Paver is amazing at creating worlds that fully immerse the reader and Wakenhyrst was no different. The claustrophobia of it being set mainly in one setting added to the intrigue and mystery of the story and it gave it an almost fantasy feel.. Would 100% recommend.

Enjoyed this slightly different story from Michelle Paver. Really gripping through to the end and suitably spooky too.

This is the first one I've read from Paver but I get the hype! The truly gothic atmosphere in this book is spine chilling, Fens is the perfect setting for the story. Maud's story was definitely a page-turner one and I loved the psychological horror side of this book- it wouldn't be as good if it was a plain paranormal story. Very elegantly done. 4 stars

A great gothic tale that is really dark in its content.
The story surrounds a young girl Maud who has to deal with her historian father who is researching and obsessed with the medieval take on heaven and hell .
Her fathers action during the course of the book verge on the boarders of madness, but as he is a respected person in his field nobody will listen to Mauds concerns with devastating consequences.
Although I enjoyed the book at times I found it difficult to read.

A gripping gothic thriller, full of medieval folk lore and mystery set in the Fens. The story revolves round Maud an only child whose mother died giving birth to her 8th child. Maud, an intelligent, free spirit, who is ruled by her repressive father and her world is haunted by witchcraft, age old legends and the nightmarish demons of her father's past. The story which spans several centuries, is spine-chilling with a real sense of menace, A beautifully written atmospheric page turner.

Wakenhyrst is the first book I have read by Michelle Paver but from the outset I had an inkling that I would enjoy her style of writing.

Wakenhyrst begins with an article in a magazine which begins as follows:

“Like a witch’s lair in a fairytale the ancient manor house crouches in its tangled garden. I can’t take my eyes off the ivy choked window above the front door. It was from that window in 1913 that 16-year old Maud Sterne watched her father set off down the steps with an ice-pick, a geological hammer – and murder in his heart.”

The article then goes on to suggest that there may have been more than meets the eye to this crime and implies that Maud was involved in witchcraft and that she was the one who committed the murders.

This introduction to our protagonist immediately sows the seeds of doubt surrounding the trustworthiness of our narrator.

Maud grew up in a manor house called Wakes End in a little hamlet called Wakenhyrst. The house is surrounded by the gloomy Guthlaf’s Fen. Her father’s crimes were largely forgotten until some paintings he made in an asylum surfaced and became popular.

The description of the fen adds to the atmosphere of the book and makes the potential for something supernatural to be going on seem much more likely and the belief in its possibility much more understandable.

“The watery wilderness that guards Wakes End is the last real fen: the last stretch of the ancient marshes that once drowned the whole of East Anglia. It’s said to be the oldest rottenest fen ever. Here lived the dreaded ‘fen tigers’: savage folks who doctored their ‘ague’ with home-brewed opium and feared nothing but the spirits that haven’t the means.”

At the time the article was published Maud was 69 and looking back on the events of her childhood because Wakes End is in bad need of repairs and she needs the money.

Was a demon lurking in the fen or was her father mad?

Wakenhyrst was a fast read and I throughly enjoyed it, I am definitely looking forward to reading more from this author.

This was in no way as scary as the advance publication had led me to expect, but that wasn't a worry and luckily, it meant that I could read this in bed before going to sleep!

The novel concerns Maud and her relationship with her eccentric, widower Edwardian father who we learn about mainly through his journals. The characters are well-drawn, including the third main character (with Maud and her father) which is the mysterious Fen area where they live in an isolated house with a few local Fenland servants.

The author's note at the end of the novel is not to be missed. It tells how the plot evolved, describes the provenance of some vital incidents and indicates how much detailed research goes into writing fiction.

Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for giving me a copy of "Wakenhyrst" in exchange for this honest review. 4.5 stars!

Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver is a real blockbuster of a Gothic novel. I was engrossed while following the life of Maud, the plain daughter of the household, who faced and dealt with her ever increasingly disturbed father's actions. The characters were strong and well drawn and the landscape was so graphically and atmospherically described, I felt I was there in the fens alongside Maud.

The author has obviously painstakingly researched both the geography and the landscape of the area. I recommend reading the author's note at the end of the book which illustrates her sources and inspiration.

DNF!

I loved the intro of the book, it was so interesting with the article about Maud's father. Then, the story went back in time to when Maud was growing up and I just felt that the story turned more and more boring to listen to (I picked the audiobook version). It came to a point when I just felt that enough is enough. I'm not that interesting in Maud's childhood and youth and her feelings for the young gardener. Her father's diary notes are not rocking my boat. I'm just not the right reader so I decided to quit around 60%...

Michelle Paver’s new novel wears its heart on its sleeve to try to be in the best tradition of the Gothic novel. In 1966, the story of Edmund Stearne is brought back into the public’s imagination by a lurid tell-all book and a renewed interest in paintings he made whilst in prison. The book then flashes back in time to 1906 and recounts the story of Stearne and his family, in particular his daughter Maud.

There are demons, and ghosts, and visions, all set in the gloomy, dripping atmosphere of the Cambridgeshire Fens. There are family secrets and revelations and a spooky house. The narrative moves between Maud’s account and the diaries and notebooks of Edmund, all building to a climax where Edmund, convinced that there is demonic possession afoot, kills someone with an ice-pick and a hammer. Nice.

I struggled to get into this, to be honest. Fans of the genre will no doubt enjoy it, but the tropes and themes felt a little too overdone, the characters a little two-dimensional (cue lots of locals taking in dialect) and it just all felt a bit too light. Just not for me, I’m afraid.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

I’m a fan of Paver’s work. I’ve read a few of her books and have been impressed overall. Wakenhyrst is no exception. This is a fantastic example of gothic horror. I knew as soon as I started to read the book I was onto something special. I wasn’t disappointed. Wakenhyrst is a bizarre and unsettling blend of supernatural horror, madness and a repressive society. The sad tale is told with compassion. I was gripped as events unfolded and Maud’s father descended deeper into darkness. Paver does a great job of bringing the period the novel is set in and the society to life. This was a pleasure to read. I don’t often read historical fiction and prefer crime or gothic horror. I liked the way the novel is structured using a story-within-a-story framing. There are a few books by the author I haven’t read and these are definitely on my TBR list.

Maud Stearne is entrenched in a patriarchal system, railing against it as best she can. Every key decision in the household is made by her overbearing, haughty father- to the extent that he sacrifices her mother’s life when it hangs in the balance during childbirth, against medical advice, with detachment and calm.

Although the Hall is situated in the beautiful Suffolk Fens, Maud is never permitted to do justice to her natural affinity with nature. Her father’s repressive nature and internal aversion to his surroundings combine to prohibit her efforts to explore the marsh and immerse herself within it.

Edmund Stearne’s descent into a full breakdown is inevitable yet still shocking; Paver charts the decline of a bookish yet superstitious man credibly and vividly, breathing new life into the gothic horror mystery. Tense, vivid and mesmeric, ‘Wakenhyrst’ is a disquieting examination of internal prejudices, frustrations and the effects of obsession.

On a long train journey over the weekend I sat down with Michelle Paver’s Wakenhyrst, and I devoured it at one go.

There. That’s probably all you need to know but I feel I ought to make a bit more of an effort to tell you what I loved about it, and the book certainly deserves it. It’s a complex, compelling, dark, twisted, wonderful, readable book.

It’s set in the early part of the twentieth century and it’s the story of Maud, a child when the story begins. Stuck in a house on the edge of the fens with a wealthy but eccentric father, an irritating younger brother (who, being a boy, is granted seniority) and a long-suffering mother whose endless pregnancies almost all seemed destined to end in miscarriage or death, Maud has a grim coming of age.

