Book Review: Weyward by Emilia Hart

I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

What a beautiful book. I couldn’t put this down. I had to go on reading and reading, and then when I was done, I wished I could go on. This is a book about three generations of women who are tied to nature, healing, and witchcraft. There is Kate, who is fleeing her abusive boyfriend in 2019—Altha, who is trialed for witchcraft in 1619—Violet, who’s trapped in her family home, forbidden to be who she is and love nature as she does in 1942. All of them are woven together by insects and birds and by abuse of men over their bodies and minds.

The book’s voice is so compelling that I traveled there with the three women. I was trapped in the attic with Kate; I could feel Violet’s sorrow of being forbidden to climb the trees; I had the same kinship with a spider as Altha had in that cold cell. The thing is, I usually don’t care for the theme of the book: abuse and witchcraft. I want liberation for the naturalists and those who are empathetic enough to sit with the dying and damned. But somehow, with this book, it made so much sense. It was a story that needed to be told: how our bodies and minds are not free from the judgment of others, how we are tied to the expectations of both our family and society; how we are alienated from nature and thus incomplete. I loved how Emilia Hart wrote nature in everything and how she brought alive insects and arachnids. My passion and love, things I photograph.

I think Weyward just spoke to my soul and how trapped I feel in the city, and how I hunger to be in nature and wake up and go outside with a cup of tea and observe how the birds sing, how the insects go about, and how the wind feels on my face. The true structure of life and not the cold, concrete, alienated world we seem to have arrived. Weyward brought back some of that magic of what it means to exist. It broke the shackles we come with, be it an abuse of a person or the modern world.

Thank you for reading! Have a beautiful day ❤