"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 Hoban

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.

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

Alexis Riddley spends her day’s knee deep in the grind of corporate America, but her love of reading is what pushed her to put pen to paper. Bringing to life the stories that once existed only in her head. Alexis loves the outdoors, adventures, and music. Oftentimes music is the catalyst or the trigger for memories, and emotions that she uses in her writing. Alexis rarely watches television, but is a total comic book freak, superheroes, the whole lot of them. She is obsessed. Alexis is willing to try anything, at least once, as long as it keeps the soul free and the mind open. She is a kid at heart who refuses to let age define her and limitations contain her. Alexis is a romantic, with a twisted mind and sexy imagination. She still believes that happy endings exist, just that sometimes they do not come in the pretty packaging you may have expected.

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This book did my head in. To deliberately mangle punctuation, grammar, spelling, and syntax nearly beyond recognition is a lot harder than it sounds, and even harder still to come out with a cohesive, fascinating story at the end of it. Russel Hoban did it brilliantly.

The world building is fantastic and is helped along immensely by Riddley's less than perfect English. The folk tales, the allegorical puppet shows, and the glimpses of mankind's bygone glory days bring a strange sort of familiarity to an otherwise almost alien landscape and way of life. This book would not have had the same impact if it had been written in plain English, but what lifts it up is also what brings it down for me.

Reading this was hard work. Being pulled out of the story time and again by the sometimes incomprehensible Riddleyspeak was more than a little frustrating. There were times I had no freaking clue what was going on. There were times when my brain sort of disengaged and I found myself caught up in the rhythm of Riddley's speech patterns, sounding out syllables without assimilating the meaning of the words or stringing the words together into sentences (such as they were). There were times when I literally got a headache trying to parse it out.

So, to recap: Plus five stars for a compelling story, awesome world building, and the scope of Hoban's ambition in reworking the language. Minus two stars for "Ow, my brain!" and "sharna pax". (Seriously. How was I supposed to get that?)

So. I didn't figure out "sharna pax" by the end and went ahead and read the glossary. All I can say is, I don't feel bad for not solving that particular puzzle.

And now for the next puzzle! I have no freaking clue how to rate or review this. O.o

He wer talking on so many levvils at 1ce I dint all ways know what he meant realy I wisht every thing wud mean jus only 1 thing and keap on meaning it not changing all the time.

Amen, brother.