I quote from the blurb. “When [her father] finds a painted medieval devil in a graveyard, unhallowed forces are awakened. 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.”

There was so much to love about this book. The sinister fenland with its lingering spirits is drawn as a place that would drive anyone mad. Even Maud, a practical young woman, begins to believe in evil things that creep around the corridors of Wake’s End, the house, at night. The characterisation is wonderful, the story telling extraordinary, so that I was drawn into it and just kept reading and reading and reading.

If there was one thing I didn’t like about it, it was the prologue and epilogue that brought the story into the 1960s. Yes, there was information there that tied up the loose ends of the story, but I didn’t feel it was necessary and slightly weakened the whole thing for me. Not much, though, and certainly not enough to stop me recommending it to anyone looking for a darkly satisfying read.

Thanks to Netgalley and Head of Zeus for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Maud is a lonely child, growing up in a corner of the Fens in Edwardian Suffolk, without a mother and ruled over by her father. When, one day, he finds a medieval painting in a graveyard, unnatural forces are awakened that drive him beyond the point of obsession and into insanity. For Maud, this is the beginning of a battle to survive in a world haunted by devils, protect her beloved Fen, and uncover the demons of her father’s past.

I absolutely loved the atmosphere of this book. It is dark and spooky, with an air of menace from the very first page, which is entirely down to Michelle Paver’s brilliant writing because nothing overtly scary actually happens for the majority of the story.

Maud is one of the best characters I’ve read recently. Considering that she’s a child and a girl in Edwardian times with literally no power to do anything, she’s surprisingly ballsy. Her courage and intelligence made it impossible not to care about her. And the way she gets revenge on her father without ever attracting suspicion to herself or placing blame on anyone else is just brilliant.

I hadn’t read any of Michelle Paver’s books before Wakenhyrst, but I will definitely be correcting that in the future.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Deliciously atmospheric & gorgeously written, this is a superb gothic thriller that will keep the pages turning late into the night! In an ideal world I'd have read this on a cold night in front of a roaring fire with no one to disturb me! Erudite style & subject matter won't appeal to everyone but the right reader will love it as I did. An unforgettable read that really got underneath my skin. Highly recommended.

I don’t normally read historical crime fiction or gothic based fiction but there was something about the blurb for Wakenhyrst that caught my interest. Little did I know what I’d let myself in for!

Wakenhyrst wasn’t just this historical crime thriller that I was expecting; for me it turned into a bit of a historic psychological thriller. Anything that happened to Maud’s father, Edmund I questioned whether it was actually happening, whether someone was causing these things to happen or whether Edmund was just mad! This could actually say more about me and my love of psychological thrillers – the way Ms Paver has written the story made me doubt whether the events I was reading about were real!

Our leading lady Maud, I really didn’t know what to make of her. She’s lived an oppressed life in the shadow of her brother, working as her father’s secretary. But she’s a bright lass and someone who is passionate with a dark side. There is a lot that happens in Maud’s life that is out of her control and as she grows up, she grows in confidence to take control of her life, manipulating those around her. Saying that, I loved her friendship with Clem the gardener; there is a feel of innocence that comes with first love which is endearing

There is a thick air of mystery to the story. The household is shrouded in secrets. I really liked the sinister, gothic feel I got from Wakenhyrst and I’ll be looking out for more!

Before I begin I must confess – I clearly have a thing for historical fiction. Didn’t think I ever would do but I do. So I guess there’s that. We discover something new about ourselves each week.

The other thing I must confess (and this I’ve known for a while now) is that I love, love, love when books tells us the ending (or half the ending) and then the story builds up towards it. If done properly this can be such a hook as people (me) feed desperately on anticipation and try to work out exactly how the story will unfold.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the story is in the journey.

We begin Wakenhyrst in 1966 knowing that Maud’s father, Edmund has been detained in an asylum for years. We are told that one summer day he butchered the first person he saw while Maud looked on. We (the reader) don’t know who he killed and we (the reader but also the other characters) don’t know why he killed them and in such a horrible manner.

