I feel like a ghost, like a thing made of mist, shreds of me taken away each time there is a fresh breeze, stripping away until there will be nothing left. …
— from The Path of Thorns
Asher Todd, their new governess, arrives at the remote Morwood family estate and quickly takes the measure of her new household. Supplied with knowledge of current medicine and the ancient practices of cunning women, and with more knowledge of the family than the family can know for her own safety, Asher begins by ingratiating herself with her young charges, Connell, Albertine and Sarai. The Morwood family has its secrets, and Asher is aware of many of them, and comes with a mystery to solve and promises to fulfill, and secrets of her own. She may leave the Morwoods shattered. And possibly herself, as well.
Witches, wolves, ghosts and revenants, spells and potions, and treachery and betrayal flow through these pages, a fantasy novel that draws on fairy tales and the Gothic novel. Welcome to the world of Angela Slatter’s Sourdough and Bitterwood stories, a world reminiscent of 19th century England, where a woman’s magic needs be performed quietly so not to alarm the authorities and be hanged or burned by the priests.
In her afterward, Slatter credits a piece of artwork by Ruth Sanderson as sparking the idea of a story in which Jane Eyre meets Dr. Frankenstein. The set-up of the governess arriving at a remote mansion draws directly from Jane Eyre, among other Gothic novels, and as the tale of unfolds we learn a variation on Red Riding Hood and the meaning of “the path of thorns.” Still, for all the fantasy trappings, Slatter keeps her characters real: They hurt, they bleed, they doubt, they persevere, they need each other, and if none of them are exactly heroes, there are better and worse among them in the estate and in Morwood Tarn, the small town adjacent to the estate.
This is not the sanitized fairy tales we give to children. The Path of Thorns is an adult novel, not in the sense of sex and violence, though there is some of both, but in the sense of exploring themes associated with the lives of women, specifically of women in a 19th century setting different from but rather like England. Slatter manages to dramatize the lives of older and of younger women, and of women of different social classes, without lecturing, but simply by watching them mingle and deal with one another. There are class and wealth differences, and differences in upbringing and experience that sometimes they surmount and sometimes they do not. There are also some differences from the historical past — for instance, there is a woman lawyer in this, which would have been rare if not non-existent in our past — but the grounded, earthy dissection of how women live and behave, how they move through their society, what is expected of them and how they survive it, of how the love of daughters for mothers and the expectations between them can be strong or sour from the beginning, is woven into a powerful story of one woman trying to do the right thing, even when not sure what the right thing is, or who the right thing is for.
Let me stress, this novel may offend some readers. These women are embroiled in incidents and make life choices, often couched in frank, earthy terms, that some readers may neither understand nor condone. I believe these incidents and choices reflect those of the historical past as well as this fictional world, and the occasionally coarse language is in keeping with the time and place and classes involved.
I wholeheartedly recommend this novel to anyone interested in the Gothic novel, fairy tales, and fantasy written with a realistic touch that sometimes hurts.
THE PATH OF THORNS by Angela Slatter
Published by Titan Books, June 2022
ISBN: 9781789094374
383 pages
Review by Randy M. Money
