most part. Many of the spellings of words that were mentioned in the podcast are found in this book. An example would be "cyng", which we know as "king". The pronunciation is different, but the etymology is effident. The story itself is also quite good. It's interested to read of the Norman invasion from the point of view of an Anglo Saxon, Buccmaster, the main character is an engaging fellow whom I immediately came to like. There is some humor within the story, but mostly there are the hardships that the Anglo Saxons faced as their way of life was changed by the invaders.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    While it takes focus (and nerdery) to get into the Anglo-Saxon/modern English pidgin language the book is written in, the reward is worth it. Often perceived as the birth of modern England, we see the flip side of the Norman invasion through the eyes of a flawed narrator. While this could have easily been a Braveheart-like revenge story, it introduces enough complexities to keep the reader interested and sympathizing with the narrator's companions: unsure whether this is a man worth following after all.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I went into listening to this book with high hopes. I'm a Dark Mountain subscriber, and think that Kingsnorth [one of the editors], is a very cool guy.I had heard all about the Old English used throughout the book, and heard that his editors had him tame it down a bit. I wish they hadn't. Other than a few words I didn't understand here and there, it didn't feel that novel.I also heard parallels to an "Armageddon" story. But I didn't get this from the book. There was an angry alienated privileged guy who was justifiably angry throughout the book. It wasn't a striking or revealing storyline for me though.Also, the scope of the story was small, but without depth. I love stories that dive deep into a very small context [I could read an entire Lord of the Rings about having tea in the shire, like Frog & Toad]. This story didn't have that richness for me of the Old Gods and the Old World. There were many allusions, but not much meat.I do think more people should be telling stories like this [about different people in deferent times that we might relate with].
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    After the Norman invasion of England, the French ravage and burn. One man, Buccmaster, returns to his home to find nothing but ash, and his wife's body amidst the ruins.

    He takes to the woods to become a 'green man' (an outlaw), with loud proclamations of his intention to raise a group to fight the French in revenge for all he has lost.

    The story is told in Buccmaster's own words. From a narrative perspective, this means that he clearly tries to paint himself in the best light possible, seeking the reader's sympathy for his situation. At first, as readers, we do have sympathy. Certainly, from the first, Buccmaster seems to be all talk and little action. Many of the actions he justifies to us seem pretty cowardly. He's arrogant, violent, superstitious, self-entitled, and certainly knows how to nurse a grudge. But, after all, he has been a victim of brutal invaders. His position as a man holding to 'the old ways' (as he imagines them from his grandfather's tales), while the world has moved on around him, seems poignant. We expect, as the story progresses, that he might find redemption in some way, whether through justice or spirituality.
    Instead, the reader finds Buccmaster's character thrown into increasing doubt. Finally, we see an outside opinion of him. These revelations trigger a crisis point, where events of the past and Buccmaster's current decisions combine for a finale that's quite horrific.

    From a linguistic perspective: I don't think I've ever read a historical novel that did a better job of bringing the reader into the mind and culture of a character. Kingsnorth has created a vocabulary for this novel based on the language of the time. It's not Old English - but it's influenced by it. At first, it makes the reading slow going. I normally read very quickly, but I found myself lingering over each word, thinking about the tones and rhythms of the language, imagining how the words would sound from the mouths of the characters.
    It's not only the spelling - the author is careful not to use words or concepts that his characters would not be familiar with.
    I thought I might find the artificiality of the language tedious, but I actually found it extremely enjoyable, and ultimately successful.

    I've read a lot of historical fiction, and this is far from the first story I've read that illustrates the religious shift in Europe from indigenous beliefs to Christianity. This book avoids falling into any of the common tropes of that type of tale.

    It also does a fantastic job of describing a time of historically momentous events in a way that vividly conveys what it was like to be a 'regular person' in a time before news media.

    The details of daily life, as portrayed here, seem completely convincing and well-researched - but this is more than a vehicle to educate readers about 11th century England. Buccmaster is not simply an example of a man of his time - the novel fully works as an exploration of one individual's character.

    This is a unique and significant work, and one that will stick with me. Highly recommended.

