The Familiars
Historical fiction never goes out of fashion, but since The Miniaturist ignited global bestseller lists back in 2014, the audience has exploded. This partly explains why nine publishers fought over The Familiars even though it was by a debut author, but there is more to it. Stacey Halls’ magnificent tale of sorcery and demonic witchcraft conjures up a fascinating gothic world with women right at its heart.
Feisty outspoken Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 and pregnant for the fourth time. She married at 13 but keeps on losing her babies and with this pregnancy is sick up to 40 times a day.
“It felt like the child growing inside me was trying to escape through my throat,” she says. Fleetwood longs to give her handsome husband, Richard, an heir but when she finds a letter in his study from the doctor who delivered her third stillborn child saying she will not survive another pregnancy she’s angry that her husband hasn’t told her.
Enter Alice Gray, a midwife Fleetwood comes across in the woods around their rather grand home, Gawthorpe Hall. Fleetwood loves riding through the forests surrounded by animals and nature. She hires Alice to heal her through her pregnancy and the two women form a special bond.
Meanwhile Lancashire has become obsessed with witchcraft and women are being rounded up to face potential hanging. The 1612 Pendle witch trials are the most famous in English history and it’s no wonder the author was transfixed. “I find it freeing writing about women because history belongs to men; women are on the periphery, so there’s plenty of room for imagination,” she explains.
Alice Gray gets caught up in the hysteria, branded a witch and Fleetwood is determined to save her. But is the mysterious Alice really to be trusted?
Suspicion and sorcery dominate as the drama gathers pace with a clever twist at the end. And while it’s a tale about a moment in time, Stacey feels her novel also relates to women today. “While we might no longer hang people accused of witchcraft, the mob mentality is still very much alive and well in this era of social media. It’s no coincidence that witches were almost exclusively women who were different in some way, and begged to be ‘put in their place’ by male lawmakers.”