The Wake

July 6, 2015
Kingsnorth’s debut novel is a feat of linguistic speculation—it’s written entirely in a modernized version of Old English. When our hero observes that “I had cnawan yfel was cuman when I seen this fugol glidan ofer,” phonetics, patience, and the glossary help readers approximate this as “I had known evil was coming when I saw this bird gliding over.” Set in England around the Norman Conquest, the novel portrays this cultural upheaval through the eyes of Buccmaster, a Saxon farmer. After his sons are killed at the battle of Hastings, and the French burn his farm and murder his wife, Buccmaster and a small band of fighters take to the countryside with vague aims of fomenting rebellion. The rhythms of the prose, the phonetic clues, and Buccmaster’s emerging narrative voice cue the reader in after a few difficult pages, and many sections sail along. Others remain obtuse, and the fact that comprehension is always coming in and out of focus gives the reader a sense of searching for connection with something authentically old. However, the stylistic triumph glosses over some basic flaws: for most of the novel, Buccmaster is absent from key events, and the bulk of the plot is related to him by others, making for a dull middle of the novel. And the ostensible climax of the story—the kidnapping of a French bishop—comes only a few pages before the end, underscoring the uneven pacing. It’s a brilliant novelty, but not a classic.

July 1, 2015
Frenchies is ycumen in-lhude sing Shazam! The fens of eastern England, so memorably inhabited by Graham Swift in his 1984 novel Waterland, are no place for an outsider to wander into. Least of all if that outsider is a Norman, for then he's likely to confront-well, if not Grendel, then a sturdy fellow named Buccmaster of Holland, who acts as if he owns the place. And so he does, for he lives on "three oxgangs of good land" on "an ealond in the fenns on all sides the wilde"-that is, about 60 acres on an island surrounded by wilderness and water, the kind of place where, with his peasant workers and his passel of sons, he can ignore the rest of the world. But he can't, in the end, for with the arrival of William the Conqueror and company to the south and the Vikings to the north in that fated year 1066, Buccmaster is called on to do battle in the name of the Anglo-Saxon crown. Debut novelist and environmental journalist Kingsnorth opens with an ominous quotation from William of Malmesbury, to wit, "England is become the residence of foreigners and the property of strangers"-the sort of thing that an anti-EU type might dredge up today, perhaps, but that also nicely announces Buccmaster's determination to keep not just the persons of the furriners out, but also their customs and manners, for "efry daeg they is cwellan us the cyng and the crist"-that is, every day the king and Christ are killing us. Kingsnorth's use of an ever so slightly streamlined version of Old English to convey Buccmaster's story, rich in ghosts and the old gods, is daring, but after a time it feels like a parlor trick: one wonders whether the story would have been better served with more straightforward, modern language. However, for the patient reader willing to puzzle and pause, the words are mostly clear enough, as when our man grumbles, "all i will hiere from thu is scit i saes" meaningfully, waxing most wroth. One can't fault Kingsnorth for lack of ambition, though his story stumbles under its own linguistic weight. The reader will judge whether it's worth the heafodpanneteung.

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Starred review from September 15, 2015

In 1066, Buccmaster owns many acres in Lincolnshire and sits on the wapentac, a court administering local affairs. When his sons leave home to fight the Normans, Buccmaster's rage paralyzes him. In the wake of their triumph at the Battle of Hastings, Normans ravage English towns and countryside, murdering Buccmaster's wife and destroying his farm. Buccmaster takes to the fens and forests, gathering about him a band of "grene men," English people driven from their homes and forced to live off the land. Inspired by a vision to reclaim England from the Normans as well as the Christians, Buccmaster vows to slaughter all who try to prevent him from reestablishing the pagan ways of his forefathers, a mission that ultimately calls into question his sanity and competence. VERDICT Poet and journalist Kingsnorth's debut novel re-creates the mysterious joy that accompanies first learning how to read. Composed in a seductive Anglo-Saxon dialect, the narrative is disorienting yet familiar and brilliantly unreliable. Buccmaster's astonishing voice will haunt readers long after they finish this bold book.--John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2015
Historians identify 1066 as a year of triumph for the Norman French, who conquered England, but in this carefully researched historical novel, Kingsnorth re-creates the year as one of shocking defeat for anglisc men feohtan for angland, a time when the vanquished regroup in desperate bands of green men determined to throw off the new yoke of bondage. As one of the proud Englishmen who has seen the invaders savagely despoil his land, Buccmasterthe narrator of this dark and disturbing talerecounts his protracted struggle using the Anglo-Saxon tongue that has become the speech of an oppressed race. To be sure, the language Kingsnorth uses here preserves only a few features of authentic Old English, but those features betoken a long-lost world, alien to us in part because of cultural changes catalyzed in 1066 by the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power in the new Norman monarchy. But beyond these broad-gauge patterns, readers will be absorbed in the tormented psyche of Buccmaster, who presses his quest to regain his land's lost freedoms with ever more delusional devotion to displaced pagan gods, a devotion he ultimately enacts in a cathartic but horrific pagan ritual. Masterfully wrought historical fiction turning epoch-making events into a harrowing nightmare.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)