THE WAX CHILD

A woman is hounded by accusations of witchcraft through 16th-century Denmark in this historically based novella.

“I am a child shaped in beeswax,” is how the narrator of this breathtaking short novel introduces itself. The narrator means this literally—it is a wax child, only “the size of a human forearm.” Its beloved maker, who it misses with a “bottomless, shaft-like longing,” is an impoverished Danish noblewoman named Christenze Kruckow, who lives in the luckless household of Anne Bille. Embittered by an unbelievable series of miscarriages or stillbirths, Anne accuses Christenze of witchcraft, the punishment for which is a gruesome death. Christenze flees to the larger town of Aalborg, taking the wax child with her. In Aalborg, Christenze, who never married, joins a lively society of women who gossip, sing, and repeat the folk lessons they have learned from their mothers as they perform the grueling labor of their lives. The wax child, who is present at many of these gatherings in the guise of a child’s toy, reports both the women’s talk and the feelings that seethe behind it—Christenze’s attraction to the “effervescent” Maren; the claustrophobic resentment of foolish Elisabeth, whose husband, the pastor Klyne, abuses her; the proud independence of the one-eyed widow Dorte; the cunning spirit of Apelone. Yet, in spite of the small protection afforded by her noble birth, the label of “witch” is not so quick to fall away from a woman content to live on her own. Spurred by the witch-hunting mania of King Christian IV and fanned by accusations from the malignant Klyne, Christenze is again accused of witchcraft and is thrown into the dungeons, along with Maren, Dorte, and Apelone, to await trial. Throughout it all, the wax child—who narrates from the distant future, the past, and the brutal present of the novella all at once—spins its own spellbinding tale of loss and longing as the true story of Christenze Kruckow weaves through language that makes what happened to her, and to so many other women like her, pulse with a clarity more real than fact.

A magnificent book. A true masterpiece of both substance and style.