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    Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition
    Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition
    Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition
    Ebook294 pages6 hours

    Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition

    By Russell Hoban

    4/5

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    "A hero with Huck Finn's heart and charm, lighting by El Greco and jokes by Punch and Judy. . . . Riddley Walker is haunting and fiercely imagined and—this matters most—intensely ponderable." —Benjamin DeMott, The New York Times Book Review

    "This is what literature is meant to be." —Anthony Burgess

    "Russell Hoban has brought off an extraordinary feat of imagination and style. . . . The conviction and consistency are total. Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece." —Anthony Thwaite, Observer

    "Extraordinary . . . Suffused with melancholy and wonder, beautifully written, Riddley Walker is a novel that people will be reading for a long, long time." —Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

    "Stunning, delicious, designed to prevent the modern reader from becoming stupid." —John Leonard, The New York Times

    "Highly enjoyable . . . An intriguing plot . . . Ferociously inventive." —Walter Clemons, Newsweek

    "Astounding . . . Hoban's soaring flight of imagination is that golden rarity, a dazzlingly realized work of genius." —Jane Clapperton, Cosmopolitan

    "An imaginative intensity that is rare in contemporary fiction.' —Paul Gray, Time

    Riddley Walker is a brilliant, unique, completely realized work of fiction. One reads it again and again, discovering new wonders every time through. Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state—and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture—rebel, change agent, and artist. Read again or for the first time this masterpiece of 20th-century literature with new material by the author.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndiana University Press
    Release dateSep 22, 1998
    ISBN9780253008510
    Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition
    Author

    Russell Hoban

    Russell Hoban (1925-2011) was the author of many extraordinary novels including Turtle Diary, Angelica Lost and Found and his masterpiece, Riddley Walker. He also wrote some classic books for children including The Mouse and his Child and the Frances books. Born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, USA, he lived in London from 1969 until his death.

