Apr 20

Apr 20 Book Review : Olga Ravn - The Wax Child (2023)

Here's what I know about European witch trials : nothing. I do understand why their iconography and historical meaning appeals both to feminist activists and black metal musicians, but anything else I know about the topic is solely constructed by horror movies. Olga Ravn's novel The Wax Child is too contemplative and mythical to carry the tension and dread typically associated with horror, but it's exactly why it's interesting. It makes you feel afraid of other, more realistically terrifying things.

The Wax Child is literally narrated by a wax figurine, which is considered to be a vessel for dark magic in Danish folklore. It is inspired by the real life story of Christenze Kruckow, a Scandinavian noblewoman who was executed for sorcery in the seventeenth century. When she learns of the formal accusations against her (people gossiped), she flees the city of Aalborg, but the authorities just won't let her disappear and live her happily ever after in the woods like the alleged witch she is.

Totemic Terror

I’m certain you can imagine how atypical it is have a novel narrated by the thing you should be afraid of in any other witch trial themed horror book. It’s as if Annabelle decided to tell her own story. But something weird happens when you take away the obvious creepy thing. Your dread is trying to find something to latch onto. It unlocks a sense of impending doom that has nowhere to go, therefore it's everywhere. Especially where it shouldn't belong. Everyone suddenly feels in danger.

I believe Olga Ravn engineered this feeling by writing short, contemplative chapters from the perspective of something that literally cannot do anything, but observe. The titular wax child bears witness to the life-affirming community built by women, for women and to the systemic violence waged against women challenging patriarchy and gender norms. The narrator is powerless to change anything that has happened or will happen. It's locked inside its own body.

This powerlessness mirrors Christenze's own powerlessness to elude her fate. The child is a creation watching her creator get chased, condemned and ultimately executed (this is so not a spoiler if you passed history class in high school). This is the sense of inevitable doom that keeps weaving in and out of consciousness for the entire novel. It's not a horror novel even if it has all the signifiers. It's not a historical drama also even if it tells a real, historical story. It's in an uncomfortable, but fascinating in-between.

Inhuman Concerns

Another quirk that makes The Wax Child what it is is the emotional distance from which it is narrated. If the narrator has some kind of anthropomorphic attachment to her creator, it doesn't show. At least not in any clear way. She does what she is created to do: witnessing. Sometimes she drifts into considerations that are not human, but quite pleasant to read nonetheless. Sometimes I had no idea what I was reading, but the sheer luxuriant bliss of it all felt like a privilege.

That little puppet can get pretty intense and lyrical when situating the human experience as part of something greater and not quite knowable. Even if the chapters are rarely longer than two pages, it will make you wonder whether or not you've lost the highway and started drifting in your own thoughts, but I believe that drifting is a function of The Wax Child and not a flaw. It's how it connects to your subconscious to make you a part of the story. That's why the chapters are so short. They allow you to constantly reset.

Reading Olga Ravn is always a strange experience, but strange is what Olga Ravn does and The Wax Child is just as strange and alienating as The Employees was. Well, maybe it's a little less cerebral and a little better felt, but it's a wealth to have an author who can change register so easily. All you know when you start an Olga Ravn novel is that you have no idea what's about to happen and I wish I had this kind of experience more often when reading novels.