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BOOK REVIEW

Watching out for witches in Megan Giddings’s ‘The Women Could Fly’

Imagining a world where nonconforming women are illegal

Author Megan Giddings has created a horrifying alternate reality, not too far from our own.jon cameron

When I was about 14 years old, my cousin told me I’d been cursed. A pimple had appeared on my nose the same day we were slated to attend a party, and my cousin insisted this was clearly a result of “mal de ojo,” a.k.a. Evil Eye.

“I saw some girl give you the Eye at the mall yesterday. And then, boom!, an ugly pimple. It’s obvious.”

If the mechanisms had existed in 1997 for reporting a witch, I might have picked up my dad’s giant cellphone to dial whatever bureaucrat-curandero-policeman handled that type of thing. After all, the pimple on my nose was massive, unfair, and supernatural in origin.

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In Megan Giddings’s “The Women Could Fly,” the mechanisms for reporting a witch do exist. Children are taught in schools how to identify an evil practitioner of the magical arts — usually female, definitely nonconformist, and fiercely independent — so that they may report possible offenders to the state’s hotline.

In this fictional universe, law and religion converge on those who do not believe in values like marriage, childbearing, or heterosexuality. Women who do not marry by 30 are registered and monitored, queer people exist with their paperwork firmly in the closet, and the concept of bodily autonomy has been erased for more than half the population.

Giddings has created a horrifying alternate reality, not too far from our own, where the fear of any magic, and more importantly, magical women, queer, and trans folk, has created a surveillance apparatus that mostly ignores straight, cisgendered men, while constantly threatening to burn everyone else.

“The Women Could Fly” is the story of Josephine Taylor. Jo is 28 years old and has no clear marriage prospects. She’s bisexual, Black, and balancing all that with the desire to appear as normal as possible in order to avoid scrutiny.

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Jo has been avoiding casual and ministerial glances since she was 14 and her mother disappeared amid accusations of witchcraft. Nearly 15 years later, Jo and her father declare her mother dead, which sets in motion a chain of events that lead Jo on a wild and witchy quest to fulfill the terms of her mother’s last will and testament.

Because her mother’s disappearance was so sudden, so unexpected, Jo never processed the loss. Grief haunts Jo more than anything; the possibility of her mother’s return prevented her moving on and the extent of her mother’s absence blurred Jo’s memories of the woman.

Jo’s mother became a figure in stories, stories she struggled to keep present. She thinks, “when you lose someone — even when you read their journals, running your finger over every stain and scribble thinking it could tell you something deep, even when you watch some old videos of them when you’re in the thrall of a deep missing — you reduce them down, over and over. For years, my mother had been a wound I could never fully stitch, one that when I was being honest with myself, I didn’t ever want to scab over, fade, disappear.”

As Jo struggles to make sense of her identity, her future, and her mother’s fate, the stakes, both metaphorical and literal, loom large. Her mother’s request reveals a new possibility to Jo, but her normal, predictable life calls to her as well. Is it worth it to be free from society’s gaze if that freedom means being away from your community, your friends, and the people you love?

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I appreciated how Giddings parceled information, delaying answers to important questions until absolutely necessary. The language and world-building are beautifully executed, rewriting our assumptions of witchcraft. Tread carefully, this is a world where skeptics get slapped. I found myself hoping for more stories set in this universe — a coven’s worth, if you will.

“The Women Could Fly” walks a fine line between allegorical fantasy and literary character study. At times, the metaphor felt overbearing, but while I occasionally longed for a lighter touch, the heaviness of Giddings’s subject mirrored its concerns.

What happens in a world where independent thinkers are seen as enemies of society? What happens when we burn anyone who chooses a life outside the expected? How quickly would we pick up the phone to report someone we suspected of being a little too magical?

My deep teenage distrust of some girl my cousin had probably invented disturbs me as I think about it today. It took so little to turn me against another person; a glance had unearthed my inner misogyny and provoked my wrath toward an innocent bystander.

Giddings’s characters struggle to survive the power imbalances these types of aggressions create. A person’s misdirected accusations can derail a life, can light the kindling, can see a perfectly nice girl get burned.

It seems like a waste of a good witch — and we could all use a little magic right now.

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THE WOMEN COULD FLY

By Megan Giddings

Amistad, 288 pages, $26.99

Adriana E. Ramírez is a writer based in Pittsburgh; she is the author of “Dead Boys: A Memoir.”