
Author: Emilia Hart
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers/The Borough Press
Available: 2nd February 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook
Book Details:
KATE, 2019
Kate flees London – abandoning everything – for Cumbria and Weyward Cottage, inherited from her great-aunt. There, a secret lurks in the bones of the house, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.
VIOLET, 1942
Violet is more interested in collecting insects and climbing trees than in becoming a proper young lady. Until a chain of shocking events changes her life forever.
ALTHA, 1619
Altha is on trial for witchcraft, accused of killing a local man. Known for her uncanny connection with nature and animals, she is a threat that must be eliminated.
But Weyward women belong to the wild. And they cannot be tamed…
Weaving together the stories of three women across five centuries, Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.
Thoughts:
There are some books that you seem to see everywhere on various social media platforms prior to their publication and I do love seeing them, as they prompt me to investigate books, I might not yet be aware of. As was the case with Weyward Emilia Hart’s debut novel, I mean how could I miss the shockingly pink proofs floating about and they sparked my curiosity and I went and had a look at the book details…and I had a love at first sight moment…I was struck with that internal sense of fizz of excitement, that sense of satisfaction and anticipation and a rather childlike, chant of gimme, gimme, gimme in my head because I knew that I must read this novel! Then came the crushing discovery that I would have wait about 6 months until it was published (I could be exaggerating about the timeline but to be honest, it has felt like forever) until finally last week, Weyward was released into the world, and I could get my hands on a copy, or in this case the audiobook and before 9am on 02/02/2023 I was engrossed and I could not put it down or stop listening in my case!
If there was ever any doubt about the hype for this novel surpassing the expectation, let me dispel that notion! Emilia’s book deserves it, every mention, all the excitement and the accolades…this novel may just be my favourite read of 2023 and yes, I know that we aren’t even halfway through February…well that should tell you, how fabulous I think it is! And Emilia, what ever you write next, I will be at the head of the queue to buy it, as you are an imaginative, clever storyteller and you deserve every success this book brings you.
So let me give you a small taste of the book itself; three women from the same maternal line centuries apart, with lives and societies so different from each other, yet all face the violent persecution of men. Men who fear them for their independence, their intelligence and their power and seek to destroy them but they are Weyward women, so be careful what you start! This novel is a magnificent mixture of murder, mystery, and magic. As a reader are drawn deeply into the characters’ lives, their emotions, their struggles, and their environments. Which Emilia has constructed so exquisitely, and she imbues the circumstances each woman faces, with such taut atmospheric tension, you can almost touch it! I found my heart in my mouth several times as I read!
I loved how this novel was constructed layer upon layer of history, social context, and emotional intelligence, its simply sublime. Each woman has their own individual story, and they are woven together, and each chapter of their timelines are slotted together like literary Lego to create the legacy of the Weywards; a human tapestry if you will. The knowledge and experiences of the past (Altha story) informs the story of Violet and in turn, their discoveries provide Kate with the strength she needs to survive her present.
It is a rich history of women and their connections to the spiritual and natural world, some might label it feminist, but that for me is oversimplifying the context. Yes, it is a fictional story of women their skills and their survival, but it is so much more, it a novel that articulates, the complexities of society, where the patriarchy in their fear and insecurity, seeks to control, to supress and to dominate a gender they cannot comprehend as mentally equal never mind physically so and where their fear overwhelms them, they seek to destroy women who refuse to be cowed or submit to the limited boxes assigned to their imposed weaker gender and through Altha, Violet and Kates experiences, we see the nefarious manifestations and consequences of that fear and it will make you grind your teeth with the presumption of it! This novel is breathtaking, it will terrify you and inspire you in equal measure as you to read it but of course to find out more you will have to embark on this reading journey for yourselves as I won’t be revealing anything specific here!
As far as I’m concerned, this book needs to be on every bookshelf in the land and deserves to win a literary prize or two as well. It is a textured, taut, terrifying, and triumphal book and one that I insist you buy, today, right now, put an order into to your local bookshop or click madly online but get it and then cancel all your plans, make frothy coffees and stock up on snacks and refuse to move from your reading nooks until you’ve finished reading it! Now I’ll stop gushing and let you get on with your book shopping.
Happy Reading Bookophiles…
Author:
Emilia Hart is a British-Australian writer. She was born in Sydney and studied English Literature and Law at the University of New South Wales before working as a lawyer in Sydney and London. Emilia is a graduate of Curtis Brown Creative’s Three Month Online Novel Writing Course and was Highly Commended in the 2021 Caledonia Novel Award. Her short fiction has been published in Australia and the UK. She lives in London. You can follow Emilia on Twitter at @EmiliaHartBooks.