Lord forbid a woman have power. 

 

Alice Kyteler had a problem: Her mother died when she was young, and her father raised her at his side as a moneylender. When he passed, his fortune and business passed to the experienced, well-taught, and cunning Alice (along with her new husband). Now Alice had all of the power and prestige of her own house and had joined it to that of her husband’s. 

 

Alice also had another problem: She didn’t trust anyone, she especially didn’t trust men, and she wasn’t too thrilled with the trappings of her gender. Life was hard enough without being a female on top of it. Money became the only armor she could reliably wrap around herself and those few she chose to protect, so extracting herself from relationships in which she had wrought most of the benefits from became her number one priority. 

 

Times change though, and you don’t live that kind of life without making enemies. In Alice’s case, a lot of enemies. Mix the rise of the Catholic Church in Ireland with a lot of people looking for revenge on a female moneylender, and you can see the writing on the wall. 

 

The writing in this book was absolutely lovely, interspersed with ballads, poetry, folk recipes, small stories, and pages of gossip being exchanged back and forth between townspeople that grow more and more vociferous the longer the book goes on. The prose is lyrical, with an elegant flow and evocative imagery. Some passages grow more heated or more violent, but even those are elegant in word choice and structure. 

 

It’s a great autumnal read, but know Alice Kyteler isn’t a good person. There are no heroes or villains in this book: there are just people who are driven in certain directions by circumstance. That’s one of the things I liked the most about this book. 

 

I was provided a copy of this title by the publishers and author via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. 

 

File Under: Historical Fiction/Literary Fiction