I wasn’t sure what to expect from BRIGHT I BURN. I enjoyed Molly Aitken’s debut, THE ISLAND CHILD, but I haven’t read many novels set in the 13th and 14th centuries, as this new one is. In many ways, picking it up feels like entering a vastly foreign culture. It can take a little while to settle into as a result, but fortunately the woman at its center would be a magnetic presence at any point in history. So I was soon drawn right into her remarkable life.

Alice Kyteler was born in 1280 in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Her father was an innkeeper and a money lender. As the only child, she was schooled in these matters, which was most unusual for a woman at the time. Of course, she also was expected to marry --- and marry she did, four times in her remarkably long life. Alice is based on a real historical figure, but her voice and the more intimate details of her life are the product of Aitken’s imagination.

"Despite her singular voice, [Alice] still feels like a genuine product of her times, and readers are bound to come away from her story with a new and deeper understanding of women’s lives in medieval times."

Among other things, Aitken’s narrative contends that Alice was abused by her father and driven to murder him, using poisons that she learned from her mother. Her four husbands also died in turn, some under suspicious circumstances. It was these deaths, along with the growing scrutiny of some churchmen, that led Alice to be tried and convicted as a witch, the first woman in Ireland to have done so.

In BRIGHT I BURN, these historical facts gain emotional heft, as Alice herself narrates her longing for love and sexual satisfaction, her evolving relationship with her only surviving child, and her complicated grief over the loss of her daughter at an early age. We see Alice taking pride in her professional life and the ways in which the men who surround her both admire and envy her, desire her and plot to benefit from her success (a type of plotting that, as Alice herself knows, is a two-way street).

In addition to Alice’s first-person narration, the novel includes short chapters that function as a sort of Greek chorus of townspeople, whose pronouncements indicate their distrust of Alice from the beginning, in part because of her participation in what was a somewhat shady profession. This mistrust takes on a new and darker tone as prominent clergymen set their sights on powerful women and accuse them of cavorting with the Devil. The novel also includes short chapters in the form of lists (“How to Check Your Baby Is Alive”; “Places I Have Fornicated with My Husband”) and a couple of third-person narratives that vary substantially in tone from the rest of the novel and can feel a bit jarring as a result.

But overall, Alice’s story, which begins in childhood and ends with her mysterious escape from punishment (and the heartbreaking fate of her maid and friend, Petronilla), is utterly engrossing. Although separated by more than seven centuries from our own time, Alice’s life --- her quest for self-actualization and respect --- still feels relevant. Aitken does this without making Alice feel anachronistic. Despite her singular voice, she still feels like a genuine product of her times, and readers are bound to come away from her story with a new and deeper understanding of women’s lives in medieval times.