Wakenhyrst

Product Information

A highly successful children’s author, Michelle Paver actually began by writing novels for adults and has hollowed out a niche for herself in gothic stories for grownups, set at the beginning of the 20th century.

Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver | Waterstones Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver | Waterstones

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.As in Dark Matter, Paver manages the balance between outright supernaturalism and the suggestion that the horrors are psychological in origin with great skill. It is more difficult to pull this off at novel-length than in a short story, and harder now than it was 100 years ago, but she succeeds. Revisiting M R James territory with a modern feminist sensibility, Wakenhyrst is weirdly compelling.” This dark, gothic tale with hook you in with its atmospheric setting of a house on the edge of the Suffolk fens, and its themes of superstition, witchcraft and religion” 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. Spanning five centuries, Wakenhyrst is a darkly gothic thriller about murderous obsession and one girl’s longing to fly free by the bestselling author of Dark Matter and Thin Air. Wakenhyrst is an outstanding new piece of story-telling, a tale of mystery and imagination laced with terror. It is a masterwork in the modern gothic tradition that ranges from Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker to Neil Gaiman and Sarah Perry. 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..."

Wakenhyrst’ by Michelle Paver – We Women of Horror ‘Wakenhyrst’ by Michelle Paver – We Women of Horror

I really enjoyed the elements of folk-horror Paver used in the novel. Images of swamp demons with wide mouths and frog-like eyes, impish creatures with swampy green horns, they paint a very different picture to the antiquated Christian red-skinned devils so often depicted in medieval dooms. Time heals old wounds and dissipates old illusions as a new generation of Caskeys ascends to power.Months after reading it, I remain obsessed with Michelle Paver’s Wakenhyrst… Spooky, twisted and unforgettable” An unforgettable, surrealist gothic folk-thriller with commercial crossover appeal from a brilliant new voice. 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. The book fo Alice Pyett is basd on the Book of Margery Kempe. Like Alice, Margery Kempe was married in her teens, had an unconscionable number of children and ended up longing for chastity.

Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver | Goodreads

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.We meet Maud as a child in the repressive isolation and secrecy of Wake’s End as she grapples with the loss of her mother and struggles under her father’s commanding presence. Maud is isolated in more than just location; as the oldest of her much younger siblings, she is alone in her daily life, alone in grieving her mother, alone in her understanding of life at Wake’s End and the desire to be out from under her father’s rule. 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. We move through periods of Maud’s childhood as she grows into her teenage years, as she carves space for herself within Wake’s End. She grows to realize that she can grant herself little freedoms, that her own beliefs may lie somewhere outside of what everyone else in Wakenhyrst believes, that perhaps the only thing worth believing in is the one thing she holds most dearly: the fen. There’s a richness to this story that is enhanced by its unhurried pace, by the fact that readers get to sit still within Wake’s End as threads of intrigue, mystery, and building suspense are woven steadily around us as we come to know Maud, her father, and Wakenhyrst itself throughout years of her life.