His ability to capture a world that is at the same time horrifying and homely, a world that shows humanity utterly changed and yet exactly the same as we’ve always been is superlative. Sure there are many others out there that are excellent, and I have by no means read in the genre exhaustively (I still have to read classics like The Death of Grass and Earth Abides), but there is something about Hoban’s work that seems to define the genre for me. Still, for me _Riddley Walker_ is probably the non plus ultra of post-apocalyptic fiction. That’s definitely one of the easier passages and things get more complicated when words and phrases are elided or significantly changed when they refer to things from the deep past (our present), and concepts that people in Riddley’s day don’t fully comprehend or whose meaning has changed in their time.
Thus we have as our introduction to Riddley and his world: On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. Admittedly his language isn’t easy to slip right into given that he has created his own broken, not quite phonetic, future version of English that is further complicated for many readers by being based on the Kentish dialect.
Many, upon reading the first page, will dismiss the book as “gimmicky” (I am growing to hate that term as applied to books) due to the style in which Hoban writes. So far I have read three other Hoban novels and while I have thoroughly enjoyed all of them I must admit that I think this one is his very best. Riddley is an absorbing character, Hoban's language has a fantastic, rough poetry and the post-apocalyptic world is chilling and convincing._Riddley Walker_ is the book that put Russell Hoban on the map (inasmuch as he is on the map…he is criminally neglected as an author) and will likely be the one work for which he will be remembered (sadly he passed away in late 2011). The book has an evangelical effect on people. In the mental silence that followed the closing of the last page, I wanted to applaud, through tears. The strongest, most desolate and bewildered voice in modern fiction. Suffused with melancholy and wonder, beautifully written, Riddley Walker is a novel people will be reading for a long, long time. Fiercely imagined and intensely ponderable. a hero with Huck Finn's heart, lighting by El Greco and jokes by Punch and Judy. The way it changes is unbelievable it is a living thing. You are syntactically and emotionally and politically absolutely in the book's spell. funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece. Russell Hoban has brought off an extraordinary feat of imagination and of style.
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