Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same.
I dont think it makes no differents where you start the telling of a thing. You never know where it begun realy. No moren you know where you begun your oan self. You myt know the place and day and time of day when you ben beartht. You myt even know the place and day and time when you been got. That dont mean nothing tho. You stil dont know where you begun.
I loved Riddley Walker from beginning to end, partly just because, like Anthony Burgess, I am a sucker for made-up future dialects. In Riddley Walker something or other blew up a long time ago, and London-whatever-that-was went under water, and it was dark a long time until the days came back, but came back wrong. Or maybe it happened some other way, you can't be sure with tales. The Pry Mincer and the Wes Mincer have been doing instructive puppet shows about it so long that who knows what's real and what's just made up for politics? Anyhow some people are getting back the ways of writing things down that you used to have, so Riddley Walker, 12, is writing this down for you, whoever you are, in the dark future of the dark future, or wherever people live who read these things.
The made-up futurelect is beautiful as these things go, and easier to read than Gravity's Rainbow. Here's another sample for you!
( counting clevverness and where it leads )
Of course if it had really been 2300 years since Eusa and Mr Clevver tore apart the Little Shyning Man of the Addom (as another version of the story goes), you wouldn't expect to be able to understand Riddley's language at all (and how would the k in "know" have survived any period of illiteracy? You'd have to start your own worldbuilding wiki just to explain it). But this is a nice evocative middle ground, where every variant spelling blooms with punny exegesis.
This book was a joy to read. I spent most of it thinking that I liked the language and the setting but wasn't going to care very much about the plot. But it pulled an Ishiguro, as we call it in my house when a book tricks you into thinking you're riding calmly above it right up until it suddenly drowns you with a tidal wave of your own feelings. By the end it got its roots into me and they're still holding on.