‘Of Sorrow And Such’ is a 158-page novella that packs an enormous punch. From the first page, I fell in love with the clarity of the writing and the deftness of the storytelling. With a light touch, Angela Slatter immersed me completely in the life of the little village of Edda’s Meadow as seen through the eyes of Patience Gideon, a woman who practices her craft without anyone ever actually calling her a witch.

Patience Gideon is a wonderful creation. She sees herself and the world she lives in clearly and doesn’t look away or give in. Even though she knows how brutal and unfair the world can be and how vulnerable people with her gifts are once the priests prod the people into turning against them, she’s still willing to take risks for others. She’s a pragmatist. She prepares for the worst and expects it to happen someday but, in the meantime, she does what good she can, looks after her adopted daughter and tries to open herself to life’s small pleasures.

For the first half of the book, I was caught up in understanding who Patience was and what kind of life she’d built for herself. In the second half of the book, after the bad thing that we could all see coming finally happens, I was on the edge of my seat, wanting Patience to survive but seeing no way for that to happen.

When the bad thing finally did happen, Patience’s preparations didn’t save her. She found herself in the hands of men who she knows will take either a self-righteous or a sadistic pleasure in watching her burn. She’s alone and helpless but still full of fight. She does what she can to sow the seeds of doubt and discord among her captors and waits for an opportunity that she knows may not come.

I was impressed by how grimly real this all was. This isn’t an escapist fantasy. It isn’t something where the witch can cast a spell and walk away. Patience’s world is ruled by men. They are not kind. They are not wise. They are not brave. But they have an absolute belief in their entitlement to take whatever they want whenever they can and a complete disdain for women, especially women who are any kind of threat to them or the world as they believe it should be. When the book feels grim, it’s because these men are not demonised characters, too evil and too shallowly drawn to believe in. They are men I recognise. They each have their own reasons for doing what they do and none of those reasons are good.

Patience sees all of this clearly. Has been able to see it clearly since she was a child and knows that while she might be able to protect herself from it or even revenge herself on it, she cannot change it.

I found myself highlighting paragraph after paragraph of Patience’s insights into how her world works. Her words sliced through hypocrisy and bigotry like scalpels parting fat and muscle to expose the misogynistic heart.

I won’t spoil anything by saying how the story ends but I will say that Angela Slatter pulled no punches and that, to the end of the book, Patience remained a strong, determined and ruthlessly honest with herself woman.

I was taken by how Angela Slatter’s summary of Patience in the Author’s Note at the end of the book. I’m sharing it here because it shows her affection for the character and it’s a better summary than any I could write. She says Patience…

“…remains one of my favourite characters: she’s determined and cynical and clear-eyed, unafraid to do the things that must be done, unafraid to get her hands dirty, yet she has a conscience and tries to atone for her sins. Her survival instinct is strong and I think that may be what I love the most about her.”

Slatter, Angela. Of Sorrow and Such (p. 151). Tor Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I also learned from the Author’s Note that some of the characters in ‘Of Sorrow And Such’ first came to the page in Angela Slatter’s short story collection ‘Sourdough and other stories’. I’ve added that collection and ‘No Good Deed: A Sourdough Tale’ (currently being offered free on Amazon) to my TBR pile.