Protagonist Buccmaster is a farmer living with wife and two children in 1066, when Guillame, Duke of Normandy (William the Conqueror) crosses the sea to defeat King Harold II and his Anglo-Saxon forces at the Battle of Hastings. The Norman invasion vastly changes the old ways of life. Buccmaster’s world is crumbling around him, and he feels impelled do something about it. He becomes the leader of a band of resistors (“green men”) seeking to drive out the invaders. He is fearful and angry. He is also suffering from delusions and grows increasingly unstable.

The elephant in the room is the manner in which it is written. The author employs what he calls a “shadow tongue.” It is more comprehensible to a modern reader than Old English but still requires a quite a bit of work to decipher. For example:

“aefry ember of hope gan lic the embers of a fyr brocen in the daegs beginnan brocen by men other than us. hope falls harder when the end is cwic hope falls harder when in the daegs before the storm the stillness of the age was writen in the songs of men so it is when a world ends who is thu i can not cnaw but i will tell thu this thing be waery of the storm be most waery when there is no storm in sight.”

I would have enjoyed reading this book more if the invented language had been toned down a bit. This is obviously an artistic choice by the author, but I think it will be off-putting to many readers. The advantage is that it definitely puts the reader into a different time and place, but I have read other novels that simulate an older language more successfully. I switched from e-book to audio and found listening a much more positive experience so if you are an audio fan, it is definitely the way to go.

This is a character-driven story, and the main character is extremely unpleasant. Buccmaster is boastful, vulgar, violent, self-centered and, I presume, mentally ill. I do not mind a flawed protagonist, but there is not much positive in his personality (or in the entire story). I assume Buccmaster is supposed to be an anti-hero. The other characters serve as foils for Buccmaster – no one else is developed to any extent. It gets points for creativity, and I was curious to find out how it ends. I am glad to have read it but also glad to be finished. ( )

2019, audiobook read by Simon Vance, ★★★★★
Wow! Vance's masterful narration revealed new layers of detail, enabled a deeper immersion into the plot and setting, and even more disturbingly exposed Buccmaster's mental disintegration.

Since first reading this in 2015-2016, I have stood on the battlefield of Hastings and now feel, if possible, even more of an attachment to the period of the conquest and the regular folk caught up in it.

The Wake has become one of my favourite books.

2016, paperback, ★★★★☆
'English history... seems the work of a temperate community, seldom shaken by convulsions. But there are moments when history is unsubtle; when change arrives in a violent rush, decisive, bloody, traumatic; as a truck-load of trouble, wiping out everything that gives a culture its bearings - custom, language, law, loyalty. 1066 was one of those moments.'
― Simon Schama, A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3500 BC-AD 1603 (2000)

Imagine the world described above as seen through the eyes of an angry, prideful, domineering, foul-mouthed, violent, desperate, delusional, and (though he would never admit it) conquered Anglisc man. Then imagine him telling you the story of his world falling apart in a language you only half recognize but which seems eerily familiar. Innovative, earthy, and shocking, The Wake will surely challenge you like it did me. ( )

This is the story of the Norman Conquest of England, told by one landowner called Buccmaster of Holland. He tells of seeing signs and portents, of being reluctant to send his sons to battle because he needs them at home, of despairing as his possessions (including his wife) are taken from him by the French, and of his determination to seek revenge and reclaim England for the English. Buccmaster is certain he has been chosen for this task. At first, he just seems full of himself, but as the book progresses, you slowly realize that he is an extremely unreliable narrator.

The book is written in a sort of fake Old English, which takes some getting used to, but the prose is very repetitive so that makes it easier to get used to it. At first I thought the repetition was just a crutch for the reader, but by the end of the book I realized it was a reflection of the narrator's sanity. I listened to the audiobook, and, as always, Simon Vance is an excellent narrator. The language was probably easier to get used to in audio than print, because I only had to adjust to vocabulary, not spelling.

The book is a slow burn. It is very ominous at the beginning, and then becomes almost comedic in the middle, as Buccmaster hides in the woods with his tiny band of followers and his delusions of grandeur. But there are surprising revelations at the end that completely change the tone of the entire book. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2022/01/202213-wake-paul-kingsnorth.html ( )

In the hybrid language used throughout the novel: hiere is a boc about soccman buccmaster, who was ceosan to feoht the frenc in angland, to have vergild agan the ingengas who cwelled his wifman. Thu sceolde read it.

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