Hex: Darkland Tales

Product Information

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The terrible force of a king’s violent crusade against ordinary women can still be felt, right up to the present day. There can be little doubt that part of the success of Jenni Fagan’s previous novel, Luckenbooth (2021), can be attributed to the way she managed to evoke Edinburgh’s Old Town with its grey tenements, cobbles and closes. The book has its moments of lyricism and joy with recollections of days by the sea shore, frustrated by hopes of a simple life.

David Seaton made each of us lie – they tortured me until I said what he had told me to say – they were not witches, and nor am I! I agree with you that the slippage between witches are real/witches are a social construct used to oppress people is a bit of a problem – I feel like it turns up in other novels on this topic as well.Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. How can she lie rotting in her flat unnoticed whilst directly outside thousands of tourists are queuing daily to see the Edinburgh Tattoo? I would like to reassure you that five hundred years from now the fine line of misogyny no longer elongates from uncomfortable to fatal, yet I cannot. Iris disables a guard, astrally produces an eatable meal for Geillis, conjures a blanket out of nothing for her too and later, when in the guise of a crow, manages to devour a rat herself.

Luckily things are changing, but there’s still a long path, but if we women unite all together, we can truly leave a mark and cause a great impact. However, as the questioning continues and men look around seeking answers Iris tells Geillis, ‘ There is no man on earth who didn’t get here except by a woman parting her thighs. Iris answers Geillis about the present: “no it’s mostly just men doing what they feel entitled to do, certain women’s deaths seem like they are almost, well, expected. Iris might have determined to go or might have been summoned to come; she might be a familiar or she might be dreaming.The year is 1910 and she has been sent to a tenement building in Edinburgh by her recently deceased father to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancée.

inspired by the north berwick witch trials we follow geillis duncan on the night before her execution, where she receives a strange visitor named iris. Geillis tells Iris that she has been accused of “trying to ‘stay the Queen’ from arriving safely to her husband.

Based on real events and characters from the 16 century North Berwick Witch Trials, Hex is mainly a conversation between. Other characters mentioned in the novel were also real historical characters like Geillis – Doctor John Fian, Agnes Sampson, Barbara Napier and Euphame MacCalzean. While this resonates, and I remained intrigued at the time, on reflection I find it a little counterproductive. When she first meets Geillis, Iris observes: ‘Head turned away, eyes toward me – the outline of your nose and forehead and chin is marked in moonlight; you look like a silver face on a ten-pence coin. It raises the question - if a country cannot re-tell its history, will it be stuck forever in aspic and condemned to be nothing more than a shortbread tin illustration?

Hex by Jenni Fagan is part of the Darkland Tales, a book series made of retellings of stories from Scotland’s history, myth, and legend.Having lived in Edinburgh for 5 months, I know very well the place where Geillis took her last breath. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Hex is a fictional retelling of a the tragic fate of Geillis Duncan, a real girl from the 16th century, tortured and executed as a witch. Men and women at this time grew their crops together and their homes and their work were much the same.