But Maud is here to tell us. Her home is in a state of disrepair and so, as an old woman, she is finally selling her story. What unfurls is Maud’s life told by her and interspersed with extracts from her father’s diary which helps paint a picture of what he was like but also what life must have been like living with him.

Remember when I said this about books where you know the ending – If done properly this can be such a hook as people (me) feed desperately on anticipation and try to work out exactly how the story will unfold.

So was it done properly? Oh yes, I like to think so.

But look – if you’re after the gothic horror/ gothic ghost story that marketing seem to be painting this story as then you’re not going to get it.

This is more a tale of what has gone wrong in a young woman’s fraught life. Now Maud is such a riveting character which is a good thing as this story about her life is told through her eyes.

Maud is an intelligent, repressed child who remains an intelligent, repressed young woman but as she grows so does her sense of injustice at the way the world treats certain people. As this sense of injustice grows so does her anger and she uses her anger and intelligence to survive life as best she can.

As Maud navigates these paths of life, simultaneously her father is navigating some completely different paths. When you read her father’s diary entries (entries Maud has also read) you see the depth of what a hateful, privileged, misogynist he truly is.

It’s also via these diary entries that we see his descent into madness.

Now we never fully understand exactly what causes this. Is it mental illness exacerbated by the constant consumption of religious material depicting hell? Is it religious fanaticism taken far too far? Is someone gas-lighting him? Is there something truly disturbing out there in the fen? Or is it a combination of all those things?

Oddly the reason(s) why Edmund goes insane isn’t the most riveting part. In fact, the diary entries which document his thoughts and eventually his fears are the least interesting bit about this story. He is a vile character that we (and Maud) rightfully hate but while his diary gives us insights into his mind and eventually his story crosses path with Maud’s I don’t want to spend a lot of time swimming in his thoughts.

I’m not interested in Edmund. His act of violent murder is the crescendo to which Maud’s traumatic youth builds but Maud’s ‘coming of age’ story is more interesting. She grieves her mother, falls in love, makes an enemy of a maid, renounces god and finds a spiritual home in the fen with its dark history and oppressive atmosphere.

For others the fen is a place of untamed, ungodly wildness whereas for Maud its an extension of her soul and so we feel that outpouring of love across the page.

The setting and description of the time Maud lives is one of the best bits of this book. I can truly picture the wetlands and the house, covered in ivy and slowly rotting while villagers are a mix of local superstition and religious fervor.

It’s sad but the close-mindedness of the time and the oppression that Maud experiences is portrayed just as thickly as the descriptions of the fen.

The writer has deftly crafted a story that slowly builds towards a rotten event. You know its coming but you don’t exactly know what takes place. You guess as you go and hope for the best but it’s like watching a train crash where you can see that neither train is going to be able to swerve.

Reading about Edmund and Maud is watching that happen in slow, painstaking motion.

If you want creepy, gothic horror then Wakenhyrst is not it. If you want a slow burn, painful, historical piece about an intelligent and angry teenage girl desperately trying to outrun her fate within society than this is it.

I know that last sentence makes the book sound terrible but this truly isn’t. It’s well written and thought provoking, it’s sad and horrific with moments of touching kindness that are far too few.

I love Maud.

We should all love Maud.

Michelle Paver appends an extensive Author's Note to her excellent new novel Wakenhyrst; in it she describes the book's genesis - the chance finds and happenings which sparked ideas which in turn formed the basis of her tale. A novel is more than just a clever assemblage of components, of course, and it's in the way she has used her raw material that Michelle Paver's skill is evident, for while her research has been extensive and comprehensive, she has made her facts work, both efficiently and elegantly, for their place in her intricate story.

