The Familiars - Stacey Halls

This was one of the books I bought last year fully intending to read sooner rather than later but it has been later. Another book published a year ago but I have to say it was well worth the wait. Utterly engrossing historical fiction concerning the Pendle witches of Lancashire.

Some blurbish matters……

‘To save her child, she will trust a stranger. To protect a secret, she must risk her life . . . 

Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married, and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband Richard is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn't supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy.

Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby, and to prove the physician wrong. 

As Alice is drawn into the witchcraft accusations that are sweeping the North-West, Fleetwood risks everything by trying to help her. But is there more to Alice than meets the eye? 

Soon the two women's lives will become inextricably bound together as the legendary trial at Lancaster approaches, and Fleetwood's stomach continues to grow. Time is running out, and both their lives are at stake. 

Only they know the truth. Only they can save each other.’

Almost a dual narrative in concept the novel tells the story of the Pendle witches and their subsequent trial but alongside it and very dominantly is the courageous tale of Fleetwood Shuttleworth. So it is also what I call a ‘big house’ story (and, oh, how I want to visit Gawthorpe Hall!). All these elements work in harmonious tandem with each other to produce an immersive read with plenty of intrigue and rich historical research that will have you scuttling off to raid Wikipedia - if you’re anything like me!

The book examines the role of women within the society of the time. The two main female characters, Fleetwood and Alice, are from different social and economic backgrounds but their implicit views converge. The men portrayed in the book are domineering, with a sense of superiority and that arrogance assumption that they are right about everything even if it borders on infidelity. 

For all Fleetwood’s youth and her, perhaps less than happy and fulfilling childhood, she is quietly feisty and determined. Always trying to shake off the manacles of the seventieth century views on how women should behave she baulks at little to protect her unborn child and to seek justice when it seems justice will not be sought. Loyalty, too, is fundamental to her motivation. 

Wherever you have witches you have a sense of the supernatural and ethereal but not in the ghostly, ghastly, ghouly way. Some of it is subtle. A dog called Puck? Oh yes. And descriptions of the pastoral landscape might conjure Titania. 

As with any good historical novel the quality of research is tantamount to the reader being able to engage fully with the narrative. And if you’re a bit of a history buff you twitch at any glaring anomalies and inconsistencies. I didn’t twitch, not once. And I’m a history buff. I was riveted the whole way through. A wonderful lockdown read. I’m now pleased I waited. And I’d like to thank myself for buying a copy of this book.