At just nine years old, Maud Sterne begins to realise how unfair and unforgiving the world can be. At ten she glimpses the true brutality of her father and the desperation that rattles away inside her poor mother. At eleven, she begins to question everything around her. The way her father and brother disregard and crush any hopes, aspirations and desires she has because she is a girl. The way simple pleasures such as reading are banned and injustices are allowed, the way her freedom is kept so far from her own hands. Her single consolation is the natural world. The birds and the eels and the wildlife all around her in the fen and the hope of one day sharing their freedom.

For such a long time, she has struggled to unravel the subtext to words whispered around her but now she is starting to glimpse the truth, so frightening and brutal in so many ways. The truth about her father. Her mother and the world around her.

Maud lives a somewhat isolated life with her family at Wake’s End, an old Manor House in Wakenhyrst. Edward Sterne, her father, is a historian and scholar, deeply religious and devoted to his beliefs. He is also a tyrant. Cruel, malicious and wicked. He is fuelled by his own wants and needs, regardless of how they hurt those around him. When he finds a centuries old painting in the undergrowth near Wake’s End, his grasp on reality falters. Secretly reading his journal, Maud is an unknown audience to her father’s sprawl into madness. But neither of them will ever predict what is about to happen and how it will alter their future.

Wakenhyrst buzzes with tension and atmosphere. Maud is a character you can’t help but admire and applaud, her strength, determination and resilience is apparent in every page. I hated Edward for his cruelty and arrogance. The author has crafted such a vivid portrait of these characters. They draw you into a seamless story of strength and weakness, hope and fear, reality and insanity.

Vivid. Shocking. Atmospheric.

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.

Michelle Paver's Dark Matter and Thin Air are two of my favourite ghost stories, so I was particularly excited to read Wakenhyrst, a claustrophobic piece of rural gothic set in the flat, damp murk of the Suffolk Fens. At the start of the book, it's the 1960s and an elderly woman, Maud Stearne, is living alone at Wake's End, a fenland manor house near the isolated village of Wakenhyrst. Maud is the daughter of Edmund Stearne, who, back in the Edwardian era when Maud was still a girl, was sent to Broadmoor after murdering a young man in a horrific, entirely unprovoked frenzy and subsequently became known for the apocalyptic paintings he produced while locked up there. Keen to write a book about what happened at Wake's End, an academic visits the mysterious Maud in the hope of persuading her to tell her story.

That story, which forms the rest of the book, is a strange and absorbing one. The landscape and wildlife of the fens - sometimes beautiful, sometimes sinister - are richly described in every detail. Maud adores the fen on the family's land, fascinated by its birds, animals and insects and befriending the mysterious Jubal Rede, a hermit-like outcast who survives there. Father, meanwhile, detests it. Surely a man like Father - an almost puritanical Protestant and a classical scholar - can't believe the locals' tales of the imp-like demons and spirits that live there. Does he simply abhor anything that's wild and untamed? Or does the fen have other, darker associations for him? And how might it be connected with the Wakenhyrst Doom, the mediaeval painting of the Last Judgement which has just been accidentally uncovered at the local church?

At the heart of the story throughout, Maud is a pleasingly complex character and it's fascinating to watch her naivety fall away and her heart harden as she comes to realise the truth about her father and to understand more fully the misogyny at the root of women's place in Edwardian society. As for the other characters, we see them only through eyes of Maud and in the pages of Father's diary, so it's left to us to try and imagine them without those filters. Is Ivy the maid really as mercenary as Maud believes her to be and as lascivious as Father's depiction of her? Or is she simply seeking a route out of her desperate poverty in the only way, after a life of abuse, she knows how?

You can feel the tensions and frustrations of the stifling rigidity of the Stearnes' family life that imposed by Father throughout this book. Father's control over his Belgian wife, Maud's adored Maman, is particularly chilling and there's a horrible inevitability to her fate. Maman is almost permanently pregnant, suffering miscarriages and stillbirths at least once a year which sap her mental and physical strength, but any suggestion by the doctor to Father that contraceptive methods or even just self-control ('Perhaps not every night, eh?') might save her is met with a dismissive disdain that tells us, and Maud, everything we need to know about Father's attitude to women, and the underlying hypocrisy of his religious views, which can apparently be readily bent to allow him his own pleasures, but not to allow Maman to keep mementos of her own dead children, a practice Father deems too much like Catholic idolatry.

Folklore and superstitions run through this book, with the village people, including the Wake's End servants, imbuing almost every act and object with significance and ritual. Magpies are bad omens because their pied feathers suggest they didn't wear mourning for Christ. Women mustn't wash while menstruating. Toads are devils in disguise. Superstition is just as oppressive as organised religion seems to be here, a source of constant fear and anxiety that drives people to pointless cruelty. There's also just enough ambiguity about Father's madness for even Maud, and us as readers, not to be immune to the suggestion that there's something of the supernatural about Wake's End.

While I didn't find this book frightening, exactly, it's extremely atmospheric and has a strong sense of the past not just haunting but defining the present. It's not a fast-paced story, but it shouldn't be - if it were, it would jar with the notion of time passing slowly with the seasons, and with the boredom and loneliness which shape Maud's character and interests. While this isn't a terrifying chiller like Paver's ghost stories, this beautifully written Edwardian folk horror tale gripped me from the very start.

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.

This Gothic tale of dark-doings in the Fens is something of a departure for Michelle Paver, being more psychological horror rather than a truly paranormal tale. There are ghostly goings-on for sure, but are supernatural forces at work, or is it all the delusion of an obsessed, deranged mind? With it’s sinister overtones of madness and a dark past washing over the present, Wakenhyrst reminded me more of Rebecca than the author’s previous work.
In so many ways, the truest horror to be found at Wakenhyrst is the misfortune of being born female at a time when women were disregarded and of little value to most men - other than as brood mares for sons. This mundane aspect of the tale was the most vicious of all, far more sinister than the dark aspect of purportedly cursed Mediaeval paintings and the supposed horrors of the surrounding fen.
The story is peopled by memorable Fenland characters whose old ways and superstitions make for sharp contrast against the supposed modernity of encroaching science - and which are most deluded? The religious villagers, who still secretly fear witchcraft and leave a bowl of bread and milk at the door every night, or the smug, complacent certainty of Edwardian males who cannot contemplate that notion a solid, decent, public-school chap might conceivably go mad?
The tale is a compelling one. The mysteries at Wakenhyrst’s heart make for a deeply-engaging, page-turning read, laced with a darkly, claustrophobic sense of threat and impending disaster that builds to a truly catastrophic end.

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.