Product Description

Set in the part of England once known as The Lake District and frequented by hordes of landscape hungry tourists, "The Carhullan Army" is narrated by a young woman who has adopted the name Sister. Britain after its union with the United States and numerous unsuccessful foreign wars, has found itself in the grip of a severe fuel crisis and the country is now under the control of a severe body known as The Authority. All fire-arms have been handed over to the Government and all women have been fitted with contraceptive devices; this Britain of the near-future is brutal and very-near desperate. Sister's only hope - or so she thinks - lies in finding the Carhullan Army: a mythical band of women who lives a communal existence in the remote hills of Cumbria.A "Handmaid's Tale" for our times, Sarah Hall's novella is about women, terrorism, and individual choice. As compelling as it is believable, "The Carhullan Army" represents yet another stage in her development as one of Britain's most original and relevant story tellers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #144954 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Observer
'In prose as stark and lyrical as the Cumbrian landscape, Hall picks apart notions of absolutism, individuality and moral responsibility.'

Guardian
'When Hall writes scenes rather than synopsis, the personal drama ensures the political gravity becomes genuinely gripping.'

Independent
'Hall's award-winning third novel has shades of Orwell and The Handmaid's Tale but is entirely modern and brutally fresh.

Customer Reviews

In agreement with other reviews
I tend to agree with others' points on here. I felt that the Handmaid's Tale did this idea of an Authoritarian government and its impact on women in society much better on the whole. I really didn't like the ending. I just found myself approaching it with pages left to go, not concentrating on the story but wondering how the hell she was going to wrap this whole thing up in like one page given the direction it was going in. And it didn't work as I suspected, well in my opinion.

The only reason I felt the author gets away with it, and what made me continue to the end, is that at points her language was just outstanding. Her semantics and sentence construction/arrangement would at times make me pause, reread and think 'wow, where did she come up with that?! That was damn impressive!'. Poignant, visual, emotive and highly original. So really it was these moments every few pages that kept me going really. I also felt the characterisation of Jackie was bang on the nail, but she was the only character that really intrigued me, even the main character didn't hold my interest as much.

So yeah, 3-3.5 stars. Having not read some of her other books, not sure whether it might be worth exploring those ones instead/first, given they seem to have higher/more ratings than this book.

Thought Provoking but Flawed
Strangely, I find myself in agreement with parts of nearly all the previous reviews here.

First the good points. Sarah Hall's writing is excellent and this novel is highly readable. On the opening page she uses the delightful phrase 'It was a wet rotting October' and this type of evocative language is used right through to the novel's very last words. The narrator slowly drip feeds the reader with snippets of backstory that cover the collapse of the United Kingdom and the genesis of the 'Authority'. This is very well done and Hall makes a breakdown of this magnitude seem scarily plausible. For me, these sections form the strongest part of the novel and should be compulsory reading for anybody considering working for the Ministry of Justice.

I have to come clean and admit that I'm a man and concede that perhaps I'm not the target audience for this novel but for me, the sections dealing with the all-women commune, didn't really stack up. These parts felt derivative and rehashed from countless other (superior) dystopian visions. This novel inevitably invites comparison with Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tail" but this is like comparing the Marx Brothers with the Chuckle Brothers; the Carhullan Army just doesn't come close.

The lesbain love scenes, although sensitively handled were all too predictable and added little to the story. The central question posed by the novelis, 'Will women become as violent as men if they have to?' but Hall's attempts to answer it feel clumsy and contrived. One thing that is exemplified well, is that no matter what ones intentions, absolute power does indeed corrupt absolutely.

The novel does rather collapse in on itself as it reaches the final pages and the ambiguity of the ending isn't very satisfactory but Hall's excellent prose pulls the reader along at a breakneck speed. In all I'm not sure that novel achieves what the author intended but it is an enjoyable read. I haven't stopped thinking about the Carhullan Army since finishing it, which is a strong positive for this flawed but powerful novel.

torn opinion
I have to say, I'm not entirely sold on Hall's novel. This indepth narrative of one woman's determination to fight back against the injustices of an oppressive government is certainly thought provking. The imagery of nature fighting back again containment is convincing - government control of human reproduction represents an attempt to control nature; whereas the women living at Carhullan are living off the land and allowing nature its rightful place in the world. Imagery found in the episode in Sister's father's garden shows how nature (i.e. the over-grown garden) is a protector, is the right path, by hiding the gun and ammunition from the Authority; her salvation, so to speak, is guarded by unadultered nature.
However, my main problem with the novel lies in it's conclusion. After the last piece of missing data it just ends. I sort of feels that Hall ran out of steam and couldn't be bothered finishing it properly. While, as a rule, I have no problem with ambiguous endings, and actually quite like puzzling over the question 'so, what happened next?', the connections were anything but seamless.

If you like nice neat bows to tie up your endings, this is not the one for you. But, if you like a thought provoking exploration of the ethical questions involved with retaliation of oppression then give it a go.