Riddley Walker

Russell Hoban
Riddley Walker Cover

Riddley Walker

spectru
2/22/2015
Email

When I started reading Riddley Walker, I didn't know what to expect. It's written in a future English dialect. That's what makes Riddley Walker unique, even peculiar, and not all that easy to read. One doesn't just breeze through this. The setting is a future primitive, post apocalyptic culture steeped in the rituals of a quasi-religion. What seems to be a legend of long-ago lost knowledge of atomic power, (the Littl Shynin Man the Addom) reveals the recipe for gunpowder. The greada mints are chard coal, Saul & Peter, and yellowboy stone. Two rival camps manage to blow themselves up, losing the seakret. Life goes on as Riddly embarks on a life as a traveling showman, putting on a Punch and Pooty puppet show. The references to Punch and Judy probably are more meaningful to Brits than to us Americans.

http://www.buckward.net