Now She is Witch: ‘Myth-making at its best‘ Val McDermid

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It’s little wonder that for a time Lux, who as the novel progresses becomes in turn an actor on a frozen stage, a servant in a hall of delicacies, a food-taster to a lord and companion to a fine lady, is tempted to turn her back on Else’s revenge and set her own dreams of finding freedom in the wild country aside. It's a dark story, and some truly vile and horrible things happen to the women in this book, but it never strays into gender-essentialist territory, which is what I usually loathe about those witchy feminist stories. Whether Logan is describing a dismembered bear whose lopped-off parts are handed out as favours at a banquet, or a gory flagellant’s parade, the images we are offered snap and sizzle with portent and possibility. For Lux and Else trail the weighty plumes of traumatic pasts, which Logan skilfully offers us in passages of backstory that sing, screech and skip through the novel in the way records are marked by jagged scratches.

I did not connect with the characters, and I found the plot both a bit too drawn out and quite repetitive in places. We join her story when her mother dies suddenly and she almost ends with the same fate as the angry mob-like villagers forcing her out of her home by committing the only thing which is imaginable in the cruelty of that era; arson. It was either no full stops, lots of amphersands and inconsistent capitalisation or a sort of dreamlike prose which kept me at arms length. This is one of the most "modern" examinations of a very real historical phenomena that I've read -- it thrives on the vagueness of its setting, neither a historical fiction nor a fantastic allegory.In the many stories that fall shrieking from the pages of this brutal, bracing novel, we encounter maidens forced to become mothers and mothers, if they live long enough, punished as witches or scorned as crones. the stream of consciousness parts felt super random and were incredibly hard to read so i had to skip them completely. I really enjoyed this creeping, sinister tale of witchcraft, such a hugely satisfying read, a kind of fantasy history, full of complex, powerful, women. I truly, truly highly recommend this book to everyone who needs some magic in their life or just a green light to finally be who they are. I was so looking forward to reading that book and unfortunately it didn't quite live up to my expectations.

Photograph: Massimiliano Donati/Awakening/Getty Images View image in fullscreen An eye for striking detail … Kirsty Logan. Not even to mention the beautiful circularity of the story, and the way that shards from the first page fall into place and are mirrored once we reach the ending. It’s winter and this play, which tracks a woman’s trajectory from maiden to mother to crone, is a small smudge of light in a grim surround of dark.The journey of Lux, and her strange companion Else, feels eerily familiar, showing how even after centuries, women with power are still held with suspicion. From the snowy winter woods to the bright midnight sun; from lost and powerless to finding your path, Now She is Witch conjures a world of violence and beauty - a world where women grasp at power through witchcraft, sexuality and performance, and most of all through throwing each other to the wolves. The realness of all these elements, in conjunction with the magical atmosphere of the setting and prose, made Lux’s story hit home all the harder.

The book also has good dynamics; there are no boring pages; even though the author focused more on the development of the main character, which is one of the reasons why this book is so good.Anyway, Logan dips her toes into that myth, her main character being a herbalist and abortionist, but manages to craft a story that does justice to the horrors of witch hunts and the disempowered position women held in medieval societies that never feels exaggerated. One of our national writing treasures , Kirsty Logan's latest tale is a deeply atmospheric , sometimes gory but ultimately uplifting . The relationship between Lux and Else was very carefully done, and there was a real slice of humanity to be found in so many of the various characters Lux falls into step with along the way.