As we enter into what will surely be another cherished fall season, the rise of readers in the genres of the gothic, the horror, and the dark academia are—as they should be—on the rise. Vampires, ghouls, and of course, witches fly freely through the pages of readers across the States. There are levels of literary talent that span these novels, but at the very top of them is Olga Ravn’s new novel The Wax Child, featuring the telling of a town in 1600s Denmark from a very unique narrator that has been infiltrated by so-called witches.
Everyone loves a story of witches, but to write one in a poetically lyrical fashion isn’t something that has been done in the fashion or caliber of Ravn that I’ve yet seen. You can tell that Ravn is a poet by nature, and an astounding one at that. Sensorially, this small yet powerful work carries that same ambiance as Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, though set much further back in time. There is a distinct feeling of foreboding that echoes through these pages, despite the hope that the main character, Christenze, seems to cling to throughout the pages. There is an ominous looming of the horrors that will come to pass, both for those who stand accused and the accusers themselves.
We enter into the story from the lens of a wax doll that is treated for all intents and purposes like the child of both her creator, a middle-aged woman named Christenze, and the women she befriends in her village: Maren, Dorte, and Apelone. As in any story of witches, the women are immediately watched closely and ultimately accused of witchcraft, at which point they are imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured together. As the Wax Child tells the tale, we see both their perhaps delusional belief in being saved, as well as their crumbling resolve in a way that makes you feel as though you are standing in that cell with them, awaiting an inevitable fate.
The perspective of the Wax Child is critical for the narrative arc of this book. It offers a third-person narrator who, while not quite omniscient, is able to access information that would otherwise be unknowable to us as readers, while still creating the effect of comfort and familiarity with the narrator. I also enjoyed the irony of the Wax Child as the speaker because if the women have not committed witchcraft, how on earth do they have a sentient doll in their homes? Or maybe that isn’t the point—perhaps we are supposed to accept that the Wax Child is an entity of its own making, that maybe all inanimate objects can have voice, if we imagine hard enough.
I think what Ravn is poking at most in this work, though, is what is witchcraft, really? Sure, it can be considered hexes and curses, but could it be something more? Could it be as simple as medical remedies passed down from generation to generation? Plain old superstition? Could it be the “wives tales” that are shared or the gossip or, dare I say it, knowledge? No, I would argue that in addition to all of this, Ravn is saying that “witchcraft” is undeniably synonymous with “womanhood.” While this is no extreme shock to anyone familiar with the witch trials, this truth is brought to life in a powerful and lyrical fashion as Ravn ventures into creative structure, interspersing “spells” in between the narrative prose of the Wax Child. These spells, as discussed in the afterword of the work, are taken from the very real remedies and spells written from women in the 1600s, discovered in Ravn’s research as she took on this story. While the take on witchcraft that is found in this novel are perhaps not unheard of, they are certainly substantial in their impact because of the research that Ravn put behind this book and the prose in which she communicates across the page.
As we follow Christenze and her persecution as a witch, one of the protections that she invokes is the insistence that because she is of noble blood, there is no way that she will be ultimately burned for being a witch, for surely someone is coming to save her—and by extension, the women she considers her friends. I think we would all agree that in our contemporary society, as in our history, invoking class status has and does, in fact, get people out of sticky situations. Yet for Christenze, this expectation may have turned out to be false (stop here for no spoilers). Despite calling upon her noble bloodline throughout the entirety of her trial in hopes of a rescue, ultimately, all her heritage saves her from burning only, but not from decapitation. Building on the connection between witchcraft and womanhood, Ravn goes a step further to imply that no matter a woman’s status, it is the fact that she is, in the end, a woman, that condemns her to the fates heaped upon her by society.
While Ravn’s witchy tale is not necessarily making never-before-seen observations on our history and the nature of witches specifically, it is certainly taking an angle and tone that is both deeply immersive and immensely pleasurable to read. As a long-time fan of Ravn’s, I was thrilled with how her newest work in English read to me, and would recommend this book to anyone looking for the classic, elegant gripping prose of the Ravn they know, and even slightly more to those looking for a witchy tale to fit their autumnal reading lists. The Wax Child is one to remember and return to, a story of power and who wields it, a story of women and how they stick together—and fall apart.
FICTION
by Olga Ravn
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published on September 30, 2025