From disparate sources come an inspired conjunction: a lonely house in the eerie and forbidding Suffolk fens, a medieval 'Doom' discovered by chance, a historian writing a monograph on a fourteenth century mystic, his bright young daughter, overlooked because of her sex. Add to that a dreadful act never admitted or atoned for, a liberal dash of local folklore and a touch of the supernatural, and you have a gothic thriller about obsession, set in the Edwardian era and the 1960s, which should grip you until the final page.

If you've read Dark Matter or Thin Air you'll know how good a Michelle Paver book is; her latest doesn't disappoint.

Set in Edwardian Suffolk is when it all begins. A painted medieval doll is found in a graveyard and something has been awakened. Well what can I say I was hooked from the fist page. Spent most of the time sat on the edge of my seat and in places holding my breath. A very dark gothic thriller par excellence. It had me reading late into the night, with all the lights on and listening for strange noises. This book gave me goosebumps on my goosebumps. An easy five stars and so Highly Recommended.
I would like to thank the author, Head of Zeus and Netgalley for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

I'm grateful to the publisher for inviting me to take part in the Wakenhyrst blogtour and for providing a free advance e-copy of the book via NetGalley.

Having loved Paver's previous two supernatural-tinged novels, Dark Matter and Thin Air, I was delighted to see Wakenhyrst coming - and then to be able to take part in the tour.

Like Dark Matter and Thin Air, at the heart of Wakenhyrst is the social structure of early 20th century England (England not Britain). I say that despite the fact that the previous books were not set in England: they still explored English notions of class and the way that English arrogance impinged on, and fell foul of, other cultures and places.

Wakenhyrst is, very much, set in England (with one short diversion to Brussels) and the English upper class scorn for the beliefs of the 'natives' that featured in Thin Air is here turned back on itself as a dilettante Edwardian gentleman, researching the obscure fifteenth century mystical biography of one Alice Pyett, goes to dark places despite (or because of?) his rejecting the beliefs of the 'lower orders'.

Edmund Stearne is a man 'of spotless reputation' but, to his daughter Maud, a forbidding and pernickety father ("You know my dislike of manhandled newsprint") who enthusiastically administers physical punishment. To his Belgian wife he is a tyrant ('It was Father who had decreed what Mama ate, read, did and thought...') As a girl, indeed as a woman, Maud is slighted, discounted, disregarded. Edmund knows what he wants - his wife pregnant (she suffers an endless series of miscarriages - Maud comes to dread 'the moaning'), his daughter silent in the nursery, and servant girl Ivy at his disposal ('Nor did he regard what he regularly did with Ivy as anything but the satisfaction of a lawful appetite'). Allegedly a religious man, it would be overgenerous even to label the contents of the diary we're allowed to read here as hypocritical. Indeed there's a vein of outright misogyny in Edward ('Women are all the same. Devious, hypocritical, corrupt') and also in his pals the local doctor and the Vicar. The subordinate role of a young woman in that time and place is made very plain: when she seeks their help in a crisis, Maud is threatened, told to stop being hysterical sent on her way. Throughout the book, Ivy and Maud are at odds, seeking to undermine one another, even though the cause of their problems is not their own relationship but the stultifying, patriarchal, power of Maud's father.

But this isn't just a story of how bad things were in the past and how much better they have become. Paver is shrewder than that. The book opens in 1966 with a quoted newspaper article which is, in its own way, just as patronising, just as set on keeping women in their place, as Doctor, Parson and Squire at their worst. Describing the discovery of some sublime artworks created by Edmund in his later life, it introduces the academic who first recognised them thus:

' "My hair stood on end," shrills Dr Robin Hunter, 36, a mini-skirted redhead in white vinyl boots...'

That article portrays the elderly, reclusive Maud, still living in her decayed childhood home out in the Fens, as at best, a bitter old maid, at worst, a murderer and witch - and naturally, as in conflict with another woman, her cook. Plus ca change... Initially unwilling to share the real story, despite the calumny directed at her, Maud eventually relents (a storm has damaged the roof, she needs money) and admits to her confidence that same Dr Hunter.

