Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Bright I Burn, by Molly Aitken (Knopf). Inspired by a real woman, Alice Kyteler, who was born in the thirteenth century and accused of witchcraft, this gripping novel follows its protagonist from her youth in Kilkenny, as the captivating daughter of an innkeeper and lender, to her old age, hiding out as a priest in England. In between, Alice takes over her father’s business; is struck by lightning; marries four times, each with violent ends; births two children; and amasses significant wealth. “I am a rare case,” she says, of her story. “Once brightly I burned, I drew them all to me and consumed them all, unwittingly and wittingly, in my fire.”

Gifted, by Suzumi Suzuki, translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell (Transit). In this unsentimental novella, a young woman working as a bar hostess and sex worker in Tokyo reckons with several unresolved personal traumas in the course of a few weeks. Her mother, an unsuccessful poet, is dying—first at her daughter’s house, in the entertainment district, then in the hospital. The unfortunate circumstances force the unnamed protagonist to reflect on the abuse she endured at her mother’s hands, as well as on the recent deaths of two of her friends. Based on Suzuki’s own experiences in the adult industry, the book chronicles the young woman’s wanderings from bar to bar, hospital to home, with brutal honesty. “This district is rife with women walking around with two million yen,” the character remarks. “Nearly the same number who say they want to die.”