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    Reviews for Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Read this book ages ago. It popped up as a suggesstion on Goodreads because I am currently reading The Cloud Atlas. Both books are amazing feats of imagination, and both take us into a post apocalyptic future where English has evolved into something quite different from what we know today.
    • 4/5
      "People ask me how I got from St. Eustace to Riddley Walker and all I can say is that it's a matter of being friends with your head. Things come into the mind and wait to hook up with other things; there are places that can heighten your responses, and if you let your head go its own way it might, with luck, make interesting connections."in "Riddley Walker by Russell HobanI was initially a doubter, even a hater of “Riddley Walker.” Thanks to this great RG and many friends from TLS, I was converted to a great admirer of Hoban and a mega fan of this extraordinary book. In the end, it has worked for me on every level. But I shall only comment on its spirituality from the angle of eastern mysticism, the most satisfying aspect for me.The first major influence for our 12-year old hero is tel-woman Lorna. Her teaching is the 1st Knowing, the pure awareness at the background of all sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions. Riddley becomes in tune with this force of nature, that is generally obsured in humans by the over-busy mynding, programing, trying to outmanoeuvre the others, eg Goodparley for the Big Power. Riddley is able to tune out, of the human mind, to listen for directions from the 1st Knowing. He can be dog friendly, and later, is chosen by the dog leader, his nexters and the pack who eventually follow him and become his hevvys, while Ardship of Cambry is dropped. This is the great indicator that the Force is with Riddley.But he is also almost lost to the resistible pull of the dark force when he senses the past Big Power at the now ruined Power Ring. There is a most powerful scene summarized like this: 'Not jus my coc* but all of me it wer like all of me wer coc* and all the worl a cun* and open to me.' That's the Power all the players succumb to: look at Abel, after losing everything and his eyes, once he knows Granser can make 1 Littl 1 happen, he forgets all and wants a piece of that Power again. But not Riddley, it is meant to be he cudnt hol it at the Power Ring, and he discovers the True meaning of the hart of the wud in the hart of the stoan: 'Onlyes Power if No Power'. Later he realises more: 'Its the not struggling for Power that’s where the Power is.' He stays away from Granser's experiment when they gone bang.But the most important spiritual teaching is here when Riddley contemplates his one connexion experience: 'I begun with trying to pul it to gether poal by poal only my reveal dint come that way it snuck me woaly...Ready to cry ready to dy ready for any thing is how I come to it now. In fear and tremmering only not running a way. In emtyness and ready to be fult. Not to lern no body nothing I cant even lern my oan self all I can do is try not to get in front of whats coming. Jus trying to keep out of the way of it.'And the final realization that: ' Or may be there aint no such thing as a 1 Big 1 or a Littl 1 its jus only all 1 and what diffrent things you see in the chayjing lites of the diffrent times of the girt dants of the every thing. Sum tyms bytin sum tyms bit.' In this light, what does it matter if Walker & Orfing are roading the New Show - the awful Punch show, them dogs are following, and new followers are attracted like Rightway and his brother, 'They boath of them have wives and childer the woal lot roadit out with us they jus slung ther bundels and a way.' I know I will if I wer there.I think RW is like concentrated juice. You have to gradually dilute it to see all the intertwined themes and images it contains. Hoban has boiled down his original five hundred pages without losing any of the vitamins.In Riddley's culture he is a young adult: we learn on page 1 that "my naming day when I come 12" is "the day I come a man". More importantly, Riddley's language is not badly-written modern English. Spelling, grammar, punctuation and word usage are completely consistent, except when Riddley is accurately reproducing what (to him) are ancient texts. You might ask whether it's realistic that a twelve-year old in any society could pull this off, but it's a literary convention that young protagonists tell their story without committing childish errors of language. Besides, Riddley is unusually smart. As Fister Crunchman tells him: "I aint no where near as qwick as you. Your myndy dont you see." The rest of this conversation shows us that despite his own protests Fister himself is pretty sharp.The language is what makes this book, working at multiple levels. For a start, it gives the reader an instant sense of estrangement, telling us from the first line, at a gut level, that we are in a world very different from ours. Then, as Hoban has said, the difficulty of reading it slows the reader down to Riddley's own speed, and it makes you read unusually carefully. Like many science fiction novels, Riddley Walker has to tell many stories at once: as well as the surface plot, it has to describe Riddley's world and how it came to be. While some of this is done by the traditional stories Riddley tells us, a lot is told by the language itself. We don't need Lorna to tell us that "bint no writing for 100s and 100s of years" because it's obvious that spelling has been lost and re-invented. The fact that the language is full of computing metaphors tells us that the 1 Big 1 happened quite a long time in the future of the mid-'70s when it was written. Words like "crowd" for tribe and "hevvy" for warrior clue us in to how this society emerged from ours in the Bad Time.The language of Riddley Walker is often described as broken or degenerate, but I think it has just evolved. Words have shifted and changed their meaning due to creative misunderstanding, but that's what drives language change all the time. Of course, with the loss of written literature, a lot of vocabulary have been lost ("I dont even know 1/2 these words" says Riddley, and neither does Goodparley, despite having access to all the Mincery's records). In modern English we usually have several words for a concept, each with its own overtones. For Riddley, it's the other way round: each word is overloaded with different meanings. No doubt this encourages his mystical bent. It also makes the text deeply poetic (along with Riddley's (or Hoban's) natural bent) which is why for many readers it lingers long in the mind.NB: Review written a la Hoban.
