Bright I Burn

July 15, 2024
The blistering latest from Aitken (The Island Child) gives voice to Alice Kyteler (1280–1325), the first Irish woman convicted of witchcraft. Aitken portrays Alice, who evaded her punishment by fleeing the country, as a formidable figure and nobody’s idea of a victim. Having inherited an inn and a banking and lending business from her father, Alice goes through four wealthy husbands, all of whom die suspiciously, before coming to the attention of an ambitious new bishop, who accuses her of witchcraft. Alice makes a beguiling heroine whose lust for money, power, and sex are constrained but never thwarted. Some of her actions are horrifying—she shoves one of her husbands down the stairs to his death, and fatally poisons another—but Aitken never wavers in portraying her humanity. Particularly striking are the depictions of Alice’s sorrow at the death of her young daughter and at the growing distance between her and her son. The novel moves through the decades in sharp, poetic vignettes told from Alice’s point of view, which are interspersed with commentary from a chorus of judgmental villagers (“I always thought there was something unnatural about her”; “Rich people are so odd”). It adds up to a fiercely intelligent and often surprising examination of a woman’s choices and their consequences. Agent: Hellie Ogden, WME.