The prose in this work is beautiful. I haven’t read much translated from Danish, but the style and narrative voice here was interesting in that it was both visceral and fragile. Strikingly, the story is narrated from the perspective of a doll made of wax. This allows Ravn to a perspective that removed from the bounds of humanity, but is intimately connected to it. The basic premise of the story is that it follows an accused witch who is hounded from her small town in Nakkebølle under suspicion of withcraft, and ends up in the city of Aalborg, only to be part of a larger witch trial.
We are witness to the experience of the women being imprisoned, tortured, and ultimately executed. We see the way suspicion builds arbitrarily, and the ways in which social hierarchies founded in jealousy and dominance find targets for violence. We see friendships placed under strain and the lengths which people will go to defend themselves and each other.
The narrator’s alternating desires for and disembodiment from the human experience is a unique lens through which Ravn tells the story. There are beautiful passages dedicated to descriptions of nature, contrasting against the violent, metallic world of bureaucracy. There are gory instances of spells and rituals, as well as short incantations and excerpts from grimoires that break up the narrative structure. The wax child outlasts its' maker, and this allows Ravn to play with chronology a bit, to interesting effects.
Ravn develops the relationships between the women in a way that feels authentic and intimate. Though this is not a long book, the dense prose and fragmented sentence structure in many ways help Ravn distil the essence of friendship and illustrate intimacy in great depth.
This books’ beautiful prose, sadly prescient subject matter, and excellent narration made it a top read for me. I loved the depth of historical research clearly done and the sense of place that Ravn creates as she envelopes the reader in medieval Denmark.