    • 4/5
      Breathtaking - on reflection I might have to upgrade with another star. I love books written in dialect and while Hoban has created the language of Riddley Walker's far future time, he's done such a great job that it has all the depth of a real language. I also love that I had no idea where the book was going from the start right to the end. While the narrator becomes a man on the first page he's only 12 and no more than a few weeks older by the end, but the book never for a moment slips into Young Adult mode. Brilliant.
    • 5/5
      Perfect. Beautiful.
    • 3/5
      This book is written in not just the "voice" but the spelling and language of a boy growing up in a unique, apparently post-apocalyptic culture in the region around what in our world is Canterbury in England. It is very cleverly done, and develops the culture and mythology of the culture very effectively, but I find it too depressing to enjoy reading.
    • 5/5
      I have just finished reading the Folio Society Limited edition of Riddley Walker.The post-apocalyptic theme is a common one in science fiction, but in Riddley Walker, it is approached in a unique way as it uses the language of the 44th. century rather than our own.As a result, it is not a fast book to read, but you soon get used to the new words and altered definitions of known words. Just let your eyes flow across the words and the meaning seems to become clear. Checking the glossary at the end of the book would have helped, but I only found this after I had finished.To describe it as a nitty-gritty version of the dystopian future is a gross understatement. The rough edges grate on your consciousness, and as a result it is probably a far more realistic version of this possible future than that portrayed by the more dramatic authors of the genre.The FS edition is superb with its dark moody textural cover (and page edge washes), heavy paper and large type (helps ion reading the strange dialect). The illustrations by Quentin Blake perfectly fit the dialogue, and are at exactly the right place in the text.A book that I will remember for a long time, and this edition is highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      An amazing book. It’s written entirely in a fairly dense, invented dialect, and thick with symbolism, so it took some effort. But it was very rewarding and I’ve been thinking on it a lot since I finished it a few days ago. I gather that some editions have glossaries and explanatory notes, but mine does not. I did find this comprehensive set of annotations online, with contributions by the author, after I finished it. I’m glad I only saw it after I was done.Here’s the first paragraph:"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later.' The other spears gone in then and he wer dead and the steam coming up off him in the rain and we all yelt, 'Offert!'”Harold Bloom put it on his canon long-list.
    • 5/5
      I discovered Riddley Walker by attempting, and totally failing, to finish a book that I'd heard rip-roaringly good things about, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.To be fair, I was only attracted to Cloud Atlas because I'd heard it featured a dystopia. I was fresh out of college, working in a library, and all I'd been interested in reading about was the end of the world. I happily picked my way through wikipedia's lists of dystopic works,until I got to Cloud Atlas. It became a slog: I only reached the end of the first half-story, then, lip curled, turned again to the internet to find out what happened in the rest.It turns out that Mitchell, in his novel's post-apocalyptic center, was inspired by Russell Hoban, whose name I recognized from the Frances picture books from my childhood. I found a copy on the shelves of our library, and dove in.And it was a dive: Riddley Walker was one of those most immersive reading experiences of my life. Hoban's invented language--as complex as Burgess' in A Clockwork Orange, but, perhaps, more poetic--seemed to change the book from a fairly simple story about a boy coming of age in a Bronze-Era-like society after the fall of man to some sort of integral, sacred text. I usually read quickly: Riddley Walker forced me to slow down, and in doing so the landscape around me seemed to transform. I remember standing on the brick track behind the library where I worked as the sun went down and feeling the soggy natural potential in the world around me.It's difficult for me to talk about this book and not sound either sentimental or trite; it's difficult for me to talk about it in terms of plot, or character. Riddley Walker to me seems to be more of a history, or a mythology. It has the same slippery quality that Homeric works have, the same intangible magic as the Tao Te Ching or the Bible.And no one's heard of it.Oh, that's not entirely true, I suppose. People have. There are annotated webpages, goodreads reviews. But I've never met anyone familiar with the book. Because the experience of reading it was so strange and so affecting, I talk about it whenever I can. I have had more than one person tell me that it sounds like Cloud Atlas; have I read Cloud Atlas? At that, I can't help but wistfully shake my head. This isn't a post-modernist nesting doll gimmick of a book. This is something else entirely.Riddley Walker should be seen as required reading for anyone who is interested in doing something beyond telling a story when they write a book. This is the story of a boy, and a death, and Punch and Judy, and the government, and what happens following the fall of our world. But it's so much more than that, too--it's the story of the world, and it's a world in itself, too.This review is part of Road Trip Wednesday, YA Highway's "Blog Carnival," of weekly writing- and reading- related questions. This week's question was "what's an unheard-of book you love?"
    • 3/5
      Fantastic idea and well executed...but I stopped caring about the journey and, eventually, the characters.
    • 3/5
      A frustrating book. A postapocalyptic "story" mainly concerned with language: the broken, caveman-like English of its world; the way today's words morph into future misinterpretations; the poetic run-on sentences that swirl hypnotically.

