Customer Reviews

Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Many years after reading "Riddley Walker," what has stayed with me was Lissener's story "The Other Voyce Owl of the Worl." I can still recall nearly every word after reading it only once over 20 years ago.

I wish there were a sixth star available, to distinguish this monumental work from your ordinary everyday Oprah novels, Atonement or House of Sand and Fog or The Shipping News, e.g. Smart people I know put this book down after a few chapters, finding it too challenging and odd. Very smart people I know find it fascinating and memorable. The smartest people I know think it may be the finest book of the last quarter century.

I highly recommend reading the first three or four chapters, and then starting over, once you've mastered Riddley's dialect. Reading it aloud also helps. You will find yourself thinking and talking in Riddley-speak for months afterwards. And you will read it again and again, finding new marvels each time.

I can give no higher marks to any book since Zorba The Greek.

Aside from The Lord of the Rings, Hoban's Riddley Walker is the most imaginative piece of fiction I've ever read. This is a novel to savor, to prolong, if possible, to pore over, to backtrack upon, to celebrate.

Do not be put off by the post-apocalyptic plot description. This is not your father's Neville Schute story. Nor is it Stephen King. This is a multi-layered, cosmic, end of days tale, that far transcends all other entries in "the genre." Hoban has been compared to Joyce, but don't be put off by that either, if you struggled through Finnegan's Wake, as most do. This is accessible. Highly so. Sure, you have to invest some effort and if you are the type of reader who has to have everything conveyed immediately to you, you will not enjoy this work. Hoban is essentially playing a game with his reader. If you enjoy riddles ("Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddles where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same."), Hoban will definitely keep you guessing. This is probably modern fiction's most "interactive" novel. The progressive revelations clue you in as you "walk" with Riddley through Inland (England). The path is so devious, yet so honest, at the same time, that you never want Riddley to seperate from you (a motif in the work) and you never want to lose his companionship.

Suffice it to say that I've been so obsessed over this book that I have joined a Hoban fan club and I can't wait to read more from this astounding author. If you can read updated Chaucer, you should have no difficulty grasping Riddley's vernacular, though there are some similarities to earlier English speech. Allow at least three chapters to get into the cadence and the inner logic of the "Riddley Speak."

The only slight quibble I have, is that I wish that Hoban had written more dialogue, and a bit less first person narrative. I say this because the dialogue is the most hilarious I have read in recent memory. The Punch show interchanges are particularly amusing. They were droll enough to also make me take a whole new interest in traditional Punch and Judy Shows. These are confined primarily to the British Isles, these days, which is sad. I did learn, from one of the foremost practitioners of the tradition, that the book is very much appreciated on the part of the community that still take their get ups from venue to venue. I also would have to say that readers who may be computer programmers, IT professionals, etc., will take a particular delight in the way that Hoban works in computer language of our era into his central character's (and his culture's) partial understanding.

If you are looking for something that has Pythonesque, Pynchonesque, but ultimately Riddleyesque elements, and will leave you feeling as though your brain has actually been through some mental gymnastics, but isn't sweating...order this volume, immediately.
BEK

After reading this review page, I was convinced I'd found the book that would be my next keeper. 5 days later, unfortunately, this was turned in to the used bookstore. I hate getting rid of books, and I had a difficult time deciding on this one, but it had to go.

Actually, the feature that would be most expected to turn someone away from this book, the dialect, was not the culprit. I found that fascinating, and trying to translate the words, locations, events, and legends into their proper contexts was very entertaining.

My problem was with the plot. It's extremely uneven. The first third of the book is very slow, maybe unnecessarily so, supplying a large amount of info on this future society's history, culture, etc. Then all of a sudden, things are moving at ten times that speed, characters and events fall in with too much convenience and not enough information, and the story loses its flow. Quite a disappointment, considering all the good things I've heard about it. Choose carefully.

