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Hex: Darkland Tales

£9.9£99Clearance
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This new book, The Witch in the Word Machine, is a collection that underpins Jenni Fagan’s entire approach to words. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. And if we think of the way our children can also be conditioned to think in this way then consider the tale of Hansel and Gretel or the Slavic tale of Baba Yaga. The writing was fantastic quite lyrical and poetic at points and it was amazing to see how much of a solid connection was crafted between these two women within a short number of pages, not only did this book manage to tell the story of Geillis and Iris but also the experience of so many women.

Me gusta cuando se abordan hechos reales y se les da un toque fantástico, pero creo que quizás quedó un tanto corto.As the hours pass and dawn approaches, Geillis recounts the circumstances of her arrest, brutal torture, confession and trial, while Iris offers support, solace - and the tantalising prospect of escape. Interestingly, Federici argues that the witch hunts occurred around the same time as colonialism and the extermination of the populations of the New World, the English enclosures, the beginning of the slave trade and the laws against vagabonds and beggars. This is a book that follows two witches across time, Geillis and Iris set in a prison sell below the floors of Edinburgh in 1591. Maybe the windows are closed but it still seems unlikely that, in the summer heat, the stench of her body could be bottled up tight inside.

This is a book that perfectly demonstrates how generations of women still have so much to change in the world and everything in common centuries apart. Hex is a visceral depiction of what happens when a society is consumed by fear and superstition, exploring how the terrible force of a king’s violent crusade against ordinary women can still be felt, right up to the present day. It opens with Jenni's most recent work and includes her previous two collections, both now out of print. Brecht would certainly agree with her but so too would Edmund Burke (1729-1797) when he said, ‘ The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.Iris disables a guard, astrally produces an eatable meal for Geillis, conjures a blanket out of nothing for her too and later, when in the guise of a crow, manages to devour a rat herself. None of this can disguise the stunning talentlessness of Fagan’s writing and its botching of the North Berwick witch trials. Iris says she will ‘ place a hex on every man, woman and child who takes pleasure in Geillis’ death. During the 2016 Presidential election Hilary Clinton was demonised, particularly on social media, with images of her in a black hat riding a broom. It seems an odd choice then for the author to present this look at the last woman hanged for being a witch from the point of view of an actual witch and a seance - thereby establishing some sense of guilt where there wasn't any to begin with.

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