Maud is a wonderful character, brave and smart, and the phenomenal storytelling keeps the reader turning the pages to the very end.

While much of the novel is set in the Edwardian era, the tale of female oppression is timely. Wake’s End and the surrounding fens provide the perfect atmospheric setting and it haunted my thoughts long after I put the book down. It is a masterwork in the modern gothic tradition that ranges from Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker to Neil Gaiman and Sarah Perry. Wakenhyrst is an outstanding new piece of story-telling by Michelle Paver, a tale of mystery and imagination laced with terror. Maud struggles to 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. When he finds a painted medieval devil in a graveyard, unhallowed forces are awakened and he descends into madness and paranoia. Maud is a lonely child who secretly reads her father’s personal journals. Through Maude, and her father’s journals, we are propelled into a chilling past.Īfter Maud’s mother died in childbirth, she was raised by her father, a historian and a controlling man. And while she’s remained silent until now, she needs some money to fix some storm damage on her historic home, Wake’s End, so agrees to meet the journalist. She witnessed her father, icepick in hand.

Did he really commit murder all those years ago? Maud knows. The discovery of three paintings by her father, Edmund Stearne, completed during his time in an asylum, has a reporter asking questions.

At nearly 70, Maud Stearne has been living the life of a recluse for 50 years in the tiny village of Wakenhyrst in the Suffolk fens. Spanning five centuries, Wakenhyrst is a grand gothic tale and psychological thriller.

Wakenhyrst by michelle paver