I parbly wer preddy gud at speln bfor I redd this buk Riddley Walker an I parbly arn enny gud at it enny mor but thats ok. Cuz I wud rather be 1 wut redd this buk its amazn. The man Rusl Hoban wut rowt it he wer usin his maginatn he wer teln the tales. He has makt a wurl wut is prymevl an it wer in the futr at the sayme tym. The wurdz he makt em up also an we ken stil unnerstan em they iz frum us an is frum them 2. An he put the musik innit the wurdz 2. You shud jus by this buk an redd it. There is 1 trubba wid it ther arn enuf starz forit.

To those who have difficulty reading this book, may I suggest reading it aloud? The language is English, written the way it sounds. The places named are mostly in Essex. It may be worth looking at a map. Riddley looks back at us the way some of us look back at Atlantis; without a clue. The story of Eusa setting the world on fire should make us all take a careful look at the present administration in Washington. This book reads like an eye-witness account of a post- apocalyptic future. So far beyond Russell Hoban's other works, its hard to believe it is by the same author. You will never look at a bottle of Jagermeister in the same way again. This book is what Canticle For Leibowitz might have been. Riddley Walker is perhaps the finest work of fiction I have ever read, and I have read more than one. Read this book and decide for yourself. Read this book.

Riddley Walker is a most unusual and rewarding novel! It is narrated by Riddley, who lives in what is left of England, about two thousand years after civilization as we know it was destroyed by a nuclear war. He describes an odyssey he takes when he turns twelve years of age. What sets this book apart from others is that it is written entirely in "Riddleyspeak," a kind of pigen English that has evolved after all remnants of society and learning have disappeared. The people of Riddley's world live almost like animals, scratching out an existence, believing in superstition and legend, reduced to the most basic elements of survival. Riddley, on the other hand is semi-literate, thoughtful, and curious about the past and the future. Try this:

Riddley ryts like thice and you mae fynd it hard to desifer, so youl hav to pae atenshun. He and hiz peapl r veree dffrunt frum us; thae r hard and brutl, but Riddley's werds r offen qwite funee.

If you think you can read a whole book written like the above, you will enjoy the challenge of this amazing, poignant, and often humorous novel. The plot is not as important as the unique language, which speaks volumes about Riddley's life. Reading this book is a wonderful and rewarding experience!

Russell Hoban's "Riddley Walker" is more than just a novel of the post-apocalypse; it is so original and odd for the language it uses and the mythology it creates, it's clearly in a class by itself, as though it could be a relic of an imaginary civilization. Hoban chooses as his setting the county of Kent in southeastern England, now called Inland, where in 1997 something called the Power Ring, encircling what used to be Canterbury, was responsible for a nuclear cataclysm called the 1 Big 1 that nearly destroyed the earth. In the thousands of years since, mankind has undergone an evolutionary breakdown and reverted to Iron Age technology and tribal society, hunting with spears, scavenging for scrap metal, and speaking a vestigial form of Cockney English.

Twelve-year-old Riddley Walker, as one of the few literate people in his community, is the voice of the novel and writes in a manner that reflects the primitive speech of his society, constructing jagged sentences and spelling words phonetically. He alone senses the greatness of the civilization that was destroyed so long ago; he wonders why his own people are unable to put "boats in the air and picters on the wind." As a "connexion" man, he channels the spirit of an entity named Eusa, a mythical figure to whom the 1 Big 1 and perhaps even all of creation are attributed. The origin of Eusa's name is associated with the most famous landmark in "Cambry," the former Canterbury; an eyeless boy Riddley meets named Lissener, who proclaims himself the "Ardship of Cambry," shows the peculiar logic with which the theologies from the two epochs have merged.

One day while excavating in a place called Widders Dump, Riddley finds a Punch hand puppet -- with a severed hand still inside. Abel Goodparley, Inland's "Pry Mincer," recognizes this theatrical artifact, but its purpose is lost on the Inlanders, whose only concept of entertainment is the "shows" that retell the Eusa legend. Nevertheless, this puppet is the catalyst that inspires Riddley to escape his confinement as a connexion man and forge a new path.

