Ghost Wall

On the 2026 VCE English and EAL text list. Ghost Wall is a List 1 novel for Reading and responding to texts. 2026 is its second year on the list and it is also on the 2027 list. VCAA's reference edition is Granta Books (2021). The novel depicts family violence and a planned ritual killing; some readers may find it distressing.

The novel in brief

A short prologue describes a girl in Iron Age Britain being led to her death as a sacrifice in a bog by the people closest to her. The novel then moves to a hot summer in the early 1990s in Northumberland, in the north of England.

Seventeen-year-old Silvie Hampton narrates. Her full name, Sulevia, comes from an ancient British goddess of springs and pools, chosen by her father, Bill, a bus driver obsessed with the ancient Britons and with a pure, native British identity. Bill is controlling, racist, sexist and violent; Silvie's mother, Alison, is cowed and compliant. The family joins an experiential archaeology course run by Professor Jim Slade with three university students, Molly, Pete and Dan. For two weeks they try to live as Iron Age Britons: wearing rough tunics, foraging, hunting and skinning rabbits, and camping out on the moor.

Silvie is drawn to Molly, a confident, clever, middle-class student who questions everything and sees another kind of life, including university, as possible for Silvie. Molly also sees the bruises and the fear in the Hampton family. When Silvie swims naked in the river, following Molly's example, Bill beats her savagely. Bill and Slade, increasingly caught up in their fantasy, build a ghost wall of animal skulls on poles (modelled on the skull-topped barriers ancient Britons are imagined to have raised against invaders) and stage rituals. Molly, disgusted, leaves the camp. The men's re-enactment moves towards a sacrifice: Silvie is bound for a ritual modelled on the bog killings. Molly raises the alarm, help arrives in time, and the police arrest Bill.

Author and context

Sarah Moss (born 1975) is a British novelist and academic, known for novels that examine family, class, history and the body with a sharp, unsentimental eye. Ghost Wall was published in 2018 and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

Context you can use (always linked to a topic):

• Bog bodies. Preserved bodies from Iron Age northern Europe, some apparently ritually killed, have fascinated archaeologists and the public. They are the novel's central image of sacrifice and preservation.
• Experimental archaeology. Re-enactment tries to understand the past by living it, but the novel asks who gets to decide what the past was like, and what it is being used for now.
• Nationalism. Bill's obsession with a pure, native Britain, and his contempt for immigrants and outsiders, connects the novel to nationalist politics in Britain. Many readers have linked it to the debates around Brexit, which were live when Moss was writing.
• Class. Silvie's family are working class; the professor and students are middle class and university educated. Silvie is both admiring and resentful of the students' ease and freedom.
• The early 1990s. Before mobile phones, the camp is isolated, which matters for the plot and for the sense of danger.

Form and structure

• First-person narration. Silvie tells the story in a close, flowing voice that mixes the present of the camp with memories and her father's teachings. She sometimes excuses or normalises her father's violence, so the reader understands more than she admits. The VCAA annotation describes the style as stream-of-consciousness with northern dialect.
• No speech marks. Dialogue is not set off with quotation marks. Voices blend into Silvie's narration, which makes the reader work to distinguish speakers and creates a sense of immersion and claustrophobia.
• The prologue. The opening scene of an ancient sacrifice foreshadows the ending and frames the whole novel as a cycle, the past repeating itself in the present.
• Brevity and pace. The novel is short and tense. Moss builds dread steadily through small incidents: the father's rules, the rabbit skinning, the beating, the building of the wall.
• Symbolism. The ghost wall, the bog, the river, the tunics, food and hunger all carry meaning. The VCAA annotation singles out the ghost wall as the central symbol.
• Landscape. Moss's precise descriptions of moor, bog, heather and river make the landscape beautiful and threatening, parallelling the harsh beauty of nature and the brutality of the people in it, as the VCAA annotation notes.

Key characters

• Silvie (Sulevia) Hampton. Observant, capable and resilient, shaped by her father's control and by her love and fear of him. Her growing friendship with Molly opens her imagination to another life. Her journey is from compliance towards voice.
• Bill Hampton. Silvie's father, a bus driver and self-taught enthusiast for the ancient Britons. He glorifies an imagined pure past and uses it to justify control, cruelty and violence.
• Alison Hampton. Silvie's mother, frightened and submissive, who does not protect her daughter. She shows how fear silences people.
• Professor Jim Slade. An academic who indulges Bill's fantasies and is drawn into the ritual. His education and status do not stop him; they give the men's violence a veneer of respectability.
• Molly. A university student, outspoken and independent, who befriends Silvie, notices the abuse and acts. The VCAA annotation stresses her courage and conviction in bringing the truth to light.
• Pete and Dan. The other students, who go along with much of the re-enactment. Their participation shows how ordinary people drift into complicity.

