BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
"I'd rather be a monster than go back...This is my choice. We have to be free. My daughter and I have to be free."
To anyone who was wondering: we’ll be returning to our regular werewolf programming shortly. Just a quick note, though, in the older stories witches were often depicted working alongside shapeshifters and often the lycanthropes were witches themselves.
Has the man got you down?
Is the pressure to conform crushing your dreams?
Throw your inhibitions (and your clothes) to the wind and join a coven! Hex patriarchy and have fun doing it. 💀💀💀
15-year-old Fern has few options after getting pregnant in the pre-Roe South. Her parents are ashamed by their daughter and drag her to a home for unwed mothers, which lies deep somewhere in the sweaty armpit of Florida. Frustrated by being scorned by her family and controlled by a league of tyrannical adults, she’s drawn to an unusual librarian who proffers her a book of spells.
Fern finds herself forced between choosing to rejoin the status quo and seizing upon an unnatural power for herself.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is Grady Hendrix’s eighth novel in a relatively short amount of time. And I’m obliged to tell you it’s fucking fantastic….it’s the kind of book that you offer to make a sandwich for after you’re done reading it.
Hendrix’s main protagonist is painfully relatable in the sense that women and girls are brought up to be people pleasers and uphold societal values—the last type of person who jettisons a rural community into chaos. Hendrix develops this concept of identity right away, as Fern isn't allowed to use her first name upon arriving at Wellwood House. It doesn’t stop there, Fern finds her very identity challenged on multiple fronts.
The story also shows us some brutal birthing scenes. The girls in the house are subjected to suffer the experience alone, stripped of the community of wise women who once controlled the narrative on birthing babies. Indeed, modern birth is often anesthetized and void of female relationships. Hendrix is keen on this fact. The coven of witches, on the other hand, offers Fern a substitute for lost female camaraderie.
She must decide if the cure is worse than the ailment.