It’s been a while since I’ve had a reading experience as visceral as what I had when I read Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child.

The story is based on a seventeenth century Danish witch trial, and focuses on a woman named Christenze Krukow. For reasons that are described in the first chapter (I am going to avoid spoilers at all costs, despite the fact that a quick internet search will tell you the fate of Christenze and her companions), Christenze creates a child from beeswax, ‘…the size of a human forearm‘, and adds hair and fingernail parings ‘…from the person who is to suffer‘. For forty weeks, she carries the wax child, tucked beneath her arm, warmed by her body and giving it life. The wax child has eyes and ears that cannot open, and yet, it watches and listens – the wax child is the narrator.

How do I know this? The dead fly in the windowsill told me, the grass-pollen as it puffed into the air told me, a brass candlestick told me, a speck of grit. Everything remembers and speaks to those who will listen.

For a slim volume (178pp) this book carries weighty themes – most obviously the power of religion (and therefore men), but also the role of silence (forced, chosen, or institutionalized) and consequently consideration of when silence is a form of oppression, and when it is a form of agency.

The story also presents a complex view of women’s roles in society and of motherhood. Ravn challenges views on the ‘value’ of a woman in multiple ways, from the literal monetary cost of the trials tallied by the noblemen, to nudging the reader to feel perhaps more empathy for one particular accused woman, whose young daughter has to watch her mother on trial (the scene where the daughter gives evidence shattered me). And throughout, we have the perspective of the wax child, who only asks for love.

There are scenes in the book where Christenze and her companions come together to work, act as midwives, prepare food and simply enjoy each other’s company. This represents a threat. This is interpreted as witchcraft.

Where there are many women, there are witches.

In some ways, things have changed and in others, not at all. Although Ravn focuses on witch hunts and the power of the Church, it’s not a stretch to understand this story as a template for the present, where certain institutions and ideologies create a divide; where society is driven by power and shaming; and where recorded history (let’s be frank, most history is reported from a privileged male point-of-view) fixes a narrative.

The structure of this book is quite extraordinary. Narration shifts from broad observation to narrowly focused, minute detail, and small exchanges between characters are so deeply affecting that I caught my breath on more than one occasion. The overall result is a fragmented and unsettling reading experience, where you’re pulled from one extreme to another. Initially, I tried to keep track of shifting perspectives but then gave in to the idea that Ravn had deliberately not created distinct voices – when considering the themes of power, silence and unity, is the group protective or an indictment?

I began by saying that this was a visceral reading experience. There was a lot of armpits, and dirt under fingernails, and mention of a ‘skin girdle’ (I don’t even know what that is and was too scared to search) and I kept thinking about the work of artist Patricia Piccinini when I imagined the wax child (her work makes me squirm). And yet, I was also acutely aware that all the wax child needed, was to be held.

Visceral goes both ways – there were lines that were beautifully poetic:

Within the labyrinth of pleasant smells and pale green pent roofs where my mistress walked was a taste of alkaline, of chloroplasts and perfume.

And a character’s description of the experience of physical pain –

…afterwards they said the blood ran as quickly and as quietly as the becks run through the land when the ice melts in spring, and the pain I felt was a place, a room I never knew existed, though still recognized when it opened towards me; somewhere inside me I had known that pain always…

The book has similar a vibe to Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites, and of course there are obvious parallels to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. I couldn’t put it down, and read it in two sittings. Interestingly, others in my book group found the language, structure and emotional load overwhelming, and were thankful for the short chapters and being able to easily read a little at a time.

4/5