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

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As a lover of witches, female rage, revenge murder, gender neutrality, matriarchy, and the word ‘cunt,’ this was good as hell. This beautifully, dark story sees Lux go through her darkest moments, with parts of the novel being written with no punctuation, as Lux talks to Else about her past, her trauma and what led her to where she was at the beginning of the book. Her work has been optioned for TV, adapted for stage, recorded for radio and podcasts, exhibited in galleries and distributed from a vintage Wurlitzer cigarette machine. It’s a kind of revenge plot, but being female in a male dominated time highlights the power and powerlessness of women at this time. There’s also a folkloric nature to the whole thing, particularly the recurring motif of the players.

I was looking forward to sinking into her newest novel, but I found myself distanced from it throughout. 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. Kirsty Logan became one of the authors whose work I would definitely follow in the future and catch up on her past. Not just as a person who is always trying to heal and learn from everything around her, but as an artist. Honestly, what I wouldn't give for a sliver, a morsel, a grain of sand in the oyster of this woman's writing-capability.Among many things, probably one of my favourite aspects of the story was the main character; Lux’s evolution throughout the story.

But there’s something about Kirsty Logan’s writing that seems to transcend the story itself; that reaches into the heart of a deep, dark, hidden history and pulls out a truth that resonates down the ages. 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 where women grasp at power through witchcraft, sexuality and performance, and sometimes by throwing each other to the wolves. Now She Is Witch meditates on these issues and Logan's stance is explicitly made clear, yet it never feels like it's too much. Lux’s fate, though, lies elsewhere, up north where “blue glaciers cast up glassy and gleaming on a shore of black sand”. Near the beginning of Kirsty Logan’s fine new novel, a travelling theatre company stages a nocturnal performance on a frozen lake.

What follows is her life’s travels, making her way from a group of vagrant theatre plays, to a final position as the kings food taster, all the while accompanied by a mysterious woman named Else, who she grows closely connected to.

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. This is the skill in her storytelling, that I have another genre to add to the two listed at the start: mystery. Now She is Witch is a beautiful, atmospheric, resonant tale that follows Lux and Else as they fight to be heard and to tell their own stories.

A brilliant stand-alone story to read on cold, wintery nights with the wind howling and the rain pouring outside. The leader of the theatre company, which haunts Lux throughout the story, “was as thin as a skeleton: if he lay on his side during rain, a tiny puddle would form in the hollow of his cheek”. Now She Is Witch feels like the making of a new one, while also fitting into the landscape of British Isles folklore more generally. Kirsty Logan is the author of three novels, three story collections, a memoir, two chapbooks, a 10-hour audio play for Audible, and several collaborative projects with musicians and visual artists.