Review - The Near Witch by VE Schwab

Cover by Julia Lloyd

The Near Witch
VE Schwab
Titan Books, 12 March 2019
Available as HB (355pp) or e-book
Format read: HB
Source: Free copy from publisher (thank you!)

I was really excited and felt very privileged to be sent a copy of this, VE Schwab's first published book, which - as can be the fate of early books - had fallen out of print in the US (it was never published in the UK). It's wonderful that Titan have put it out again, in a handsome edition with some beautiful illustrations on the cover and title pages well as a new introduction by Schwab herself and an additional, related short story...

It starts with a crack, a sputter, and a spark...

So begins this story of yearning, prejudice, revenge and of love.

If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.

If you ever visit York, do take in the Castle Museum, housed in the old prison. It has its share of the gruesome - you can visit the condemned cell where Dick Turpin spent his last night of life - but more interesting to me is that the wings have been adapted to house displays of everyday Yorkshire life though the ages. Among these is the interior of a moorland cottage form the 18th or 19th century. One family living in a single room, surrounded by the harrowing wind. It could be very cosy - or, if you are at all nervous, it could almost be a living nightmare.

In The Near Witch we see both sides of moorland living. The village of Near is - ironically - near nothing at all, surrounded by wild moors across which the wind plays, almost seeming to talk to the villagers inside the boundary. (And such a clear boundary, almost like that between different worlds). We learn little of the world in which Near is set - I think there is a wider world, but, in a way that reminded me of Meryvn Peake's Gormenghast and Titus Groan, that world isn't present, important or of much interest to anyone.

Instead we have the village - more a scattering of houses and fields than a heavily built up settlement - and the moor, where it's dangerous to go, though nobody seems sure why. Beset by old legends of a Near Witch, of the dangerous wind and by the expanses of the moor, the arrival of a stranger is a big event, a threatening event, announced in dream and visions rather than in the clear light of day. And he's greeted with suspicion as, at the same time, children begin to go missing, vanishing from their beds at night...

I simply loved this book. It reads as Wuthering Heights' younger, weirder sister, with much of the same atmosphere - the moorland otherworldliness, the sense of wild forces at play, forces nobody understand or can control, not Lexi, the hero, not the two Witch Sisters, not Otto, Lexi's Uncle, the fatuous Guardian of the village - but an extra layer of the dark, of the perverse.

Despite searches, the missing children can't be found and it soon seems more important to blame someone than to rescue them. As the teasing winds get stronger and something from the village's past seems to be stirring, a mob mentality, a desire to hurt and blame, begins to whisper through Near.

So there's a mystery at the centre of the story - in fact, two mysteries. Who's taking the children, and who's the stranger?

There's an atmosphere of claustrophobia, of finger-pointing, of fear and recrimination

There's also Lexi, into whom Schwab breathes a spirit of absolute reality. A young woman mourning her dead father, Lexi fiercely protects her sister, Wren, and tries to keep at bay the influence of Uncle Otto. But it's hard when her mother has become hollow and Otto insists on Lexi knowing her place and keeping to it. Lexi's family are hunters and trackers but Otto thinks she should tend the bread ovens and deliver loaves instead - and not carry a knife, wear boots - or interfere with mens' business, like the hunt for the missing kids.

As a Schwab hero, of course, Lexi has absolutely no time for this, setting the stage for a conflict with Otto and his gang. They have muscle, but Lexi isn't without her own resources, whether friendships, knowledge or simple determination. In a way - and I know this is being fanciful and using hindsight - I could see a bit of Lila Bard from A Darker Shade of Magic peeping out of Lexi.

And there's Cole, about whom I shall say nothing at all because you need to discover this elusive, haunted young man for yourself. (The story that's included, The Ash Born Boy, does tell more about him but you should definitely read that afterwards: it is itself a marvel of a story, turning complex emotional truth into unleashed power, but if you read it first you'll just know too much about him).

It all makes for a powerful, even heady story, romantic in all ways at once, imbued with the spirit of moonlight on the purple moor. A haunting story, about a haunted place but one which manages at the same time to keep itself rooted in humanity, in love and in family rather than going totally gothic.

A fine first novel, and I hope that if I'd read it in 2011 I'd have guessed the author was bound for great things.