Wakenhyrst

Product Information

It was not me who discovered Michelle Paver about five years ago, but my daughter when she pulled “The Wolf Brothers” off the shelf at our local library and then read all six books of the “Chronicles of Ancient Darkness” in short succession. So you may forgive me, that I had Michelle Paver down as a middle grade author until I saw Wakenhyrst on the shelf at the same library but this time in the adult section of “new and notable releases”. The magpie on the cover sealed the deal, because I adore the birds for their chatter and cheekiness. The problems: superficial description with one-note characters and all-too-obvious motivations that are hamfistedly repeated ad nauseam. If it weren't for the occasional adult subject matter (sex/demon possession), one would think this was written for 13-year olds. Paver definitely seems to be the go to author during the spooky season as this gothic Edwardian mystery is just as compelling as her ghost stories. Maud loves the fen and feels at home wandering its watery wilderness. However her father is scared of it, his guilt manifesting in his paranoia. The pervasive marsh smell starts to haunt him as he becomes more and more obsessed with the rantings of Alice Pyett, ironically a female spiritualist. It’s gripping and tense, and my favourite Michelle Paver book by far. Maud spend most her time in the nursery worrying about her maman. Maman has many ‘groanings’, these ‘groanings’ occasionally resulted in a baby but most often a sheet soaked in blood.

Dark Matter: the gripping ghost story from the author of Dark Matter: the gripping ghost story from the author of

Wakenhyrst is a framed narrative set in Edwardian Suffolk, at the Sterne family’s ancestral marshland home of Wakes End. The story follows the life of Maud Sterne and her account of the mysterious events leading up to a gruesome murder committed by her father. We see Maud mature into adulthood while simultaneously watching her father, Edmund, descend into madness. 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 Fens are presented to us as this wild, unromantic, untamed space that transcends social boundaries (see Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Marie de France’s Lanval). Even Wakes End’s patriarch, Edmund Sterne, with all the power that his status and gender affords, is at the mercy of the marsh. Only in this space can Maud be her true self, unrestricted by the social expectations of a landowner’s daughter. 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. The Suffolk Fens are to Wakenhyrst what the Yorkshire moors are to Wuthering Heights, the feral beauty of the marsh is to Maud Sterne what the unbridled heathland is to Catherine Earnshaw. Blessed is the man who endureth manifold troubles, for whereas he is tried, then shall he receive everlasting reward... Helped by sneaking in to her father’s study and reading his personal notebook (diary) - she learns many things, some that she struggles to understand!

What you need to know before your trail

Maud’s father’s discovery of an unsettling, grotesque painting of devils marks a shift in life at Wake’s End. Always a controlling, but logical, man, Edmund Stearne has changed since first setting eyes on the painting—and Maud notices. Paranoid and erratic, Edmund’s work as a historian comes to intersect with the history of the painting—the Doom—and his obsession becomes Maud’s mission to understand. The life of Alice Pyett, a woman who claimed God spoke through her centuries ago, has absorbed him as the focus of his work, but now her diary entries, which Edmund is translating and which readers are able to read, fuel his own paranoia. Through firsthand journal entries, readers—and Maud—come to know Edmund’s thoughts intimately as he faces what he fears he set loose in discovering the Doom. Something ancient, something uncontrollable, something evil. The atmosphere and folklore of the fens comes to life, the utterly compelling story unfolding in a way that is impossible to look away from. There are secrets at Wake’s End and secrets her father keeps and Maud will have them unraveled before her. But as the story unfolds, not all is clear; is it madness or is history repeating itself? Is Edmund paranoid or has something actually been wakened? Is there truth to the local superstitions of the Fens? Though a quietly told tale, Wakenhyrst rises to a thrilling crescendo that is unsettling and surprising. Paver is a fantastic writer. The atmosphere she created was Gothic perfection—eerie, unsettling, full of the sense of long-kept secrets and the unknown. The novel’s structure and pacing, with the inclusion of both Edmund’s and Alice Pyett’s journal entries, was gripping. Maud was a captivating character whose experience and perspective enriched the story with something deeper than just the events of the plot—the desires and hopes of a young girl, the resistance to injustice that can come in so many small forms. Michelle Paver was born in central Africa, but came to England as a child. After gaining a degree in biochemistry from Oxford University, she became a partner in a city law firm, but eventually gave that up to write full-time. In Edwardian Suffolk, a manor house stands alone in a lost corner of the Fens: a glinting wilderness of water whose whispering reeds guard ancient secrets. Maud is a lonely child growing up without a mother, ruled by her repressive father.