      Some of this is entrancing—the short stories the protagonists tell are spooky little oddities. But the book as a whole is very poorly plotted and redundant. It's hard to parse out how B follows from A in it, and when it all ends, it doesn't accomplish much.

      The language is fun to figure out about 5% of the time. For the rest of the book, it just feels like work to sound it out and decide what each phonetic name stands for. The answer is sometimes clever, sometimes overclever.

      Halfway through the book, I wished for a modern-English "translation" of it. By the end, I didn't think it would quite be worth the trouble to produce one.

      I'd suggest reading chapter one of Alan Moore's 'Voice of The Fire' instead—it does more and says more with an even simpler English and a world even more bare.
    • 5/5
      Russell Hoban’s 1980 post-apocalyptic masterpiece Riddley Walker was a book handed to me with the words, “It’s a little difficult, but you’ll enjoy it.” Half right. Hoban’s book follows the adventures of the eponymous Walker, a twelve year-old boy who has just passed his “Naming Day,” thus becoming a man. He lives in a world that has self-destructed in a conflagration that the survivors call “the 1 Big 1,” the nuclear apocalypse with which our generation continually seems to flirt. This is not, however, a tale of the few stragglers suffering through fallout and nuclear winter so familiar from dozens of films covering similar territory; rather, much like Walter Miller Jr.’s excellent novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, the story is set ages past the event, over 2000 years in this case.Humanity has devolved, culture appearing only in the form of a travelling puppet show which serves as entertainment, education, and political propaganda all at the same time. Hoban cleverly echoes this devolution linguistically. The story is set in southeastern England, in and around Canterbury, and the language the characters speak has its roots in English; however, like humanity in general (in which society has been reduced to individuals struggling to survive), the language has devolved to individual phonemes, with complex words often broken up into smaller units (surprise = sir prize, Canterbury = Cambry), most still recognizable, but many requiring a bit of work to decipher. That said, Hoban’s work is much easier to understand if you read it aloud – often, hearing the words gives you the phonetic equivalent, and when that doesn’t work, context helps quite a bit as well. This was the “It’s a little difficult” that my friend referred to, but to be perfectly honest, the language contains an inner logic that makes it fairly easy to comprehend, once you get a couple of chapters into the book. And if you’ve already tackled Finnegans Wake or A Clockwork Orange, you’re well-armed to make the attempt.The beginning of the story finds Walker becoming his village’s “connexion man,” a position vacated when his father dies in an accident. This requires him to make pseudo-mystical comments about the travelling puppet show I mentioned earlier, a show that travels from town to town and presented by two “Eusa men,” representatives of what stands for a government in this rather ephemeral society. His comments are intended to provide wisdom to his fellow villagers; however, Walker experiences a truly mystical vision, which frightens everyone around him – and ultimately, leads (amongst other things) to Walker leaving his village entirely. Once Walker leaves his home, he becomes “dog frendy” (dogs, not terribly impressed with our tendency to self-destruct, have finally given up on humanity – except as tasty hors d’oeuvres), and works towards finding the secret of the “1 Big 1.” What he ends up stumbling upon is something a little less destructive, but altogether just as dangerous within the context of a world that largely relies on sticks and stones (and brute strength).I shan’t give more details than that – read this book, it’s well worth the effort and the time. The edition I read is a new expanded version, which includes notes from Hoban, a couple of drawings he’s done in relation to the novel, and a brief glossary. Well worth the price.Steve’s Grade: A-Riddley Walker is an amazing tour-de-force, portraying a fascinating (and frightening) vision of a world set two millenia after a nuclear holocaust. Fans of science-fiction, literature, and linguistics should not miss, but be prepared – it is not an easy read.
    • 3/5
      Brilliant creation of a world, a language, a culture. Not so good on plot management, and the newageish world view wore me down after a while. It was interesting at first but they go on and on about it. It makes sense in a way, as their belief system is how they (and all of us) make sense of the madness they're in the midst of. I just wished Riddley wouldn't keep writing about it after he ran out of something new to say.
    • 3/5
      I wanted to like Riddley Walker. I really, really did. The problem is that I am not a science fiction consumer by any means. This book will demand your entire attention and hijack your time, thanks to a language that at first blush just looks like horribly spelled English. It's trickier than that and way more brilliant. I didn't have the time or inclination to get into it beyond fifty pages. The story opens with Riddley becoming a man at twelve years old. In post-apocalyptical English Kent, civilization is starting over from tribal scratch. Men carry spears and need to relearn skills like rediscovering fire in order to survive. Once man's best friend, dogs are now killing machines that roam the streets in packs. Riddley finds symbolism in everything.
    • 5/5
      Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban It is a sad truth that if we ever lost the modern world with electricity and all its communications infrastructure then within 3 generations we would be primitives surrounded my artifacts.

      If anyone could describe what the artifacts once did they would not be believed.

      This one of those books that has had a profound impact on me.

      I can say truly that this is one of the best books I have ever read, and I have read it several times. First off it is written is a dystopian dialect of English that can make the beginning a bit difficult. But as you go through light bulbs flash on in your head as you “get” another word. It is set in Kent and the place names are things like “Do It Over” which is Dover, Fork Stone which is Folkeston, they are the simple ones.

      Basically, in a post nuclear Britain, groups of people subsist in primitive compounds to protect them from the dogs and other creatures. The olden times are remembered but only in a mystical, broken way. Everyone seems to talk in riddles and parables. They live in a dark age and know it.

