A man insists you build a wall; why would you do what he demands? Sarah Moss addresses abusive power, fear, and complacency in a suspenseful melodramatic tale about a wall.

In this short (130 pages) riveting tale, 17-year-old Silvie and her parents spend a few summer weeks in the North British woods with a group of college students and their archeology professor, trying to reenact the lives of ancient Britons from the Iron Age. They eat only what they can gather, and wear soft moccasins and scratchy tunics.

When Silvie’s abusive father, a bus driver by trade, beats her for bathing in the stream, the tale escalates into a horror story climaxing with the reenactment of the ghost wall of the title, referring to the ancient Briton practice of placing ancestors’ skulls overlooking a camp. One of the college students, Molly, not only befriends Silvie but saves her from what quickly becomes a nightmare Silvie seems unable to prevent herself.

With references to the famous bog people throughout the story, a prologue describing the sacrificial rite, and Silvie’s memory of having once fallen into the bog –

“the bog seals around you…{filling} the inner skins of every orifice, seeping and trickling through the curls of your ears, rising like a tide in your lungs, creeping cold into your vagina, it will embalm you from the inside out,”

the reader can anticipate terror in the seemingly innocuous field trip. But Moss has a clear message too, and thankfully Sylvie’s father gets what he deserves.