From Pauline Chandler – www.pauline.chandler.com
“Burning Issy” – Melvin Burgess
Making friends with the witch’s child, Jennet, is dangerous
for orphan girl, Issy. This is 17thc. England , when
witches were routinely tortured and burned to death, and Issy herself is mocked
as someone ‘kissed by the Devil’, and bound straight for hell. She is known as ’Burning
Issy’ because of the burn scars on her face and suffers a recurrent nightmare
about being burnt in a fire and seeing a face in the flames.
Kind-hearted Issy sees more than witchcraft in Jennet. She
knows that her friend is half-starved, lonely and savagely bullied by her own
mother, Squinting Annie and grandmother, Old Demdyke, both notorious witches. In their innocence, neither of the girls sees
much wrong with being a witch. Jennet is afraid of her grandmother, but she looks forward to becoming a proper witch
herself, because then the others will stop bullying her. The witches, who live
up in Malkin Tower , scare Issy, but when the chance
comes to get observe their rituals, her curiosity overcomes her fear.
The story takes a dramatic twist when the witches lay claim
to Issy as ‘one of their own’ and force her to join them, by threatening her
foster-brother, Ghyll. As Issy prepares
to move to Malkin
Tower , a stranger
arrives, someone who also lays claim to Issy’s future.
The Pendle Witches, the deaths by burning, the brews, the
chants, the familiars, the wax mannikins: all this is well-explored material. Melvyn
Burgess breathes fresh life into the story, with an array of engaging
characters, who inhabit a real world where, day after day, they battle disease,
starvation and hardship. It’s a world we can identify with, where a lonely
child might well be desperate to have a friend, any friend, even the daughter
of a witch. It’s also a world of surprises. This is more than a straightforward
historical adventure With his customary skill, Melvin Burgess raises some
searching questions about witchcraft.
What I especially love about this novel is the character of
Issy. Without parents or history, scarred and mocked, haunted and lonely, she
shows resilience, immense courage and selflessness, in her quest for a better
life. Does Issy win out in the end? I
don’t think I’m spoiling any secrets to say that she does. Perhaps, though, not
in the way we predict.
An enthralling story, beautifully told, about 17thc witches,
full of historical detail, accurately described, with an unpredictable ending.
Pauline Chandler
www.paulinechandler.com
August 2012
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