      Their lives are equal part ritual and equal part toil. It is a fragmented, superstitious world. Riddley Walker is born into this and then one day something happens that changes everything.

      Every time you read it more becomes apparent.

      Here is a snippet that I think relates to the time when you can feel that your body is no longer what it was.

      “Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us a part. I dont think I took all that much noatis of it when I ben yung. Now Im old I noatis it mor. It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feal how its tiret of me and readying to throw me a way. Iwl tel you some thing Riddley and keap this in memberment. What ever it is we dont come naturel to it.” I said, “Lorna I dont know what you mean.” She said, “We aint a naturel part of it. We dint begin when it begun we dint begin where it begun. It ben here befor us nor I dont know what we are to it. May be weare jus only sickness and a feaver to it or boyls on the arse of it I dont know. Now lissen what Im going to tel you Riddley. It thinks us but it dont think like us. It dont think the way we think. Plus like I said befor its afeart.” I said, “Whats it afeart of?” She said, “Its afeart of being beartht.” I said, “How can that be? You said it ben here befor us. If it ben here all this time it musve ben beartht some time.” She said, “No it aint ben beartht it never does get beartht its all ways in the woom of things its all ways on the road.”

    • 5/5
      This book is unlike anything I have read before or since - a post-apocalyptic vision of a primitive culture with half lost folk memories of earlier civilisation, written in a consistent imaginary language strongly rooted in modern English but evolved and degraded. The plot follows the eponymous Walker on a trek around Kent, exploring the nature of myth and religion. Unforgettable.
    • 4/5
      The tale itself is a short and slender one, but the way its told is an extraordinary literary achievement. The events of the book take place thousands of years after a nuclear war has destroyed civilization, and humans are living in a kind of Iron Age, dimly aware that mankind was once much greater, and trying to puzzle out the connections between that lost world and their own mucky one. The author immerses you in the look, feel and smell of this place. What is extraordinary is, the entire story is written in the dialect of the time--a kind of smashed English in which words have been broken and put back together many times, like bones that have been fractured and imperfectly set by someone over and over. Some of it will come to you from sounding the words phonetically, and some will come from repetition of the same phrases in different contexts. The hardest part for me were proper and place names-- I'm not overly familiar with the geography or proper names of England, which is where the story takes place. ( I had to look in the glossary to find out "rizlas" were cigarette papers.) The constant repetition wore me down after awhile, and sometimes it seemed like nothing was happening, the characters were just turning things over (and over and over) in their heads. Something truly momentous occurs at the end of chapter 16, and that was an "Aha!" moment for me. There were two Afterwords, a glossary and some notes at the end, and I might have had an easier time if I'd read them first, but I'm kind of glad I muddled through on my own. I will read it again now, and I'm sure I''ll pick up on things I missed the first time. Because the story is told first person by the title character, you really get to know him well and care about him--not so much the other characters. Strangely enough, the only secondary character I really felt anything for was a dog. This isn't an easy book to get through, but well worth the effort as I've never read anything like it.
    • 5/5
      I started this book prepared for it to be difficult to get to grips with, because that's what most of the reviews say. The broken and twisted English, the mutated grammar and future-slang, all adding to the appeal of the story, but hard to wade through. That's not what I found, though.Maybe it's exposure to text-spelling, Twitter-speak and Facebook-English, but I found the language of the book fell into place fairly quickly and naturally. That's not to say that there weren't words and phrases that I had to pause on and mull over, but that's part of the book's charm. I hope that nobody would be put off reading Hoban's amazing story by concerns over the language in which it's written.The story comes from the science-fiction staple of the post-apocalyptic, nuclear-war-ravaged future, with people struggling to survive at an Iron Age level of technology, whilst surrounded by the ruins and shattered artifacts of the "advanced" civilization that destroyed itself. But it mixes into that Celtic mythology, English folklore, Christian iconography, and a jumbled, incomplete and incomprehensible science. The narrative is allusive and there are lots of double meanings that reward the readers time in mulling over.This is one of the best books I've read in a long time.
    • 5/5
      RW follows in the tradition of SF masterpieces to the extent that it starts off as a seemingly innocuous story that eventually becomes something very different and unsettling. Think Dick's The Man in the High Castle. Unfortunately the brilliance of its language and world do not conceal the shortcomings of the story. Though perhaps this is just the opinion of someone who has only read it once. This is a book that deserves multiple revisits and much thought. There are many passages that offer as much depth and complexity as anything you'll ever hope to read.
    • 5/5