Ideas, concerns and values, and how they are built

Glorifying the past

Bill and Slade romanticise the Iron Age as simpler, purer and more authentic. Moss shows that nostalgia is selective and dangerous: the "authentic" past they recreate includes hunger, hierarchy, sacrifice and the domination of women. A 2025 VCAA topic proposed that the novel warns of the danger of glorifying the past; the report noted that essays needed to focus on the dangers specifically, not on the past in general.

The natural world

The moor, the river and the bog offer Silvie freedom, beauty and escape (swimming, foraging, walking) and also danger and control (the bog as a place of sacrifice, her father's rules about living off the land). A 2025 VCAA topic proposed that the natural world in the novel is a place of both freedom and control.

Family violence and control

Bill's violence is shown in its patterns: rules, fear, silence, excuses and sudden explosions. The family is a small society ruled by one man, mirroring the tribal hierarchy he admires.

Nationalism and belonging

The ghost wall was meant to keep invaders out. Bill's fantasy of a pure British past excludes outsiders and links personal tyranny to nationalist politics.

Gender and agency

Women's bodies are controlled, punished and finally offered as sacrifice. Molly's intervention, and Silvie's growing sense of possibility, show women's solidarity and courage breaking the cycle.

Class and aspiration

The students' easy confidence opens Silvie's eyes to education and choice, while Bill resents the professor and students even as he seeks their approval.

Key moments and why they matter

1. The prologue. The ancient sacrifice establishes the cycle the novel will threaten to repeat.
2. Arrival at the camp. Bill's authority, Alison's silence and Silvie's routines of fear are set against the students' ease.
3. Foraging and rabbit skinning. Silvie's skill and knowledge of the land are real; they are also part of her father's regime.
4. Silvie and Molly. Conversations about university, food, bodies and freedom open another life to Silvie.
5. The swim and the beating. Silvie's moment of freedom in the river is followed by her father's savage punishment, the novel's clearest link between the natural world, the body and control.
6. Building the ghost wall. The men's fantasy becomes physical and menacing.
7. Molly leaves. The one person who openly objects departs, and Silvie is left exposed.
8. The ritual and the rescue. The past almost repeats itself; Molly's action breaks the cycle and the police arrest Bill.

How VCAA frames topics on this text

VCAA's 2024 and 2025 exam reports describe three topic types: a proposition followed by Discuss, Do you agree? or To what extent do you agree?; a quotation from the text followed by a proposition or question; and a direct question. Each text gets two narrow topics about specific ideas and values.

In 2025 the two Ghost Wall topics proposed that the novel warns of the danger of glorifying the past (the report used it to illustrate topics that "drill into" one aspect of a concept), and that the natural world is a place of both freedom and control. Expect topics on nostalgia and history, violence and cycles, family and control, nationalism, gender and courage, class, and the relationship between past and present.

Practice topics (original, not from VCAA)

These are practice topics written for this page in the VCAA style. They are not past exam topics.

1. In Ghost Wall, silence allows violence to continue. Discuss.
2. How does Moss use the ghost wall itself to explore the novel's concerns?
3. Ghost Wall suggests that the past is never really past. To what extent do you agree?
4. Molly is the true hero of Ghost Wall. Do you agree?
5. In Ghost Wall, Silvie's greatest strength is her ability to survive. Discuss.

Planning example

Topic (practice)

In Ghost Wall, silence allows violence to continue. Discuss.

Contention

Moss shows family violence sustained by silence (Alison's, the students', even Silvie's own), but she also shows silence as survival for Silvie, and makes the breaking of silence, by Molly, the act that finally stops the violence.

Paragraph 1: Alison's silence

Analyse the mother's compliance and fear, and how Silvie's narration registers what her mother does not say.

Paragraph 2: complicity

Slade, Pete and Dan go along with Bill's fantasy. Analyse how the re-enactment's rules and the building of the ghost wall make violence seem normal.

Paragraph 3: Silvie's silence as survival

Silvie excuses and conceals her father's violence to stay safe. Analyse her narration after the beating, and the absence of speech marks, which folds other voices into hers.

Paragraph 4: breaking the silence

Molly names what she sees and acts. Analyse the ending as the moment when speech stops the cycle begun in the prologue.

Conclusion

The bog preserves the past in silence; Moss's novel ends with a voice raised in time.

Common pitfalls

• Treating Bill as a simple villain. Moss shows how his obsession grows from class resentment and a hunger for meaning; understanding is not excusing.
• Forgetting the prologue. It frames the whole novel as a cycle.
• Summarising instead of analysing the style. The absence of speech marks, the dialect and the long sentences are deliberate choices.

Read the novel

Ghost Wall is in copyright, so this page analyses the novel without quoting it. VCAA's reference edition is Granta Books (2021), available from your school or local library.

Sources

• VCE English and EAL Text List 2026 and Text List 2027, VCAA.
• VCE English 2025 examination and 2025 examination report, VCAA.
• VCE English and EAL Study Design (version 1.4), VCAA.