The journals of painter and historian Edmund Stearne have been kept safely in Wake’s End since his admittance to an asylum for the criminally insane. He admitted he did it but that he never did anything wrong. 60 years later, his daughter releases his, and her, story to the world. Along with the strong-willed Maud, my heart also became enamoured with the majestic wilderness that consistently surrounded her. I could not fail but to liken this to my favourite read, Wuthering Heights. Cathy Earnshaw is as much a product of the moors as she is her upbringing and the same can be said for Maud. Also, in both, the mirroring of tempestuous passions between nature and the characters traversing its plains dominate the texts. Both were about far more than nature's undisturbed beauty but that is what spoke so clearly to me, through the intricacies of the plot, and ensured both as eternally unforgettable reads. Maud is a young girl, living with her repressive father (after her mother dies) in a house on the Suffolk Fens. She is a beautifully drawn character, as are her father & the servants occupying their house. Paver creates what feels like an incredibly authentic place & time & the story is very absorbing. I admire this wonderful writer, as she enabled me to understand the characters religious & superstitious beliefs, even though I have absolutely none of these beliefs myself. After listening to "Dark Matter" by Michelle Paver I wanted to try another of her books. Chose the audio version of Wakenhyrst and think Juanita McMahon did a great job at interpreting and presenting the different characters. Her ability to capture emotions, in Edmund Stearn's case "disdain" toward everyone and especially toward women, and individualize the personalities made it possible to identify a particular point of view or the set of values the different characters had. The story is set between 1906 (Maud is 8-yrs-old) and 1966 and I found the treatment of women and the antiquated beliefs of the Edwardian period fascinating and appalling. Thank goodness women have made it out of that.

The best recent thrillers – review roundup | Thrillers | The

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. Maud is caught up in the rules of the society of her time. Her father knows that she is intelligent, at the same time dismisses her as a stupid girl. She is self-educated because nobody cares to educate her, so she often comes to wrong conclusions. Utterly alone, she has no confidante, no support and when she turns to the stalwarts in her society for help, she is dismissed and threatened. It makes for a claustrophobic, dark experience, when you put yourself in Maud’s shoes. Starting with her 2010 novel, Dark Matter, and continuing with 2016’s Thin Air, Paver has been writing ghost stories distinguished by their vividly evoked settings and the struggles of their protago­nists. Wakenhyrst is a more-than-worthy addition to their ranks.” 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.

What you need to know before your trail

Part of the novel is about some slats of wood with painted images, found behind the church. Throughout the story Maud’s father becomes more and more obsessed by them. They are recovered and sent away to be restored and eventually returned to the church. These medieval paintings on wood are known as a doom. 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. Michelle Paver is well known for her chilling ghost stories, but to me this one is more historical fiction with a crime element. There is still some suggestion of the supernatural in Wakenhyrst, but that element of ambiguity, where the rational explanation and the spooky one are equally plausible, just wasn’t present here. I was Team Rational all the way. This did not diminish the story for me at all, but other readers expecting a Paver haunting might be disappointed. My only qualm with Maud was her rivalry with Ivy, a young and pretty maid in her household. However, this is rectified in Maud’s epilogue when she declares that the friction between them was pointless; Ivy simply tried to change her lot with what she could, as a working-class woman. Maud’s wealth afforded her some amount of foundational respect, yet she used her intelligence to achieve her goals. Ivy was not afforded that same respect as a maid, so had to use her looks and sexuality to get what she wanted. Maud doesn’t blame Ivy for resenting her, she was born into wealth – and as much as she had to fight because she is a woman, she realises that Ivy has had to fight not only because she is a woman, but also because she is poor. Maud understands her privilege, making the decision to financially support Ivy long after the main events in the story take place, and despite her contempt for the girl. 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.

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

Time heals old wounds and dissipates old illusions as a new generation of Caskeys ascends to power. This is a book that I want to say much more about, but I'm quite distracted at the moment, and not managing all that well to say what I actually want to say. I may return to this later, but for now this will have to do. And I also have something bad to say about this novel: It fulfills every promise of the standard gothic mystery formula.

Travel Guide

I have been reading quite a lot of Gothic Fiction novels of late and finding my joy in most of them but Wakenhyrst just didn’t create the suspense or tension I was expecting. During a walk through the local church yard, Edmund spots an eye in the undergrowth. His terror is only briefly abated when he discovers it's actually a painting, a 'doom', taken from the church. It's horrifying in its depiction of hell, and Edmund wants nothing more to do with it despite his historical significance. But the doom keeps returning to his mind. The stench of the Fen permeates the house, even with the windows closed. And when he lies awake at night, he hears a scratching sound – like claws on the wooden floor... A brilliantly atmospheric read (be warned: it's also terrifying!) with a brave, forward-thinking heroine I loved