      This masterpiece is driven by the eponymous narrator, who describes his peripatetic life in a post-apocalyptic "Inland", which is what remains two thousand and some years after its destruction in a nuclear war in his language, a pidgin mishmash of respelled cockney, standard English, and a few leftover technological terms from the twentieth century. Nearly everything the inhabitants of this land know of our own time comes from a goofy allegory, a sort of Finnegans Wake-meets-Revelation known as the Eusa Tale. On the rare occasions when a document turns up in standard English, the people put in charge of puzzling it out invaribaly get it totally, hilariously wrong The narrative is fascinating to decipher, the plot is always interesting, its large message is appealing, and it manages to retain a sense of fun and whimsy through it all. This is one of the two or three best books I've ever read.
    • 4/5
      This is a book with a ton going on. The extensive language play, with tension between what seem to be phonetic renderings and the double-coding going on in the particular choice of words and spellings, the endlessly-retold myths that reveal new truths - or maybe lies - about how and why this post-apocalyptic society got where it was, the offhand horror and continuous surprises. I can't quite say that I *liked* it - I'm not sure it's a book I could like, really - but I respect the hell out of it and I'm glad I read it.
    • 5/5
      Punch plays an important part in the post-apocalyptic Riddley Walker: puppet shows are both a religious ritual and a kind of news media in Russell Hoban’s far-future Britain. The book’s famous for its invented language–a degraded English–and this makes it a slow read, but what’s engrossing about is the unreal touches, which verge on magic realism, of which Mr Punch is just one. Riddley Walker is of course science fiction, but it’s almost a fable. I’m loath to use that word, though, as Michael Chabon (in a review of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road) memorably described reviewers bandying about the word “fable”, when a mainstream writer slums it with some SF, as “warming the author’s bathwater a little”.
    • 3/5
      err... well... it's not what I expected.I like trashy end-of-the-world stories - this book is way too thoughtful for me. The author claims to have taken 5 years to write it and I can see how it did that long, misspellings aside. It's more of a faith/spiritual book than a typical post-apocalyptic one. The characters live in a world completely foreign to ours and speak a language that is no longer English... but their belief in the human spirit, drive and determination remains constant (so we can be sure they are still our descendants).It's actually quite believable - I can see how society could devolve into Riddley's world post-nuclear holocaust. It was logically sensible. I think my problem with this book is just that it isn't trashy... it's meant to make you think and doesn't offer any solution/resolution to the nature of humankind, and the destruction of society as we know it. Of course, how could it...
    • 4/5
      This is another book, like Typee, that I'd been meaning to read after reading its inspired-by equivalent in my favourite book of all time, Cloud Atlas. The section "Sloosha's Crossin" is largely derived from Russell Hoban's classic post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker - particularly from its bizarre and fascinating use of language. I've had this on my shelf for a while, but Russell Hoban passed away last month, and I've developed a morbid habit of reading authors' books after they die. Cards on the table, I've been meaning to re-read my beloved Discworld series for some time, but Terry Pratchett, well...Anyway. Riddley Walker is set about 2000 years in the nuclear-devastated future, in a community in Kent that has regressed to Iron Age technology, and is written in first-person point of view by the titular twelve year-old "man," in an English that has degenerated to a phoenetic level:On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kild a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.Hoban took five years to write this book, and said that by the end of it he had become a bad speller. Riddley's language is primitive but consistent, with undeclared but definitive rules, and we later found out that literacy in his society is actually a closely guarded secret. It's something of a through-the-looking-glass moment when we see his society's religious text, handed down from shortly after the nuclear war, which is even more degenerate:13. Eusa wuz angre he wuz in rayj & he kept pulin on the Littl Man the Addoms owt stretcht arms. The Littl Man the Addom he begun tu cum apart he cryd, I wan tu go I wan tu stay. Eusa sed, Tel mor. The Addom sed, I wan tu dark I wan tu lyt I wan tu day I wan tu nyt. Eusa sed, Tel mor. The Addom sed, I wan tu woman I wan tu man. Eusa sed, Tel mor. Addom sed, I wan tu plus I wan tu minus I wan tu big I wan tu littl I wan tu aul I wan tu nuthing.The broken English, however carefully crafted, could easily be nothing more than a gimmick if Hoban wasn't capable of telling a deeper story. Fortunately, he is. Riddley Walker is everything good post-apocalyptic fiction is supposed to be: creative, imaginative, gripping and literary. The language certainly slows the pace down and makes for difficult reading; normally a book of this size would take me half the time to read that it did. But once you grow used to it, you fall into the flow of the story, and find that Riddley regularly comes up with passages that - translated back into regular English - would not be out of place in a literary novel.There wernt nothing terbel happening and yet there wer. Whats so terbel its just that knowing of the horrer in every thing. The horrer waiting. I dont know how to say it. Like say you myt get cut bad and all on a suddn there you are with your leg opent up and youre looking at the mussl fat and boan of it. You always knowit what wer unner the skin only you dont want to see that bloody meat and boan. Never mynd. Riddley Walker is a difficult book to read and certainly not for everyone, but it is absolutely a classic of post-apocalyptic fiction, and deserves all the praise it receives.