We then hear Maud's account, interspersed with entries from her father's diaries. This is where the real story begins - of a lonely girl with a strict father, growing up amidst the wildness of the Fens. Young Maud's life is marked by contrasts, for example between the different customs, of her father and of the villagers, which she must or mustn't follow (sometimes she can't remember which is which). There's the language itself - while the elderly Maud speaks with a 'cut glass accent' it's clear that she is or was perfectly fluent in the local dialect:

' "D-don't fret thysen,' she stammered, unthinkingly lapsing into village talk. "I told thee I wanted to go babbing..." '
In keeping with that, it's clear that everyone - not just the working people but Maud, her mother, Edmund himself - has recourse at one time or another to the potions and remedies of the village wisewoman.

There is the contrast between the entitled, complacent world of men (principally her father) and the second class existence of women.

And between the buttoned-up public attitudes of the trinity who preside over this world and their secret behaviour.

Above all, the story contrasts Edmund Stearne's public reputation as 'a rich landowner and respected historian' with a private dread that he has committed a terrible sin (even if he protests to his diary that he can't remember what it was, and that anyway it wasn't his fault). His fear drives an obsession with Pyett's text, which seems to him to parallel his own case. This is an aspect of the story that only surfaces gradually (there is a lot submerged in the Fen) and indirectly, and saying too much would spoil the effect. The slowly emerging picture does, though, underly a growing atmosphere of menace which makes this book truly Gothic. Paver signals what may be going on with language that alludes to the master of this genre, MR James, from details (toad-like carvings on a pew, Stearne's almost tripping as he comes downstairs, his feeling as if he had been bitten) to turns of phrase ( '...whoever painted that picture painted the demon from life') and overall themes (the fear of a hairy thing that has been let loose, the story's focus on a lone scholar and its being told, in part, looking back some fifty years through a manuscript account). We could be reading one of those stories where an accusing spectre haunts the guilty, slowly driving them over the edge of sanity.

Whether that is, in the end, the case - well, I won't say any more about that. You should read the book and make up your own mind. But it is clear that there is much more going on than in a classic ghost story, even though Paver uses that form expertly. Apart from the theme of patriarchy, I think there's also an exploration here of the creation of memory, of the importance of story - most obviously of course in older Maud's desire to control the narrative, as one might put it now, but also for example in the way that Stearne says in his diary that he remembers something 'though I didn't before' - he is a most unreliable narrator indeed and seems to me to be reinventing his life and outlook under pressure of - well, of whatever it is. Maud sees Edmund's story take shape and come to life - and eventually realises how it threatens her and those she loves. And in the end she has to take control and make her own truth.

In describing how Maud does that, Paver has, in a sense, to go beyond the supernatural and show how some horrors are actually worse - because more universal - than the shades haunting remote mountain peaks or isolated Arctic bases and which her previous books turned on. Wakenhyrst depicts a sense of unearned entitlement, the systematic application of privilege and the embrace of hypocrisy, both in the Edwardian summer and the topsy turvy '60s, which to me is actually much more chilling than a vengeful ghost keening in the Fen.

It is a powerful, enthralling book which I'd encourage you to read. If you need any more urging, it's also a beautifully designed thing, the cover tactile and brooding, the endpapers leafy and glorious, the pages crawling with the life of the Fens - the design by Stephen McNally really enhancing the experience of reading this book (yes, I was sent an e-copy, yes I have bought the hardback - there was no way wasn't going to have this on my shelves). And there's much, much more than ice been able to cram into this review: the teeming wildlife of the Fens, Maud's later life - only sketched but Paver does it so well that we can join the dots - and even some romance.

This will definitely going to be one of my standout books of the year.

The blogtour continues - see the poster below for other excellent reviews - and you can buy Wakenhyrst from your local bookshop, including via Hive, from Blackwell's, Waterstones or Amazon (and doubtless other places besides).