The Wall
Author: John Lanchester
Publisher: W. W. Norton
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
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.
TL;DR Review
The Wall reads like a classic, with an unapologetic dystopian allegory, vivid setting, and memorable narrator. It’s gripping and gritty and hard to look away from.
For you if: You like a character-driven war story.
Full Review
It’s cold on the Wall. That’s the first thing everybody tells you, and the first thing you notice when you’re sent there, and it’s the thing you think about all the time you’re on it, and it’s the thing you remember when you’re not there anymore. It’s cold on the Wall.
I read The Wall because it was long-listed for the 2019 Booker Prize. It’s an unforgiving, unapologetic allegory focused on environmentalism and anti-immigration.
What’s interesting is that even though pieces of it were fast-paced and exciting, I wouldn’t call the book exciting overall — and yet it was also sort of un-putdownable. It reads, to me, like the kind of classic that gets taught in high schools. I understand why it didn’t win the Booker, but I can also completely understand why it merited nomination.
Kavanagh, our narrator, lives in a country that we can assume is meant to be England. The Wall rings the entire country’s perimeter and was built to keep Others out. That’s because years before, the Change reshaped the world: Beaches are something only seen in movies as coastlines everywhere have long since flooded, and warm climates are no longer habitable at all. Every citizen of this country does two years of military guard service on the Wall, armed and tasked with killing any Others who come in rowboats and attempt to cross the Wall. The story starts as Kavanagh begins his two years on the Wall.
Lanchester has no subtlety about his allegory here. Our world could become this world, and he wants you to know it. That isn’t the reason this book is good. Instead, what this book does so excellently is transport you onto the Wall itself and into Kavanagh’s shoes. You can feel the cold, you can feel the competing emotions of boredom and terror. Kavanagh’s world and experiences come alive. There were violent scenes that were really hard to read, too.
Kavanagh’s character arc also feels somewhat classic: naïveté and fear as he enters training and begins his service, anger and maturation during the meat of his time on the Wall, and then the wisdom of experience and a sort of heroism as we near the conclusion. Secondary characters had very little depth (I would have liked more on the woman named Hifa, personally), but that’s because we are so firmly inside Kavanagh’s head.
Ultimately, there is so much in this book about our collective need for light and warmth and community. It’s about humanity, and war, and fear, and hope, and warnings, and resilience.
Trigger Warnings
The violence of battle
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