    • 4/5
      Our story is set in a time where we find people living in iron age style communities. After thousands of years of human development following a catastrophic nuclear war which has effectively sent the race back in time, this development has progressed from the darkest days of nuclear darkness, a time of foraging, through to hunter gatherers. Now the history of this race is mangled, handed down through oral histories which flex according to the morality of the time. The people in Holborn's book still bear remembrance to the mistakes made in the past, wary of moving forward, yet in awe of the people of the past with their boats in the air. It is impossible to give a review for this book without discussing the language in which it is written. Riddley Walker forces you to slow down by being written in a form of English conceived of as being a future version, one developed and changed through years of oral history tradition. Written records are sparse and held by the few, leaving the community in the dark, both in terms of the ability to wield the technology and in the literal sense, nights filled with the fear of life outside the encampments, where people only travel in groups.In this circumstance we find Riddley Walker, who tells us his tale, writing it down from memory as best he can, linking in the mythology of his people which gives us glimmers of information about what happened long ago. His path is a strange one, one that he follows with almost as little information as the reader has. We feel his fear and his uncertainty, which is heightened once again by having to negotiate our way around a strange language of which we have little comprehension. It is important not to rush this book, take your time and allow yourself to slowly understand the language as you slowly understand the plot and the motives of the various people involved.Not being your average dystopian tale, this book is about community and tells us the importance of myth not just in terms of explaining the past, but the potential present and future also.
    • 5/5
      It's all about connexions isn't it? Riddley's assigned role in life was to be a connexion man, watching the shows putt on by the travelling Eusa men and making the connexions. Interpreting the allegorical stories coming from the government at the Ram and explaining them to the people of How Fents in his reveals.But I don't think he would ever have been content with that. For as Goodparley says about Riddley 'hes a mover hes a happener'. Throughout the book, he roams through Inland, making connexions wherever he finds something blipful. And Goodparley's connexion of Riddley's life so far with the Fools Circel 9wys rhyme, just confirms to him that there are connexions in everything, from the discovery of the old, blackened Punch puppet which starts him on his wanderings and his meetings with Grantser and Lissener to his visions of talking dogs walking on their hind-legs. And all roads lead Riddley to the senter, to Cambry, where in the crypt of the old cathedral, he finds 'the stoan in the hart of the wud' and the 'wud in the hart of the stoan' in the tree-like stone pillars and vaulting, and comes face to face with the age-old archetypes of the mother goddess and the green man.It takes a lot of thought to follow the language through, with so many of the corrupted words having more to them than meets the eye, such as yesterday becoming westerday, the day that vanished into the west with the sunset. And when you finally make a breakthrough, such as realising that the secret of the 1 Littl 1 that the chard coal berners had preserved down the years, was actually the recipe for gunpowder, it's quite a thrill.
    • 3/5
      Similar to Jealousy - not a long book, but a massively challenging one to read, due to its Chaucerian post-apocalyptic language. Again, like Jealousy, persevering is worthwhile as, unlike in, say, The Road, we are fed plenty of treats and hints about what has happened (and arguably could happen) to the world, which is fabulously drawn. However, the actual plot and characters aren't particularly interesting or exciting, and Hoban's style makes it a real slog.
    • 5/5
      The most monumentally impressive post-apocalyptic dystopia since "A Canticle for Leibowitz". If nuclear meltdown really took us "back to the Stone Age", humankind would probably never get out of it again, but simply peter out in petty warfare and cultural stagnation while feral dogs evolve into the next sapient species. Hoban's tale is set in an isolated fragment of Kent surrounded by badlands, and centres on an attempt to regain the technology of the distant past (and specifically the manufacture of gunpowder), which in more than two millennia has become impenetrably shrouded in garbled myths and esoteric jargon. Its semi-literate first-person narrator uses a form of eroded English which adds immeasurably to the feel of the book (though given the length of time supposedly elapsed, English would actually have become unrecognizable) and surpasses the linguistic efforts of George Orwell and Malcolm Bradbury. That the "Ardship of Cambry", ritually sacrificed like the ancient kings, might survive as the the last remnant of the Anglo-American technocratic elite, and that Punch and Judy might become the liturgy of the future seem superb strokes of satiric imagination. "Dyou mean to tel me them befor us by the time they done 1997 years they had boats in the air and all them things and here we are weve done 2347 years and mor and stil slogging in the mud?"Read, admire, and confront the possibility of despair.MB 21-iv-2010
    • 2/5

