Jacket: Edward Bettison
Internal illustration: by the author
‘I had found my witching way. And it felt so good. Now I must finish my spell.’ (p 269)
Witch seeker
As a boy in East Lancashire, I was more or less brought up with stories of The Pendle Witches. Later, when our own children were young, we lived for quite a few years in the shadow of Pendle Hill itself. Robert Neil’s book Mist Over Pendle was one of the first ‘grown up’ books I ever read. It was amongst the few novels my father owned and the same volume, very tatty now, still stands on my own, much fuller shelves. That particular book about the Lancashire Witches is not exactly a literary masterpiece, but, even so, it made a big impression, and I have had a particular interest in seeking out historical fiction about seventeenth century ‘witches’ ever since.
There have been quite a few in the intervening years, both adult and YA, some truly excellent, others rather less so. But Finbar Hawkins’ new contribution is one of the very best. In fact this astonishing debut goes straight onto my list of books of the year and, ironically, makes the list shorter by being there. How so? Well, because it has raised the bar for me considerably. I have read only a few other novels this year that can stand comparison with the breathtaking quality of this one.
Now and then
Witch does not, in fact, so much tell a historical story of ‘witches’, but rather uses the seventeenth century context as background for what is essentially an exploration of character. And a very powerful study it is too. Superficially, teenaged Evey seeks to revenge the brutal murder of her mother, a country woman of benign ‘witching ways’, devoted to births and healing. Her targets are the perpetrators, a gleefully vicious gang of witch-hunting men. However Evey’s less conscious quest is to discover her own identity, particularly in relation to the dead mother and living sister she resents because of her own perceived lack of their power. It is just as much a story of our time as it is of its setting, for it is the very fact that men would deny Evey her own integrity, indeed her own life, that gives her the incentive to find it. She needs the shared strength of sisters too, though - and that too resonates. Finbar Hawkins borrows from the historical period men’s appalling degradation of women; men whose fear of women’s true power threatens their own tenuous dominance and superiority. His ‘tall man’ based very loosely on the historical ‘Witchfinder General’, Matthew Hopkins provides his archetype and Evey’s nemesis. But it all speaks to us still.
Make no mistake, this is no book for young children, It is a violent, sometimes horrific story, just as the emotions Evey has to work through are violent and destructive. But it is at heart a story about the power and potency of sisterhood, both within and beyond the family, the collective strength that can resist, move beyond, the oppression of a male-orientated world. It is also untimately about the triumph of goodness over evil, of the benign use of the ‘witching way’ over its destructive potential. But the triumph is ultimate. Very ultimate.Thank goodness the tale includes one ‘good man’ within its world of obnoxiously gross, but not exaggerated, misogyny. There is one corrupt and malign female too, to restore a little balance. Yet, even though this overwhelmingly a story of sistershood, it does not mean it is only for ‘sisters’, but I will come to that.
Bewitching writing
There is something even more to say first, for special as all of this is, the narrative itself is, for me, not the crowning glory of this novel . Witch is not simply its story, powerful though it is, in more ways than one. It is not simply its story, but the way it is told that makes it very special indeed.
The brusque, single word Witch, feels like a very fitting title for this work. It reflects its style well, for the components of Finbar Hawkins’ prose, its sentences, are themselves, generally terse. They are short and powerful, crafted, honed. In the voice of Evey, and in the conjuring of the settings, he achieves something very difficult. He gives a real feeling of period, pressingly real without ever seeming artificially archaic. Yet he creates a voice that speaks directly to us and to our world too. By distancing things from us, he brings everything nearer. He shows us the past as a mirror, not as an oil painting.
Often the narrative fractures. Particularly at moments of high drama and explosive emotion, which often in Witch amount to the same thing, the storytelling fragments into a kaleidoscope of language, images, events and impressions. It floats across the page like blown seed-down, it scatters like dead leaves, then it swoops like a murderous flock of crows.
Many fine authors enrich their language with powerful images, and Finbar Hawkins does so excitingly, but, like a great film maker, he also builds his narrative through visual images, conjured in the mind’s eye of the reader. And sometimes it is the events described in the narrative, or the objects that are its catalyst, that are themselves the images. It is all most marvellously done. It is not only the pivotal images, like the birds and the scrying stone, that burn into the memory long after this story is done, but the kicked gallows bench, the wood ash on the face and the ash wood on the hill. The magnificently crafted chapter, I think it was number twenty two, where agonising news is learned during the spilling of a bowl of apples, bites deep and will live long. So too does the one about Evey’s stealing through a dark market. And these quieter scenes only serve to throw into high relief the trauma of chaos in the hanging square and the subsequent storm-fed battles on the hill.
Images of images
Finbar Hawkins’ own skilful drawings front each chapter and add wonderfully to the atmosphere, as well as foreshadowing themes, becoming partners with the words in creating rich imagery. One of his particular touches of design genius is the way small silhouettes creep across the text pages, around chapter heads and into blank spaces in the text block; leaves, feathers, creatures, dandelion seeds. They draw the eye and the mind of the reader through the story and deeper into its meaning. And, oh, the blood magic! Oh, those crows!
I have seen this book classified as ‘Women’s and Girls’ YA’. However, it would be a crying shame if its audience were limited, even to such an important one. Men and boys need to read it too.Even those who themselves stand with the ‘good man’, and I hope there are many, will rightly cringe at the despicable acts their sex commit. All the more reason they need to read it. More important though, no avid reader who is old enough should miss this wonderful writing from a debut writer.
When the power of language and the power of story meld so thrillingly together, they make something very special, and important - witching magic. They leave us
‘Dancers all of the day’