BRIGHT I BURN

A novel set in 13th-century Ireland detailing the life of the first woman in that country to be convicted of witchcraft.

Everyone in Kilkenny knows Alice Kyetler. Her father, an innkeeper and a lender, has passed his business onto her. As a woman banker, she is shrewd; as a marriage prospect, she is intimidating, with her independence and fearlessness. Eventually she marries William Outlaw, another moneylender, with whom she has a son and a daughter. Outlaw is no match for the fiery Alice—he lacks interest in her, especially sexually, much to her impatience—and when their daughter dies, a shattered Alice’s eyes begin to rove elsewhere. After Outlaw himself dies, Alice moves from one wealthy husband to the next, each one dying under circumstances that set the rumor mill humming, eventually culminating in an unprecedented accusation that will change history forever. For those who have read books like Madeline Miller’s Circe or Natalie Haynes’ Stone Blind, the story’s contours are familiar, at least at first: A woman with a bit too much power, pride, and ambition gets put in her place by a society all too eager to uphold conventions. But Aitken herself eschews convention: The historical novel, usually stuffed with worldbuilding and contextual detail, here unfolds via a lyric impressionism, moving like skipped stones through Alice’s life from girlhood to old age. As the novel hits the middle of Alice’s story, these stones skip faster, upping the tension. And unlike, say, Circe, Alice is less a misunderstood woman than, like many of history’s greatest figures, villain and victim in one, complex and elliptical. “Did you never wish to know what it is to be ordinary, unseen?” Alice is asked as a young woman. “No, and I certainly never will,” she replies.

An incredible medieval life rendered in incandescent flashes.