While the story has plenty of violence, particularly when Riddley discovers a substance which, when mixed with "Saul & Peter" and "chard coal," makes a powerful explosive, it does not try to resolve any conflicts by culminating in a violent climax. Hoban wisely avoids trite devices like a final showdown between warring factions and morality lessons about good against evil, nor does he use the novel as a public service announcement to warn us about the horrors of a post-nuclear age; the focus is purely on the awakening of a civilization to the possibilities of change.

The novel is admittedly difficult to read and understand; the words require extraordinary concentration to absorb what Riddley is trying to say, but after the struggle I was left with the impression of having just read a work of brilliance. Like the fiction of Joyce and Faulkner, it creates its own bold style of communication and rewards the diligent and observant reader who enjoys the challenge of confronting an unfamiliar milieu with cryptic symbols. As Riddley says, "There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing."

"Riddley Walker" is undeniably one of the most unique novels I have ever come across. All plotting aside, the bizarre (yet understandable) pidgin English that it is written in sets it apart from almost every other work of fiction I have come across. The only thing that comes close is the slang in "A Clockwork Orange", but even that mishmash is normal when compared to Hoban's English. That said, Hoban's creation is fairly logical, and is easily followed with a little bit of thought.

It would be easy to overlook the quality of the narrative of this novel because of the uniqueness of its presentation, but there is much more to "Riddley Walker" than that. It is the tale of a humanity reduced to Dark Age misery by a nuclear war, but what makes it different from other apocalyptic fiction is the historical remoteness of the holocaust. It happened so long ago, and was so total that its causes have descended into mythology. At the same time, technology has become confused with religion, and while mankind yearns for better days, he's not sure what they might be.

Hoban paints a fascinating portrait of humans struggling to come to grips with their place in the world. Particularly poignant is the image his characters have of dogs, which have at this point have gone almost completely feral, and yet still exhibit a faint longing for their old masters. The humans see in the dogs an emblem of their fall from grace, and in the dogs' ferocity, a tacit reminder of something lost, although, again, they aren't sure what that might be.

Perhaps the most intriguing element of the novel, however, is fragments of history that have been reassembled into a moral imperative for the power elite (such as they are). To the reader, the concepts seem ridiculous, but in them Hoban makes a powerful statement about the need to believe in something bigger than ourselves. Just think about how we struggle to come to grips with the past today; a history which is documented with relative thoroughness and which spans fairly well delineated arcs. Now imagine trying to process that same history after an apocalypse of unimaginable scope, and you will have some appreciation of what Hoban explores in "Riddley Walker".

This is a novel that can be read fairly quickly, and enjoyed simply as a rather unique work of post-apocalyptic fiction. However, if you take your time with it, and really think through what the language and the characters' motivations, I suspect you will be surprised at the tremendous depth this work possesses. I was astonished at how much it made me think about my own worldviews and how much context is critical to their meaning. "Riddley Walker" is definitely a literary highlight of the genre, and a novel that is not to be missed.

When I first read this book several years ago, I was completely taken in by the abstract language and all the possibilities it allowed for interpretation. I have lent this book to many people since then, and maybe 1 or 2 have finished it because they seem to have a hard time with the way it is written, although they seem to enjoy the story. This is definitely something one should keep in mind when purchasing this book: be ready for a possible struggle when trying to decipher this questionably intuitive text.

If one does take the time, however, they are thrown headlong into a world that most of the time makes little logical sense, but speaks to a part of the subconcious which understands words and suggestions that the concious mind often finds queer and nonsensical. Even if one does not understand Mr. Hoban's references to the well-known painting of St. Eustace (part of which can be found on any bottle of Jagermeister) and the Punch and Judy puppet tradition, there is the understanding of the sensation he is expressing by using these symbols. It wasn't until years later that I understood his clever references, and while they were interesting in fleshing out the culture of the people, they were far from the main point of the novel.

Anyone who has read Vonnegut and think that he messes with your head needs to give Hoban a try. I guarantee that Hoban is a lot more coherent, concentrated, universal, and, if nothing else, technically a far superior writer.