
The Wall
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Will Poulter
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By:
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John Lanchester
About this listen
The best-selling author of The Debt to Pleasure and Capital returns with a chilling fable for our time.
Ravaged by the Change, an island nation in a time very like our own has built the Wall - an enormous concrete barrier around its entire coastline. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls who are trapped amid the rising seas outside and are a constant threat. Failure will result in death or a fate perhaps worse: being put to sea and made an Other himself. Beset by cold, loneliness, and fear, Kavanagh tries to fulfill his duties to his demanding captain and sergeant, even as he grows closer to his fellow Defenders. A dark part of him wonders whether it would be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if he had to fight for his life....
John Lanchester - acclaimed as "an elegant and wonderfully witty writer" (New York Times) and "a writer of rare intelligence" (Los Angeles Times) - has crafted a taut, hypnotic novel of a broken world and what might be found when all is lost. The Wall blends the most compelling issues of our time - rising waters, rising fear, rising political division - into a suspenseful story of love, trust, and survival.
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Slow start sneaks up on you and whispers truth
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it is cold wall
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A Climate Crisis Viewpoint
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The start is quite a slog. I understand the literary tool of setting a mood by drawing the minutia and monotony in excruciating detail, and I cannot deny it works. I just don't like it as a tool. Perhaps it is used here to contrast life's three regions: within, on, and outside the wall. As I can identify that as a possibility, the tool must work, a bit, at least, but the tone never changes. The story is only ever related in the same flat and pointless manner. Our protagonist only cares about getting off the Wall, but the thought of it seems not to give him any actual hope. So everything is grey, everything is a waste of time and effort.
I feel Lanchester misses a great opportunity to investigate society and human nature when he simply skips what could have been an incredibly interesting tension between those who choose to have and those who choose not to have children. In the story, the ones who have no children just find those who do a bit odd, and nothing more is said on the matter. I simply don't buy it. A Great Britain surrounded by a large wall would run into population trouble fast, as is hinted at in the story. And under pressure, humanity tends not to work all that well. There is no way society would not become this awkward, potentially violent mess where childless people consider themselves morally superior to those who make babies, while the "breeders" think they are the more responsible for the future. By and large, we love to hate what we love, and the distinction between having and not having children in a world suffering significant ecological collapse is not likely to be exempt from this.
Chewy, the protagonist, is boring as a single, regular, dusty, red brick. Maybe there's a small crack in the brick, but it's not large enough to explore. I mean, he has nothing more to say about the world after everything went to shit than that he hates the previous generation (like so many generations before him), and that he looks forward till military service is over? He has a lucid moment where he reflects on treason towards the end, but that's about it for any individuality and thought.
I'm not going to say it was a waste of time to listen to The Wall, but I also do not feel like I leave it having become better in some way, or that I have been shown interesting art or philosophy. Not everything needs to be that, though, and the narration is great at capturing the mood, serving the story up in as good a dressing as can be. For my part, I am glad to put it down, and look forward to more interesting fare ahead.
It's OK
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conjunction with The Inhospirable Earth for an additional kick to start truly caring for this precious orb.
A Slice of Future Time
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