'Walker' certainly has a clear enough moral to it - that technology is ultimately destructive and humanity would be better off without it - but this point has been made more effectively by many others. The careful reader will learn something about how Riddley's world came to this point through the side stories told by the ancillary characters. In many ways this is a very small story, taking place in a fairly small area over just a few days, and ultimately not all that much happens, although there is a modestly impressive payoff at the end. Rather then relying on plot or character development, Hoban entertains us with clever wordplay and a fascinating portrayal of the devolved social conventions of Riddley's culture. Due to some unfortunate circumstances, young Riddley Walker finds himself 'outside the fence' and forced to live by his own devices in an agrarian England of the (hopefully) distant future, ostensibly after some major cataclysm.

Post-apocalyptic tale told in the first person by the title character, in a dialect that makes it pretty-near incomprehensible. The book will no doubt continue to grow in popularity and recognition for the classic it is. It's great to see that Riddley Walker is being reprinted. In parallel to the meaning of Riddley's language, the primary entertainment of Riddley Walker's culture, the puppetry, is a metaphor of modern entertainment in relation to its' history: more and more sex, lies, and violence, and less and less intellectual stimulation.

This is the great paradox of modern life revealed through Riddley Walker's language. Contrary to the Baconian idea of social harmony as a product of science and progress, hostility and violence seem to grow, or at least to continue unabated, in spite of all our technological progress. Instead, Hoban invented a futuristic dialect of english by mimicking and grossly exagerating the peculiar pattern of linguistic evolution which resulted in current english and, through the implied evolution from our current language to Riddley's language, Hoban subtly and indirectly reveals the incongruities of society today relative to the past: technologically obsessed on one hand, and always becoming more 'vancit' (advanced), yet still as crude and ignorant as cave men on the other hand. This language is nothing like the slang Burgess created in A Clockwork Orange, a slang derived in part from a separate language. What I love most about Hoban's masterpiece is the futuristic language and entertainment form he invented for Riddley Walker's society. Personally, Riddley Walker is one of my favorite books of all time, along with Don Quixote, 1984, Murphy, Huck Finn, A Clockwork Orange, and other well known classics.

Riddley walker by russell hoban