    Many thanks to NetGalley and Unbound for the opportunity to read this excellent book. As always, my opinions are solely my own.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    'English history... seems the work of a temperate community, seldom shaken by convulsions. But there are moments when history is unsubtle; when change arrives in a violent rush, decisive, bloody, traumatic; as a truck-load of trouble, wiping out everything that gives a culture its bearings - custom, language, law, loyalty. 1066 was one of those moments.'― Simon Schama, A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3500 BC-AD 1603 (2000)Imagine the world described above as seen through the eyes of an angry, prideful, domineering, foul-mouthed, violent, desperate, delusional, and (though he would never admit it) conquered Anglisc man. Then imagine him telling you the story of his world falling apart in a language you only half recognize but which seems eerily familiar. Innovative, earthy, and shocking, The Wake will surely challenge you like it did me.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I thought it would be interesting to read an historical novel written in a "shadow tongue" of Old English. I enjoyed the challenge of reading the shadow tongue. What I didn't enjoy the pace of the novel and the repetitiveness of buccmster's storytelling. I am now convinced that the shadow tongue was a gimmick to make the novel more appealing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An extraordinary book, telling the story of a "green man" resisting the Norman conquest with a small band of guerrillas in the Lincolnshire fens and surrounding woodlands. Written in a hybrid language that mixes Anglo-Saxon words and spellings with just enough modern English to make it readable, it is a bloodthirsty elegy for the England that was lost, and is also fascinating for its linguistic insights.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Well, this aint no Riddley Walker that is for certain. I plodded through it because I had bought it and was left wondering whether it would have any interest at all if not for the Old English style language used. Very slow and what else can I say? Historical novels are always problematical and for me this book was not a solution.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    To quote a section on the back of the book, "Written in what the author calls 'A shadow tongue' - a version of Old English updated so as to be understandable for the modern reader - The Wake is a landmark in historical fiction and looks set to become a modern classic."I didn't get far, a mere few tens of pages, and faced with three hundred and fifty, I put it down. It takes concentration to interpret the shadow tongue, and I found it interfering with my pace of reading. The first few pages were like wading through treacle, but the rhythm did start to come; it entailed more listening to the words rather than reading them, if that makes sense.----- when we was in the brunnesweld nebbs all blaec hydan in the grene holt lic the afeart bucc oft i was thincan of my grandfather. a great man he was strong in all he wilde weep to see what angland has becum. efen he strong man that he was wolde weep lie a cilde to see us hidan there runnan from ingengas in our own land that is no longer our own land.----- In "A Note On Language" at the back, the author writes, "What we now call Old English was the language of the English people until the invasion of 1066, when it rapidly began to mutate with the arrival of Norman French, the language of the new ruling class. This novel is not written in Old English - that would be unreadable to anyone except scholars. It is written instead in what might be called a shadow tongue - a pseudo-language intended to convey the feeling of the old language by combining some of its vocabulary and syntax with the English we speak today."It also includes a couple of pages of a partial glossary; but I couldn't come to terms with this. I don't think I'll come back to this; certainly with the pace of modern life as it currently is. The book requires an effort that I currently can not give it. My mind is too full of work and other business, to be able to quieten it to the degree where I can listen to the rhythm and hear the story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    As an Australian my knowledge of the mother country’s history is patchier than I would like. It was only this year, when I moved to Britain and started doing some more reading on the subject, that I discovered the astonishing fact that the Normans were not (as I had vaguely assumed) merely one tribe among many squabbling for turf inside Britain’s borders. Rather, they were an invading French force who successfully defeated the king and installed a new leader, and who were never really turfed out but rather absorbed – even today, British people who have Norman surnames are more likely to be wealthy than those who don’t. It was three centuries before England again had a king who spoke English as his first language. The violent dispossession of land and livelihood by the invading foreigners was one of the most traumatic and consequential events in English history.Paul Kingsnorth’s novel The Wake, billed