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The familiars book review5/11/2023 ![]() ![]() Halls ramps up the stakes by having Fleetwood discover a letter from a doctor advising her husband Richard that she will die if she tries to conceive again. ![]() Married at 13, and three miscarriages later, Fleetwood needs Alice to help her deliver a healthy baby. Drawn from real-life figures, her novel tells the story of Fleetwood Shuttleworth, a 17-year-old pregnant noblewoman who finds herself caught up in the trials when her midwife, Alice Gray, is accused of witchcraft. Halls, a journalist, grew up near Pendle Hill and was fascinated by the trials from a young age. From the king down, a fear of the unknown, of the dark arts, was used as a way to subjugate, villainise and murder women. The Familiars is an incisive account of the brutal way women were treated by a patriarchal society in thrall to magic and the supernatural. At a time when the #MeToo movement was beginning to gather momentum, it is easy to see why its subject matter, a fictionalised account of the Pendle witch trials in 17th-century Lancashire, might garner such interest, culminating in a nine-way bidding auction won by Bonnier Zaffre. ![]() A debut novel, The Familiars by Stacey Halls, cast a spell over the publishing world in November 2017. ![]()
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