[The sub-literate narration in Riddley Walker] is initially painful for us fast readers and good spellers. But the heavy head-work required to decipher it is justified, in the long run by the unexpected meanings that seep through the cracks when conventional orthography is fractured. Hoban the master wordsmith has fun with the remnants of our administrative system … and with the terminology of science….

While engaged on this elaborate invention, Hoban wrote an introduction to Grimms Tales in which he expounded the ideas that [Riddley Walker] seeks to embody. Thus, domestic unity encompasses human existence. The myths that are in us prove our affinity with the cycle of the collective mind, illustrate the cosmic pattern, the infinite rhythm, of which our destinies are a part. "All of us have been, all of us are, everything."

Unfortunately, when a metaphysican casts his net over the whole of human consciousness, as...