Hex: Darkland Tales

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On this, the last night of her life in a prison cell several floors below Edinburgh’s High Street, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor – Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still killed for who they are and what they believe.

While this resonates, and I remained intrigued at the time, on reflection I find it a little counterproductive. inspired by the north berwick witch trials we follow geillis duncan on the night before her execution, where she receives a strange visitor named iris.

Supongo que se quiere decir que los hombres siguen saliéndose con la suya cuando cometen determinados delitos, pero no veo comparable lo que ocurría hace 500 años y lo que pasa en la actualidad (dependiendo del país, ya que no ignoro que en muchos lugares se siguen atropellando los derechos de las mujeres y de otros colectivos).

This book is based on a really interesting concept - of historic Scottish tales retold or readdressed - and a female focused story that I thought would grip me. No me ha gustado mucho el estilo, pero si esto son cosas que a ti no te importan te animo a leer el libro. Fagan views the witch hunt as being purely an expression of male dominance, almost as an essentialist tantrum. Visceral, damning, shimmering with literal prowess and prose all under the heady guise of something much darker, this tremendous read shall stay with you forever and repeat inside your mind long after you absorb its story.

Iris later turns into a crow and this gives the novel an air of the supernatural that fits perfectly with the subject matter she is writing about. It carries a very powerful feminist message throughout, and it was a great way to learn about this part of Edinburgh's history. Iris was the Greek Goddess of the rainbow, something that symbolises hope and the flower Iris is also said to cleanse areas. Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).

I would like to reassure you that five hundred years from now the fine line of misogyny no longer elongates from uncomfortable to fatal, yet I cannot. It balances magic and realism perfectly in reframing the Scottish Witch Trials for its modern readership. Creating a fearful panic in society can aid the entrenchment of power and the witchcraft frenzy could also be used to settle old scores, enrich individuals at the expense of others and keep women subordinate to men.

No me convenció la forma de mezclar magia y realidad, pero puede que otras personas consigan entender mejor su propósito. Nevertheless, the reality of what happened the night that Janet Cornfoot was lynched at Pittenweem is hard to grasp as one.

Disputes over inheritance, envies and jealousies, particularly of women of independent wealth and means, was responsible for many women being accused of witchcraft. This is the story of Hex by Jenni Fagan, the new volume in Polygon’s Darkland Tales series, which is coming in March 2022. With a poetic style influenced by Gertrude Stein and William Burroughs, this collection is woven with surrealistic imagery that is both unflinching and dislocating. While men were also outed as sorcerers or magicians and burned and hanged, over 80% of those said to be in league with the Devil were women – more generally peasant women – and that was true throughout Europe of this period. This gives the book a contemporary relevance, at one stage of the night Iris relating to Geillis how more than four hundred years later, similar evils were still occurring, alluding to the two Metropolitan police officers who took photographs of two murdered sisters, instead of guarding the murder scene they took photographs of the two ‘dead birds’ and circulated to friends.She goes on to comment: ‘Travelled time all my life’, and then: ‘Five hundred years between us, Geillis Duncan – it’s such a little leap really.