by Emilia Hart

I haven’t been reviewing for the past few months, which doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading, but it does mean I have built up something of a review backlog.

Weyward is one of the slickest stories I have read this year, a well-paced and cleverly plotted novel about three women who are witches – although they don’t all know it yet.

In 1619, Altha is on trial for her life. She is a successful “wise woman” accused of using witchcraft to kill a local farmer and must face all the indignities that go with the supposed crime. Violet is a sixteen-year-old girl in 1942, shut up in her home by her father, her only companions her younger brother, an old nanny and a well-meaning but complicit governess. All we know to begin with is that she is fond of insects and spiders and that her mother’s death is surrounded by mystery. Kate is a married woman in 2019, whose husband, Simon, controls and abuses her. Rather like the characters in Daphne du Maurier’s short novel, she is pursued by birds.

Kate has had enough. She breaks free of Simon and takes refuge in the English village called Crow’s Beck, where she has inherited a cottage from her great-aunt, recently deceased. We learn early on that the dead aunt is Violet, which leads us to suspect there may be genetic connections with Altha too, as well as clear “witching” connections between all three.

While Altha is aware all along what she is and what she has done, Violet and Kate are mystified by the strange things that happen around them. However, as the novel unfolds, both women begin to understand more and more about their ancestry, and their strange powers. Violet’s father forces her into a relationship with nasty cousin Frederick with predictably unpleasant consequences. She eventually learns the truth about her mother and uses her strange abilities to take revenge on her persecutors. Kate, pregnant and pursued by Simon, learns who and what she is and makes a new life for herself.

One of the challenges for Emilia Hart here was to give her Weyward characters distinctive voices and she does so with a clever device. The story is told from the three women’s point of view, but each in a different way. Kate’s contribution is told in third person, present tense; Altha tells her own story in past tense, while the Violet narrative is more traditionally written in third person, past tense.

Weyward is a strongly feminist novel in which all the male characters are somewhat unpleasant, and who in the end get their come-uppance in appropriate and (in one case anyway) rather creepy but satisfying ways. It was a great story to read on holiday while cruising along the coast of France – relaxing, absorbing and great fun!

****