      Six out of ten.

      Set in a remote post-nuclear England, where humanity has regressed to a stone-age like primivity. The most striking thing about the book is the use of language which was especially created to show what may happen to speech where much education has been forgotten.

      Quite hard to read (may need a couple of attempts) with the bizarre language but the use of semi-familiar imagery allows you to put together an idea of what happened in the world to lead to this end. The story of the book itself is less clear.

    • 5/5
      I can't praise Riddley Walker enough.It's utterly unique, like nothing you've ever read, and probably the most absorbing book I've ever read. It's set in a post-apocalyptic future hundreds of years in the future in and around Kent. The human race has devolved to an Iron Age style existence due to nuclear war in the 20th century. It tells the story of the eponymous Riddley, as he tries to piece together what happened around Doomsday, and explores efforts to rekindle an ancient weapon, the '1 Big 1'.It has an incredible style, and is incredibly rich thematically and linguistically. It's written in a degenerate, devolved English a bit like Finnegan's Wake. It lends itself to reading out loud (or in silence, in that phonetic 'voice in your head' manner.)So rich, haunting and beautiful that I would recommend it to any intelligent adult. Not a casual, light read - but a glorious read if you are up for the challenge.
    • 5/5
      God, this book is fantastic.Ever wonder what it must have been like to live in a world where all that you have is all that's around you, where the earth could hold any kind of horror at all and you'd believe it because all you know is what you see and what you whisper about at night around the fire? That's the kind of world Hoban's created for Riddley and his people. It's an utterly believable (mentally, that is-- there are some sciencefictiony things about the plot that are obviously not natural) society. The sheer thought that went into this-- it's as if Hoban went off and lived as an iron-age peasant himself for a lifetime.It's the mentality of these characters that really gets me. In the passages where Riddley, our Huck-Finn-esque hero, visits the old 'stannins' of the 'bernt towns' and roams among the ruins of our destroyed society, the feelings he describes are so earnest and bowelsy, so bewilderingly human, that it's hard not to be awed. His philosophical reflections are relevant an honest. This book is, in a large part, about the philosophy of what it means to be human-- what the "idear of us" really is. But there's no frivolity of thought here. The idea that simple people in touch with the world can know things our society can't is borne out in full by what Riddley has to say. What is the idear of Power? Should the 2 come 1? What are we-- are we in 2, are we loan and oansome, or ought we come gether? When we try to move forward in life-- when we try to progress, when we plumb the secrets of the world, searching for the Nos. of the many cools and the party cools, what are we doing? Are we hurtling towards our own destruction? What does man do to himself, in the end-- is there nothing for us in the future but the 1 Big 1, the moment when we finally destroy ourselves? Or is there another way?The language above is from the book. Yes, it's a bit intimidating. But he's created such a tight linguistic web of meaning with his Riddelyspeak that it's better, at times, to read straight on through without hesitation, to let the allusions and ideas that these worn-down words create just flow on into your head. Every word means more than one thing. Our convoluted latinate multisyllables have been broken down here into nuggets of real meaning, and Hoban's word choices often work on so many levels that it's difficult to tell what he's actually doing. The reader is as bewildered as Riddley is. This book is designed to bewilder. It works wonderfully.A classic if I ever knew one. Astonishing and brutal and profound. There is absolutely no reason why not to read this book. Absolutely none at all. It's got a kind of mastery in it that you rarely get to see in most contemporary work. This is the 20th century looking back at itself with horror, and it's a lesson for anyone.

    Book preview

    Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition - Russell Hoban

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