as “a post-apocalyptic novel set a thousand years ago,” follows a group of resistance fighters in the Lincolnshire fens who have seen everything they know destroyed in the Norman invasion – their homes burned, their wives killed, their freedom shattered. They are led by Buccmaster of Holland (Holland referring to a historical region of Lincoln, not the Netherlands), a crazed and violent son of England who thirsts for revenge.The most notable feature of The Wake is its language. Kingsnorth says in the afterword:I simply don’t get on with historical novels written in contemporary language. The way we speak is specific to our time and place. Our assumptions, our politics, our worldview, our attitudes – all are implicit in our words, and what we do with them. To put 21st-century sentences into the mouths of eleventh century characters would be the equivalent of giving them iPads and cappucinos: just wrong.Rather than write the novel in what we now call Old English, the actual language of the day which would unfortunately be “unreadable to anyone except scholars,” Kingsnorth has created what what he calls a “shadow tongue,” which represents the feel and sound of Old English while still being comprehensible to the modern eye:in the mergen i was waecen by the sound of the wind in the treows and a great wind it was. blowan from a great height blowan with the strength of thunor this wind it mofd the great treows baec and forth and the sound was grim to hiere. i cnawan this was the sign of sum great thing that had been done or was cuman bit i cnawan not what. i cum out of our hus of stoccs and leafs and i seen that the mete we had tied ofer the fyre had cum down in the wind and was all ofer the ground.The most obvious book this calls to mind is Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban’s post-apocalyptic novel written in a degenerated, phonetic version of English, to represent the warping of the English language two thousand years after a nuclear war. But the invented tongue is becoming a proud tradition: David Mitchell mimics Hoban in the post-apocalyptic segment of Cloud Atlas, parts of Will Self’s novel The Book of Dave feature another verbally debased apocalyptic community, and parts of Iain M. Banks’ Feersum Endjinn are written in a half-Scottish half-Cockney patter. (Interesting to note that these are all British authors.) Although strange to behold at first, Kingsnorth’s invented language is easy to come to grips with after a few dozen pages; lack of punctuation and capital letters aside, no more than one word in five is actually altered, and there’s a handy vocabulary at the back for some of the less intuitive words, such as “micel” for much and “fugol” for bird. A basic knowledge of a few Norse words like “fyrd,” “thane,” and “cottar” is also useful, which I handily knew from years of playing King of Dragon Pass like the nerd I am. The language absolutely succeeds in imbuing The Wake with a real sense of alienness; the narrative voice of Buccmaster is gritty and accented and sounds as though he’s telling his story from the other side of a campfire in a deep, dark forest.And as with Riddley Walker, even beyond the etymological gymnastics, the story itself is excellent. (It’s hard to make this point without making it sound as though the invented language is a gimmick, which it’s not, in the case of both books.) Many a fine historical novel (Sacred Hunger, for instance) stumbles by having characters who conveniently share the sensibilities of a 21st century Guardian reader. Buccmaster of Holland is a wife-beating religious fanatic who never loses an opportunity to remind others that he is, by the eleventh century’s standards, a member of the landed gentry – even after his home has been razed and he’s sleeping rough in the woods with the other plebs. He is arrogant, vain, pigheaded and violent, flies off the handle at the slightest provocation, is prone to bitter jealousy when others speak of more well-known resistance fighters, and is given to dark suspicions and foul moods. As the novel progresses it becomes increasingly clear that he is at the very least a psychopath, and likely suffering from other mental issues as well. He is an unlikeable and unsympathetic narrator, and yet it’s hard not to pity him, because in the wake of the Norman invasion his life truly is a tragedy.I saw The Wake at Waterstone’s back in summer, but was leery of it because it came from what I mistook for a vanity publisher (it’s not) and because a quick google revealed that while Kingsnorth was a published non-fiction writer, this was his first attempt at fiction. It was only after The Wake was longlisted for the Booker Prize that I picked up a copy. Some might say that’s a shame, that a reader might rely on awards or acclaim to judge worthiness, but I prefer to think of it as heartening – the system ensured that a book this good wasn’t keep in obscurity. (Also, I live in London, so I can’t afford to go around buying new hardbacks unless I’m assured they’ll be good.) The Wake is one of the best novels I’ve read this year, and certainly the most unique.