Wakenhyrst – Michelle Paver

Paver is one of Britain's modern greats. This sinister, gothic chiller shows why' BIG ISSUE, Books of the Year 2019. "Something has been let loose..." Es gibt Tagebücher des Vaters, die heimlich von der Tochter gelesen werden und so immer mehr offenbaren. Gerade zu Beginn hat mich das sehr gefesselt. I had never heard of a ‘Doom’ and on googling the Wenhaston Doom that Paver used as inspiration for the Wakenhyrst Doom, I found that the images were fantastic! What we know from the beginning of the book is that one day, when Maude is 16 years old, her mother dead and gone, her father kills someone horribly, never denies having committed the murder either (but saying that he had to do it) and ending up in a well screaming himself half to death. Part of Edmund Stearne’s mental decline has to do with his obsession with a historical local woman, Alice Pyett, who lived during the late 1400s and allegedly experienced visions of demons and hell, before being saved by Jesus Christ and embarking on numerous pilgrimages across Europe. Throughout the book, Edmund works to translate a dictated book of her life story. I was reminded of the famous mystic, Margery Kempe, who authored (also through dictation) a book about her life (see The Book of Margery Kempe), which detailed her pilgrimages and spiritual conversations with God during the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Lo and behold, when I read the authors notes I learned that the character of Alice Pyett was largely based on Kempe’s experiences. Sadly, Pyett is not initially regarded with the same favour as Kempe was in her time, often being referred to disparagingly as ‘this creature’ and ‘wretched’ in the text. Pyett’s contemporaries came very close to burning her as a Lollard, simply for professing the visions she had. Her treatment paralleled that of suspected witches in late medieval and early renaissance Britain, a malignant movement that would plague East Anglia in real life some mere 200 years after her time.

Like Alice, Maman had never been allowed to do anything; she’d always had things done to her. She had been ‘given in marriage’ and ‘permitted’ fine clothes – although only if Father approved of them. Maud’s battle has begun. 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. After loving Paver's Dark Matter and Thin Air, this book didn't work so well for me. The two earlier books were tight and ambiguous, and because we only saw the story through one set of eyes we were left hovering deliciously on that edge between haunting or a form of madness. Plus they were shivering-scary.

Wakenhyrst - The Book Trail Wakenhyrst - The Book Trail

Having enjoyed, “Dark Matter,” and “Thin Air,” I was delighted to receive Michelle Paver’s new novel, to review. In the gripping new novel by the author of The Fourteenth Letter, a lawyer in Victorian London must find a man he got off a murder charge - and who seems to have killed again . . . I’m Shona, a 24-year-old English Literature graduate from the South East of England. I’m currently living in Jersey, Channel Islands.Marianne has a dark history and a secret that she and her ex-boyfriend, Jesse, have kept for years. Now the pact they made is beginning to break, threatening her family and vulnerable daughter. Put not your faith in men, she thought. That out there is all you can trust: that hedge and that wet grass. Those dripping trees.” This is tragic. I have to agree wholeheartedly with the outliers. Michelle Paver, author of the phenomenal and genuinely terrifying Dark Matter, has dished up a tediously boring read that offers nothing approaching frightening. Or even creepy for that matter. It's just blah. The pacing of the novel is slow burn which works brilliantly with the scenery and the plot to encompass a simmering suspense that rises as it progresses. There is plenty to keep you interested and engaged throughout, and I found myself deeply admiring main character Maud's resolve. Those interested in folklore, legend and especially witchcraft, as well as those who enjoy subtle, beautifully written and gothic-style novels set in a historical context, will find much to love here. I look forward to Michelle Paver's next offering.