This was on my library wishlist even before I read Rosie Garland’s Night Brother, and without knowing a thing about it. I was just intrigued by the title and tantalised by the cover: I thought it might be a bit like Emma Geen’s Many Selves of Katherine North, but of course I was thinking too literally. Set in the Devon village of Braunton in the plague year of 1349, it in fact tells the story of Thomas, the village priest; Anne, his housekeeper and would-be wife; and the strange, mute girl who is discovered half-drowned in a bog after a terrible storm. As Death draws its wings close around Braunton, these three find themselves at the heart of a struggle between small-mindedness and broad vision, played out in microcosm in the kitchen and barn of Thomas’s meagre home.

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2017/08/07/vixen-rosie-garland/ ( )

I read this book on my flight from Switzerland to Australia. Usually long haul flights tend to soften the sparkle of most reading experiences, in fact one could argue that they soften the sparkle of almost every experience. It is something about the snoring, the crying babies… not to mention the recycled stale air and the horrible reheated plane food. Despite all of that going against my time with Rosie Garland’s book, I found myself not just enjoying it, but loving the book.

I bought Garland’s novel on a whim. I was in the book store, looking for something, unsure what exactly, and came across the book wedged at the back of the shelf. I bought the book based on the cover and while I am well aware of all the sayings that go with this action, I was not disappointed at all. Thank god for whims!

This book is written from three perspectives, Thomas, Anne, and Vixen/the maid (although her ‘real’ name is never actually given and throughout reading the book I often wondered if she knew her name at all), and what I like about the novel is that it teaches you something without being too overt with the message. For me, Garland was telling me: to check my beliefs, find out ‘who I am’, and once you know who you are hold on to it tight.

Thomas is a priest in a small rural town called Brauntone. He is conservative, pious, and a strict follower of the ‘word of god’. And I deliberately use quotation marks here, because Thomas is essentially a follower of his own conservative interpretation. His beliefs make him a frustrating paradox. He wishes that his fellow villagers see his as kind and caring, yet he will beat Anne to show her how wrong she is in the ‘eyes of god’. He cannot receive any criticism, but is good at dishing it out, and although he seems secure in his beliefs he is actually quite an insecure man.

Anne goes to work as the housekeeper for Thomas in the hopes that he would take her as ‘wife’. Although he isn’t allowed to officially marry, Anne had hoped they could live together as husband and wife. Thomas, however, is completely against this and uses Anne as an almost slave in his house. Anne, is a very naive woman at the beginning of the novel. She is unsure of herself and believes that a life of quasi-marital bliss will bring her everything she has desired. The fact that she ends up being on a different end of the sexual orientation spectrum at the end of the novel is just one obvious example of how she changes as a person.

The catalyst of the story is Vixen, who is described as having magical powers to transform her appearance, although it is never quite clear how she does it. She comes to Brauntone to escape the plague and death. When she is found by the townspeople, Thomas proclaims her a miracle maid sent from god. Her disguise as an uneducated animal-like girl has everyone bar Anne convinced. And eventually they start to talk. It is Vixen who questions Anne’s blind submission to Thomas and it sparks a change in Anne. Simultaneously, Anne’s kindness and patience spark a change in Vixen and her attitude to not only Anne, but the world.

When the plague reaches the gates of Brauntone, Anne and Vixen try to save as many people in the town as possible by using horse urine (I am not sure if this is an actual historical fact that Garland picked up somewhere or an invention from her own mind).

Thomas never actually learns from his mistakes or his misbeliefs and in the last pages of the book he is a shadowy old figure ignored by everyone in the town. Anne and Vixen, each in their own ways, learns that the time to be who you are is now. And, each in their own ways, pays the the price for not being who they wanted to be sooner. They say that books come to you when you need them most, and I felt that this book was fitting to read at the end of 2015 when new year’s resolutions are always on the tip of everybody’s tongue. ( )

I am so used to cruelty that I do not know what it is to taste sweetness; so used to running that I do not know what it means to stand still. It is not a skill I have ever had to learn. I can lie, cheat, cozen, simper and act a hundred parts, and not one of them is real. My heart has grown as crooked as this disguise I wear. Page 181

Anne has dreamt of a different life and escape came in the form of a marriage to the village priest. Nothing is as it seems and death is creeping around the corner. Pestilence, the plague, the Great Mortality is sweeping across the country and fear is rampant, cloaked in superstition and religious fervour. Out of the blue, a mysterious maid is washed up during a stormy night and Anne's dreams may come true, but not in the way she could have prepared for.

The more I read, the more agitated I became. The further along the story carried me the more I wished I could just abandon it. The book is strange in so many ways including the characters, their thoughts and actions. The only moments that were memorable were so for the wrong reasons, crassness and vulgarity. The book is centred around the plague and ironically I wished I had avoided the book like it was the plague. Moving along and not wasting another moment on this book. Not recommended. ( )