Bright I Burn
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK • IRISH BESTSELLER • A fierce, electrifying novel inspired by the true story of the first woman to be condemned as a witch in Ireland
In thirteenth-century Ireland, a woman with power is a woman to be feared.
Alice, the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper in Kilkenny, grows up watching her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities—and she vows that she will never suffer the same fate. In time, she discovers she has a flair for making money, and takes her father's flourishing business to new heights. But as her riches and stature grow, so too do rumors about her private life. By the time she marries her fourth husband—the three earlier are dead—a storm of local gossip and resentment culminates in a life-threatening accusation . . .
A breathtaking act of imagination, Bright I Burn gives voice to a woman lost to history, who dared to carve a space of her own in a man’s world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The blistering latest from Aitken (The Island Child) gives voice to Alice Kyteler (1280–1325), the first Irish woman convicted of witchcraft. Aitken portrays Alice, who evaded her punishment by fleeing the country, as a formidable figure and nobody's idea of a victim. Having inherited an inn and a banking and lending business from her father, Alice goes through four wealthy husbands, all of whom die suspiciously, before coming to the attention of an ambitious new bishop, who accuses her of witchcraft. Alice makes a beguiling heroine whose lust for money, power, and sex are constrained but never thwarted. Some of her actions are horrifying—she shoves one of her husbands down the stairs to his death, and fatally poisons another—but Aitken never wavers in portraying her humanity. Particularly striking are the depictions of Alice's sorrow at the death of her young daughter and at the growing distance between her and her son. The novel moves through the decades in sharp, poetic vignettes told from Alice's point of view, which are interspersed with commentary from a chorus of judgmental villagers ("I always thought there was something unnatural about her"; "Rich people are so odd"). It adds up to a fiercely intelligent and often surprising examination of a woman's choices and their consequences.