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ok, let’s get this out of the way straight away: The Wake is written throughout entirely in its own language – a shadow version of Old English which Kingsnorth created to make it intelligible for the modern reader. “we all is feohtan to lif I seas to this hraga all wihts men and others all is feohtan to lif in this deorc world. And now I moste stric” Right, that should have put most people off. Kingwood is of the view that once you get your eye in it’s not a difficult book to read/follow. We’ll get to that in a moment. First. The genus of The Wake, began when the author read a book called The English Resistance, documenting the guerrilla resistance movement that sprung up after 1066. According to the author: ” I ran through any number of possible ways of constructing the book. One early approach was an attempt to tell the story of the same period in history from varying perspectives: that of a man involved; that of a nineteenth century historical novel; that of a contemporary historian; and some other perspective I’ve already forgotten. Nicely post-modern, I’m sure you’ll agree. Perhaps I should have stuck with it; it sounds more potentially award-winning.” Funny, although oddly enough my first thought when I started this book was just how much it was – in this form – award and critic bait. Just describing this book to people makes it sounds as literarily up its own arse as you could wish to get – you almost expect an accompanying soundtrack album from Damon Albarn and Sting played entirely on Recorder and Lute. Of course this is going to be nominated and no doubt win awards. By the same token it will not be read by most people. Indeed, even if it wins the Booker it will be one of those that sits atop many a book shelf unread as readers give up a few pages in. Should this be the case? Is The Wake a good book? The answer to the second of these is undoubtedly yes. There is an argument that great art – be it music, film, art, or literature, shouldn’t be ‘easy’. As arguments go it is, quite frankly, bollocks. But, of course, that doesn’t mean that just because it is not easy it can’t be great. It is all about truth and that old chestnut authenticity (and I don’t here mean that you have to write in old English to be authentic for an 11th century novel) They say in writing fiction you should be true to your characters, and there is no doubt that Kingsnorth firmly believes that this is what he has done here for his lead character, Buccmaster of Holland, and those around him. And Buccmaster of Holland is a terrific character – whether he would equally have been good without the ‘shadow old English’ – is open for debate, I think he would have been. I think a plain English translation would read perfectly fine. But, that is not the author’s vision. Instead we get the story of Buccmaster of Holland, a free tenant farmer living his live with wife and two children in the Lincolnshire Fens, at a time when Britain was changed for all time – the invasion by “ingenga” (foreigners) and Duke Guillaume of Normandy and his men. It is a story of patriotism, religion, fear. In fact it read a bit like a Clint Eastwood western in some ways. Burned villages, outlaws, fighting for your home. it’s all here. And very good it is too. I liked The Wake a lot. I admired its construction and the author’s attempt to convey the fact that this was a different time and place with language. That said he does seem to want to have his cake and eat it too, by trying to use language to add an authenticity whilst at the same time creating a language for the book that has never been spoken and with a set of rules that he admits to freely breaking when it suited his needs. Most people will not get past this block to reading this. It is all very well (and true) to say that if you give it time, following the basic guide OE ….daeg (day) cg = dg sound as in bricg (bridge) etc you do start to relax into reading it without READING it – a bit like watching a subtitled film where you reach the point when you no longer feel like your reading the words, just immersed in the film. But, and it’s a big but, I think this only works if you read the book quite quickly and not in a pick it up , put it down, over a few weeks kind of way. In that instance you are likely to find yourself trying to ‘learn’ it again each time and never really get inside the book. In the end I’m glad Kingsnorth wrote it and I think it is an impressive feat which does convey the alien-ness of Old England. However, it also puts up an intentional barrier to a wide audience reading it – in an are you clever enough to read this kind of way, which is a shame. I should add, I am also sure this was not his intention, as a visit to his website – very entertaining ( I like him a lot -read ‘about me’ section) – would attest. Indeed, the fact that it was crowd funded lends weight to the argument that he didn’t really expect many people to want to read it, he just needed to write it. Set aside some time, remove all distractions, pour yourself a glass or several of something nice and struggle through those first pages . Hang on in there, it is worth it in the end. Or, just decide that life is too short to have to work on something that is meant to be the relaxing/enjoyment part of your life and maybe go for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler instead as your entry point into Booker 2014