3.5 Stars
I was interested in this novel when I read a description of it which mentioned that it is set in Kilkenny, a city my husband and I visited during our tour of Ireland. I was further intrigued by the fact that the book is based on a real woman, Alice Kyteler, the first recorded person condemned for witchcraft in Ireland.
The novel, set between 1279 and 1331, is a retelling of Alice’s life as seen through her own eyes; in a final note, the author mentions that her book is intended to “give her a voice again” because “like many women, her perspective has been lost.” As a child, Alice sees her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities and vows not to follow her path. Learning from her father, she proves to have a skill as a money lender. When her father dies and she wants to take over his business, she decides to marry because “’Few would choose a woman banker if she were unwed.’”
This becomes the first of four marriages. All her husbands are notable, wealthy men whose deaths leave her with more riches. The speed with which she remarries each time motivates people to suspect she may have hastened their deaths. Because she is not meek and subservient as women were expected to be and because she is rich and powerful, she becomes a target of jealousy and resentment and rumours are spread about her.
The writing style is ambiguous at times in that much is not explicitly stated so the reader has to infer. One example is Alice’s relationship with Petronilla. The novel sometimes feels disjointed as it skips years. Interspersed with the narrative are memories, dreams, and villagers’ gossip. It is the latter which adds most to the story. At other times, I was left confused. What, for example, is the purpose of “The Tale of the Coin”?
It is the character of Alice that is most interesting. She is independent, strong-willed, fearless, shrewd, manipulative, proud, ambitious, passionate, and ruthless. She is not someone that most readers will like, though one cannot but understand her frustration with the restrictions placed on her because she is a woman. She describes herself as “a girl turned bitter against men yet always in need of their devotion.” It’s clear that she is both victim and villain. The focus seems to be on her greed for money and the power it bestows and on her physical desires. She wants two things from her husbands: wealth and sexual pleasure. She is straightforward in her judgment of herself: “Everything good must die. That’s why I keep living.” In the end, she summarizes her life: “Once brightly I burned, I drew them all to me and consumed them all, unwittingly and wittingly, in my fire.”
I enjoyed Alice’s comments about society. She dismisses men “who worship at the altars of themselves” and weak women who “never learned the art of persuading men to believe they are in charge.” She does not have a high opinion of churchmen: “Half the churchmen I know have sold their souls to the Devil and bought back their right to purgatory with coin. Any rich man can save himself.” She doesn’t believe in the sermons delivered in church because “the God we hear about from the pulpit was created to line the purses of greedy men.”
Kilkenny has “the castle at one end, up on the hill, at the other end the cathedral.” What I did not know when we visited the city is that the Kyteler’s Inn along the Medieval Mile between the castle and the cathedral actually dates back to the time of Alice Kyteler. I would have enjoyed my Smithwicks there and raised it in honour of an unconventional woman who challenged societal standards. Though uneven in quality, this book does realistically develop Alice’s outer and inner life.
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