When I say I love and want stories about witches, this is the kind of story I mean.
Over the past year I’ve fallen in love with Alix E. Harrow’s stories. Not only is she an author who combines fantasy with historical fiction, one of my favourite things to read and write, and not only is her writing stunning, but there’s something so nostalgic about her tales that reminds me why it is we love stories in the first place.
After celebrating the portal fantasy genre in The Ten Thousand Doors of January, it’s time for witches to shine in The Once and Future Witches and oh how I adored this book.
James Juniper is the youngest of three sisters who were all incredibly close until they weren’t. Until the day her older sisters left her with their father, and June never heard from them again. When her father finally dies seven years later (with a little help from June), she flees to New Salem, reunites with her sisters (who, for some reason, haven’t spoken to each other in a long time) and, naturally, becomes involved in the suffrage movement.
In this alternate version of 19th century America, though, witches are real and still widely feared, and when June and her sisters, Bella and Agnes, accidentally bring witchcraft back into the world to empower women and the disenfranchised, they find themselves at war with the government of New Salem.
There’s June, who’s young and angry and frightened and so desperate to be with her sisters; middle sister, Agnes, the beauty who’s tried to cut herself off from her desire to mother the world until motherhood comes knocking on her door; and eldest sister, Bella, a scholarly and shy librarian who’s hiding some demons of her own after their father sent her away to school.
This novel had so much in it that I love, and explored so many different things, that I don’t really know what to say about it other than that you need to pick it up and read it. There are so many quotes from this book that I would gladly have tattooed on my forehead.
There were two things I particularly loved, however. Firstly, I loved that this is a novel of witchcraft with family at its centre. You’d think witchcraft and covens would create dozens and dozens of stories centred on sisterhoods, and yet so many witchcraft stories are overtaken by romance. The Once and Future Witches is a love story, but it’s a love story between three sisters who are discovering each other again and, in so doing, finally discovering themselves.
There were still two romances in the novel that I loved – a sapphic romance that was my everything, and another romance I so appreciated because Harrow wrote a woman who was still allowed to be desirable while pregnant, which I don’t think we see enough – but they worked so well because they didn’t take over the story, and it’s ultimately the relationship between June, Agnes and Bella that’s at the heart of this book.
Secondly, can I please get a hallelujah that the Eastwood sisters aren’t from high society? Something I’m always yearning for more of in my witch stories, particularly when they have a historical setting, is stories centred around the working classes. Tales about high society witches so often follow the same pattern of a woman who’s not like other girls™ who doesn’t want to get married, and yet whose story often ultimately revolves around a romance. With the Eastwood sisters being working class, Harrow was able to look at so many different parts of society – from the suffrage movement to racism to trans rights – instead of following one very small group of people who never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.
This is a tale of family and sisterhood and politics and power; a story about how the way in which the history of anyone who isn’t a white and wealthy man is so often overlooked can also be a way of quietly passing power through the generations, and how, ultimately, the stories we choose to tell are some of the most powerful spells in our possession.
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Customer reviews
A thoroughly engaging and empowering read!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 July 2021
I found The Once and Future Witches to be an emotive, powerful and poignant read.“Witching and women’s rights. Suffrage and spells... they’re both a kind of power...The kind we aren’t allowed to have.”Whilst researching post-read, I found a quote by Matilda Joslyn Gage, which I felt encompassed this book entirely:“When for ‘witches’ we read ‘women,’ we gain fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted ... upon this portion of humanity.”Harrow’s career as a historian is evidenced in the book by references to the Salem Witch Trials; Notably, a letter signed ‘S. Good,’ on page 154 and the mention of Tituba and Osbourne on page 155 (Sarah Good, Sarah Osbourne and Tituba being the first three people accused and arrested in 1692).My favourite character by far was Juniper, but I felt an affinity with all of the sisters, Agnes and Bella included.“Juniper has never met despair. She’s caught glimpses of some black creature edging nearer ... but she’s driven it back with fire and fury, every time.”One particularly heartrending chapter in this book describes all three women; Maiden, Mother and Crone. I wish the stereotypes surrounding these epithets could be replaced by Harrow’s descriptions instead:The Maiden is “the fierce one ... the siren and the selkie, the virgin and the Valkyrie; Artemis and Athena.The Mother is “the brave one, the ruthless one ... She is bloody Boadicea and heartless Hera...”The Chrone is “the canny one, the knowing one ... She is Baba Yaga and Black Anna...”A thoroughly engaging and empowering read!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 July 2021
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