The Familiars

Stacey Halls' The Familiars is a captivating, gothic account of one of England's most famous trials - that of the Pendle Hill Witches. Set in a time of uneasy witch hunts in the county of Lancaster, the story follows Fleetwood Shuttleworth, a young bride pregnant now for the fourth time after a series of failed pregnancies.

Plot

Anxious for an heir, Fleetwood's husband, Richard, seems to have hidden a crucial piece of information from her. It is not long before she discovers it: a letter that confirms that surviving the coming birth is not on the cards. If the baby wouldn't make it, neither would she.

Soon after receiving this damning news, Fleetwood soon runs into Alice Grey, a local who claims she can help her carry the baby to term. Unfortunately, this relief is ephemeral. Aiding the king in his quest to rid Lancashire of evil, Richard and his friend Roger are fervent in their vigor to root out witches in the county.

"I wonder if the king has some sense in wanting to tighten the reins on Lancaster's women. They are lawless, are they not?"

For the men of this book, witches are any women too shady, too mysterious, too lawless to be an upstanding citizen. Of course, these women must serve the Devil. The king's witch hunt is steeped in a haze of prejudice and hatred, and Halls does an excellent job of making us feel for its victims.

The story unwraps in layers as truths about Richard's and Fleetwood's pasts come to light while slowly revealing the company Alice seemingly keeps. While interest in the Pendle Trials slowly inflames the entire county, its consequences are painfully intimate in scale as it wraps up the two women in something more than what they bargained for. What follows is a glorious mess of heartbreak, loss, and betrayal that slowly sucks Alice and Fleetwood in its grasp.

Characters

It has been a while since I have come across work where the writer takes their time to carefully flesh out their characters, revealing bits of backstory embedded in their words as the story slowly unravels around them. The terrible structure of the society in this novel establishes the fact that being a woman is just as dangerous as being a witch - one misstep, and you could be mistaken for something you are not.

"Are you like the king now, thinking all wise women and poor women and midwives are carrying out the Devil's work? Why, he must be the largest employer in Lancaster."

Fleetwood

Fleetwood starts as quite a naive young woman who quite painfully, attempts to rationalize the coldness she faces at Richard's hands. Her acquiescence made me grimace: as a woman barely attempting to have any say in her life, how was I supposed to love this character?

Halls is masterful in her exposition as she reveals parts of the past that made Fleetwood who she is. Although these details don't always add to the story, they add quite a lot to the character, which, eventually, makes you understand a lot of Fleetwood's actions.

Although not your typical, rebellious woman, our young protagonist is a force to be reckoned with. A well-defined arc changes her in more ways than one throughout the book. Her strength is in her refined but firm subtlety, relying on the wiles of her gender and the power of her position to affect, as much as possible, the course of events.

Alice

Alice, for the most part, remains as mysterious to me as she did to Fleetwood for the majority of the time. It is hard to decipher her as a person, but she does make for a striking character, and somewhat quite contrary to the image of a witch. When you imagine witches, you imagine dreadful crones with ghastly faces - not cheerful, cheeky Alice and her pockets full of herbs.

My biggest issue remains that I never felt as much camaraderie with Alice as I did with Fleetwood. Although an interesting character, she never fully felt as developed out as the latter did. For the most part, Alice does remain a passive character, showing up occasionally but retreating to her shadows.

Given the title, I expected a much more fierce, intense dynamic between the witch and the noblewoman. After all, familiarshave a bond that runs deep, and while I did get a gist of that here, I would have liked something much stronger to drive home the relationship the two shared.

Worldbuilding

Halls succeeds in creating a world that is rife with danger - from shady folk to the deep woods, to childbirth. Unsettling nightmares and creepy children linger around the corners while people roam about the country calling for the blood of witches.

While there was certainly room for creating a much more gothic atmosphere, the details are unfortunately too sparse at times, breaking the immersion for me. I would have loved for her to get a bit more descriptive with those bits. This book relies heavily on its setting and would have benefited from a richer writing style befitting its characters.

Writing Style

While the story moves a little slowly for the first few chapters, it soon picks up pace. I did find it a bit annoying that some things fell into place a little too neatly toward the end - real life is rarely that neat. Although it did not feel rushed, it did have a bit of a... passive tone to it that I really did not prefer. Nevertheless, all the threads were pretty lined up in earlier chapters to tie them up in a way that still made sense in the end.

In the end, I love how there are a couple things that are never explicitly stated, even after the end. It leaves you open to your own interpretation and makes for a much more compelling read. I usually do not prefer authors who spoon-feed their readers, I much prefer those who leave breathing space between their words and trust us enough to read between the lines.

In Conclusion

The Pendle Trials were perhaps the most famous trial of the seventeenth century. Although the book itself is a work of fiction, most of the characters are not. The real accounts of the August 1612 trial have some inconsistencies about them, but Halls attempts to tell her story in a way that attempts to explain those unexplained mysteries - and I loved the way went she went about it.

For all its misgivings, The Familiars is a wonderful account of deeply flawed, strong women trying to survive in a world that constantly keeps dragging them down - crushing them under the weight of their greed and their expectations. At the end of the day, I did not go into this book expecting to love it as much as I did... and was pleasantly surprised.