I went into this with no expectations at all. I had been mildly interested in it before its nomination for the Booker Prize, and that made me pick it up sooner. But I don’t much care for dystopian books, and though the concept behind this is timely and brings up a few important issues, it doesn’t necessarily make me want to read a book about it. Of course, while the nomination for the Booker made me pick it up, it also increased my expectations of the book, which might not have been a great thing as it turns out.
To back up, this story is, as the title would suggest, about a wall. Specifically, it is about a giant wall that has been built along the entire British coast and that is guarded 24/7 by young conscriptees called “Defenders.” The context is never really explained, but we get the sense that this is taking place some distance in the future – at least one generation, maybe two down the road. Something called “The Change” has occurred, and we are left to assume this is related to climate change. It has left most of the world unlivable and so people called “The Others” are constantly attempting to breach the Wall to enter Britain out of desperation. But we don’t get any more than that. We don’t know exactly what the world looks like now, how much of it is still habitable, where exactly most of these “Others” are coming from, or even when exactly it’s taking place.
I had a few issues with this book right off the bat. The first was the lack of context. I hate it when an author doesn’t give us a proper setting or description of events at any point in the book. Even worse when they later try to drop some of that missing info in by making a character say things that don’t flow with the conversation they’re having (as happens with Hifa’s mother when discussing her Help). I abhor this. Just start us off with some info at the beginning and then get on with the story. Don’t later break the flow to insert it out of turn. The second issue I had was the capitalization of terms that feel a bit strained to begin with: Others, Wall, Defenders, Change, Help. Yeah, I get that these are important terms, but they’re also ones that annoy me without the capitalization. Next, my biggest pet peeve: when dystopian authors decide to come up with unique names for everyday objects solely to create a sense that this isn’t our time and place. The biggest example of this in The Wall is that phones are now called “communicators.” The term telephone has been around for as long as any form of the device has existed, and if the same term could be used for old-school rotary devices and the mini computers we now carry around in our pockets, no way does it feel realistic to me that in a couple of generations people will change that name. And finally, ongoing discussion of attack tactics. How the Others are less likely to attack when the weather is bad or the Defenders have good visibility, but because everyone knows that, it is now more likely because they will be trying to get the element of surprise. This is talked about several times, and each time as if this is a complex idea that needs extra explaining and no one would have thought of. Give your readers some credit. Plus that isn’t really how strategic advantage works – when you’re approaching by open ocean sure, in theory it would be great to attack when they don’t expect you to, but they don’t expect you to because it would be a suicide mission – they would see you coming miles off. This cerebral hypothesizing is all well and good, but it just doesn’t make any actual sense.
So yeah, I wasn’t that thrilled with some of the nuts and bolts of the dystopian world-building in this novel. On top of that, the book just isn’t that interesting. It’s slow to get going, slow in the middle, and only a little less slow at the end. I get that some of that was necessary to build the feeling of what it would be like to spend 12 hours a day staring out at an empty ocean in the biting cold. But there comes a point when it needs to pick up, and for me, it felt like even when action happened, there wasn’t any shift in the overall momentum of the writing. I was bored a lot, and I suspect if I wasn’t trying to read through as many of the longlist as I could, I would have just given up on it.
I feel like, in addition to needing more intro at the beginning, we needed more character development. I had no concept of the world our main character, Kavanaugh is living in (are there other countries out there? If so, which ones? How many people are alive? Why are the Others so intent on getting over this huge wall if there are other habitable parts of the world? If there aren’t other habitable parts of the world, how come the UK is the only place who built a wall in time?) but I didn’t really know anything about this guy we’re spending our time with. I didn’t know what his childhood was like, if he had any friends or family outside of his parents (who he doesn’t seem to care about, on the thin basis that they treat him differently because they feel guilty about their generation failing to avert whatever disaster culminated in the Change). I don’t know what he liked to do with his spare time before becoming a Defender, or the type of person he was. I don’t know if I like him, and have no reason to care what happens to him. In a book like this, I needed a little of that personal information and context to make me feel something – anything – about what was happening in the book.
I will say that the book is a chilling portrayal of where the world could end up if we don’t review our approach to halting climate change, and if we don’t change our ideas about migration and refugees. I know that was the point of this book, and I think Lanchester did a good job of the atmosphere of a world that has no options or opportunities and barely a chance of survival for most. The end of the book was particularly effective in demonstrating this. There are some parts of the book when the writing did manage to be evocative, but generally it was about a singular situation or event or place, and that feeling dissipated pretty quickly. It’s a shame, because if Lanchester had managed to harness that narrative voice and used it to fully develop either the setting or the characters, he really might have been on to something.
I think Lanchester chose not to provide information about how the world ended up where it was in this book because he wanted it to feel immediately possible and let us fill in the blanks with our own understanding of where the world is currently heading. I just don’t think it was as effective as he hoped. Likewise he probably left the main character’s personality blank because he could have been anyone, and in another time he could have been whoever was reading the book. But that lack of character development created a narrative distance that proved impossible to overcome. He also gave his female characters no development at all – particularly towards the end of the book, when he has them caring for children in dire circumstances and has characters having sex without any discussion of what it would mean for the woman to become pregnant in that kind of situation and how terrifying it would be – I sure wouldn’t have been taking that kind of risk. But the main character is male, and it doesn’t seem to occur to him (or, indeed, the author) to really think about how the women must feel with the extra pressure of motherhood and the dangers of pregnancy with no access to medical care. In a book where I was already struggling to build any meaningful emotional connection, this failure on the part of the (male) author to consider and develop his female characters was just insult to injury.
I’m not really sure where this leaves me. I definitely feel like this book suffered in my estimation because its nomination for this year’s Booker Prize longlist created higher expectations. But I don’t think it’s that strong of a book even without that extra pressure. I’m not really sure why it’s on the list unless it’s strictly based on the fact that it takes on two of the biggest issues the world is facing at the moment: climate change and migration. I don’t agree with a book being put on the list solely based on subject matter when the writing isn’t that strong, so I find it hard to root for this book to make it to the shortlist.
I know this book has been divisive. Some reviewers I watch and read had a similarly “meh” response to my own, while others loved it and thought it was a brilliant literary work. I have no idea who has a more accurate view of the work, or if it is entirely a matter of perspective and relative views of the importance of different elements in a work of literary fiction. I would be interested to hear from any of you who have read this. Did you find it difficult to connect to emotionally? Did you feel like the narrative choices were ineffective? Or did you love it? If so, why? I definitely feel like there must be something here I’m missing, so I’d love to hear from anyone who has a dissenting opinion to my own!
Kavanagh begins his life patrolling the Wall. If he’s lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has two years of this, 729 more nights.
The best thing that can happen is that he survives and gets off the Wall and never has to spend another day of his life anywhere near it. He longs for this to be over; longs to be somewhere else.
He will soon find out what Defenders do and who the Others are. Along with the rest of his squad, he will endure cold and fear day after day, night after night. But somewhere, in the dark cave of his mind, he thinks: wouldn’t it be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if you had to fight for your life?
John Lanchester’s thrilling, hypnotic new novel is about why the young are right to hate the old. It’s about a broken world you will recognise as your own-and about what might be found when all is lost. – Goodreads
Book Title: The Wall
Author: John Lanchester
Series: No
Edition: Hardback
Published By: Faber and Faber
Released: January 17, 2019
Genre: Fiction, Dystopian, Issue-Driven
Pages: 276
Date Read: August 7-9, 2019
Rating: 3 or 4/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.67/5 (3,098 ratings)