Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, 'Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?' and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend-the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. One can’t help but wonder if there is a post-Brexit cautionary tale flowing not too far below the surface here.Ī thorny, thoroughly original novel about human beings’ capacity for violence.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Her decision to use unformatted dialogue, without punctuation or paragraph breaks, can be frustrating and works against the plot’s natural suspense, but it also shows Silvie’s panic, confusion, and longing as strangers get too close. Moss’ ( Signs for Lost Children, 2017, etc.) unusual premise allows her to explore issues of class, sexuality, capitalism, and xenophobia in fewer than 150 pages.

As the college students in the course get to know Silvie and get a closer look at her family dynamics-her tempestuous father, her cowed mom-Silvie is forced to both question her secret life and protect it from outsiders before the re-enactment goes too far. A local professor has invited Silvie’s family to tag along on a summer archaeology course that will attempt to replicate the daily lives of the Iron Age Northumbrians.

A violent, racist man, he reveres Iron Age Britain as a symbol of purity, believing it represents a culture before it was sullied by invaders from other lands. But his interest isn’t especially benign. He’s taught Silvie how the ancient people would have lived-which roots can be eaten, which moors can be usefully foraged-and how they would have died, found preserved in bogs with ropes around their necks, hands, and feet. A bus driver by trade, her dad is an amateur expert in pre-Roman British history. Seventeen-year-old Silvie’s father has an unusual hobby.

A teenager and her working-class family join a group of experimental archaeologists and must face the sinister connections between their own circumstances and the brutal lives of the Iron Age inhabitants of Britain.

Ghost wall novel