Wakenhyrst

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On the whole this is more gothic than ghost and fen fiction rather than fan fiction (sorry couldn’t resist! It's horrifying in its depiction of hell, and Edmund wants nothing more to do with it despite his historical significance.

Wakenhyrst, by Michelle Paver - The Scotsman Book review: Wakenhyrst, by Michelle Paver - The Scotsman

He insists on bedding his wife every night, then when she dies he makes use of prostitutes, and then eventually the maid, Ivy. Highlighting similarities in the women’s backgrounds, Wyllie provides a distinctive prism through which to view the period.She must survive a world haunted by witchcraft, the age-old legends of her beloved fen – and the even more nightmarish demons of her father’s past. Pyett’s contemporaries came very close to burning her as a Lollard, simply for professing the visions she had. Maud’s father’s discovery of an unsettling, grotesque painting of devils marks a shift in life at Wake’s End. The plot was moving along rather slowly to show all the incidents throughout Maude's childhood that ultimately led to the end we already know about from the beginning of the book. I adored how Paver made the natural surroundings in the book of central importance to the characters: Stearne who fears the marsh and the fenland and Maud who feels truly herself when she is in the wildnerness of the fens, a forbidding place, but the only place she can truly be herself.

Wakenhyrst | A Review - House of Cadmus Wakenhyrst | A Review - House of Cadmus

Going back to Maud’s childhood at the turn of the last century, Paver weaves an enjoyably creepy plot concerning dark goings-on in the marshes. As her father’s only daughter, she is also isolated as the only female member of her family left—unimportant, incapable, and harmless as any other woman in her father’s eyes. Her descriptions of The Fens breathe a unique beauty into the stagnant and miasmic nature of marshlands, her passionate yet restrained depiction of a strange young girl’s first kiss will leave you enraptured, and her mastery of suspense will make your hair stand on end. So you get a great early hook, but it also means the book drags a little towards the end - knowing what’s coming, I grew impatient to finally get there, and it’s a real slow burn. Only here can she pursue a romance with the working-class under-gardener, only amongst the mud and reeds can she exist without being sexualised or undermined for being a woman.Additionally, Edmund refers to all women as ‘whores’ and constantly regurgitates the idea that they are inherently sinful and unclean. But she’s also the author of a terrific horror novel, Dark Matter, about a stranded young explorer losing his mind as he spends a haunted winter alone in the Arctic. One of my favourite things about Wakenhyrst is that it uses a distinctive medieval European depiction of nature, in this instance, the Suffolk Fens. The atmosphere she created was Gothic perfection—eerie, unsettling, full of the sense of long-kept secrets and the unknown. She is never suspected of anything, as Edmund is incapable of ascribing to her that level of intellect.