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

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With her signature style, intricately woven storylines and simply stunning prose, Kirsty Logan did it again. Now She Is Witch is a beautiful and twisted dark tale of feminine power in a time when a woman with power was deemed to be in league with the devil.

I liked the majority of "Now She is Witch" by Kirsty Logan, a very different witch story to those I've read in the past. I couldn’t help but feel the heavy burden on my chest when I realised; nothing much had changed since then. At one crucial moment, in an observation that might serve as an apt comment on the novel as a whole, the lady Lux has been serving says of stories: “Each person is stuffed full to bursting with them, fat as pigs ready for a feast. Logan’s novel is often brutal and visceral with graphic scenes that recreate the simmering violence of a time marked by its elaborate forms of discipline and punishment: the mortification of the flesh through flagellation; scolds’ bridals used on “outspoken” women; hunted animals; and plague victims boarded up and left to die.

Her name is Lux, and when we first meet her she is standing in a garden of poisonous herbs above the remains of her recently buried mother, who has been unjustly executed for witchcraft. Any who assume agency are swiftly denounced and brutally dealt with: those labelled witches are tied to poles in the sea and left to slowly drown; others guilty of lesser offences (talking too much, too loudly or indeed at all) are paraded around in scold’s bridles, torture devices deployed to humiliate. A brilliant stand-alone story to read on cold, wintery nights with the wind howling and the rain pouring outside. That’s where this book touched my aching burning forehead and brought me cool relief with its icy long fingers; the only thing I ever have to be; is myself.

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. Logan’s examination of issues of gender and power may not be desperately original but it’s thoughtful and heartfelt.the stream of consciousness parts felt super random and were incredibly hard to read so i had to skip them completely. Not just as a person who is always trying to heal and learn from everything around her, but as an artist. Some of the writing is beautiful, some is what I guess is 'stream of consciousness'; interesting, but too long and it gets a bit tiresome. 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. I'm very pleased to say that I loved the writing again here, but I found the storyline equally palatable.