We are so excited to share our Q&A with author of Bright, I Burn, Molly Aitken. Gorgeously atmospheric, this dark-twisty novel is one that will have you up at all hours of the night.
In thirteenth-century Ireland, a woman with power is a woman to be feared. Inspired by the first recorded person in Ireland to have been condemned as a witch, Bright I Burn gives voice to a woman lost to history, who dared to carve her own space in a man's world.
What inspired you to write about Alice Kyteler?
I was twelve when a teacher mentioned her at school. She was described, just briefly, but as if she tasted vile on my teacher’s tongue, as if Alice were some monstrous creature from the past that we should all fear, and pull away from. She was painted as a baby killer and demon lover. As my teacher intended, this portrayal of the Kilkenny banker terrified me.
Many years later, during the first lockdown, I read an article in the Irish Times Witchipedia: Ireland’s most famous witches, and there she was blazing in first place. The others had shocking and brutal histories, just the kind we have come to associate with witch trials, victim blaming, and scapegoating of older, unmarried women from the past (and today), but Alice Kyteler was shockingly different. She seemed vibrant and angry, and oh so powerful, just from those few brief lines.
As I began to take my hour long walks thoughts of her hounded me, almost like I was being haunted. I felt angry that her story had never been told from her own perspective. She has for the most part been forgotten, despite what an influential person she was in early 1300s Ireland. I felt this urgency to write her story as seen by her, instead of the men who judged her. But I was afraid. Firstly, I’d never written about someone who lived, and it is a great responsibility, and secondly, I was afraid of Alice herself. She was accused of terrible crimes, and I felt if I was to do her story justice I couldn’t ignore the ruthless and brutal side of her, in fact this was what really drew me to her. When I write I hear the voice of the character. In a sense while writing I embody them so I was scared of living with a person for the years it takes to write a book.
So one day I sat down to meditate, to invite her in. I lit a candle, and asked her (in my head) to speak to me.
‘Are you afraid of me?’ – a voice whispered from behind me.
‘Yes,’ I said, aloud.
My eyes were still shut, but I sensed her walking around me, and as she did, I felt as though she was shrinking, becoming a child.
‘I’m afraid of myself too.’
I opened my eyes and, of course, there was no one there, but I had my answer. I knew who she was, and she was someone I could work with. We began to write.
The book is so darkly atmospheric and vivid. What was your process for bringing to life medieval Kilkenny?
I always start with character. I worked out from Alice, looking at how she viewed the city. She saw it as a merchant banker and inn keeper. She was on the lookout for customers so often she was more concerned with the people than the city itself. There were elements of medieval Kilkenny I felt Alice wouldn’t care about but were necessary for the reader to understand her world. For this I included gossip sections. This also helped build a sense of tension so the reader felt the building judgements and jealousies.
What was the most interesting thing you came across in your research?
Sex in the medieval world fascinated me. I had a lot of pre-judgements about the restrictions on sex in the 1200 and 1300s Ireland, but I was proved quite wrong. Although the church had its rules, and there were some extremely bizarre and wonderful beliefs about sex during this period, people seemed to also be much more open and comfortable with their bodies and sex than people were in the highly Catholic Ireland of fifty years ago. This was wonderfully refreshing. I included a bizarre bit of information about a wife inserting a live fish inside herself and cooking it for her husband to make him more virile in the bedroom. I highly recommend The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages by Katherine Harvey; a rich, readable yet deeply researched piece of history writing.
When the research was missing, how did you fill in the blanks with fiction?
There wasn’t much missing about Alice Kyteler’s life. All the main facts were there: her four husbands; her banking endevours; her inn (which remains standing and now is a wonderful pub); her enormous loan to the king of England, Edward I; her apparent love of her son; the witch trial that made her so famous in her day. What the history books leave out was Alice’s interior life. Why was she so mercilessly ambitious? Why was she so ruthless and brutal? If she was guilty of the crimes brought to her door, why did she commit them? These were the real questions that fascinated me. I had to write Bright I Burn to find the answers, but the truth is we’ll never know for sure. This is what happens when women, or any minority, don’t write their own histories.
Alice Kyteler is a brilliant anti-hero. Strong, troubled and devious. How did your relationship with her change as you wrote and then finished writing her story?
I was afraid of Alice before I started writing, but the longer I wrote her voice, the longer she inhabited me, the more I loved, and understood her. Medieval Ireland was a brutal place. Many people died young. There was near constant civil war. None of us can tell how we’d act in such a place. None of us know what we’d do to survive. I found that fascinating to explore. Alice also began her life in a place of great privilege. She was frustrating at times, due to her selfishness. I explored this through her relationship with Petronilla her servant. The fact is most of us if we’d lived in the 1300s would likely have lived a life like Petronilla, in service to someone else. The act of writing Bright I Burn was an attempt to understand a woman like Alice though, and now, having finished it, I have a lot of empathy for her. I don’t know for sure that I wouldn’t have been just as ruthless.
Have you got a favourite gothic novel?
Easily Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu. It’s not nearly as well known as it should be, but it’s the vampire novel. It predates Dracula by 25 years and, in my opinion, the writing is far better. I remember reading it as an undergraduate in Galway and staying up all night to finish. It was magnetic, and strange, yet not overdone. It includes all the hallmarks of gothic fiction, as well as exploring the juxtaposition of hetrosexuality and queerness. It’s truly beautifully done, and if you haven’t read it, I recommend it for a long winter night.
As an author, what’s one piece of advice you’d give to writers who are looking to write a book that’s inspired by a true story?
Find a person who obsesses you. Someone complex. Someone who you don’t yet understand. There’s nothing more satisfying (and yes, I’ll admit frustrating) than spending your days trying to unpick a mind different from your own.
Molly Aitken grew up on the south coast of Ireland. Her first novel, The Island Child was long-listed for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, for which it won the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, Banshee and has been dramatised for BBC Radio 4. Molly is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing and History at Sheffield Hallam University. Bright I Burn is published June 6th.
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