Helen Grant Conjures Up a New Literary Agent for Purslane the Witch (news).
Novelist Helen Grant has joined the John Jarrold Literary Agency with her new novel, Purslane the Witch, a tale combining malevolent magic, disappearing teenagers, inconvenient romance and the sort of English village where the hanging baskets are magnificent but something unspeakable keeps eating people after dark.
Purslane is a freelance witch, although she would rather you did not use the word “witch”. Presumably “independent supernatural consultant” looks better on an invoice and involves fewer villagers arriving at the door with agricultural equipment and strong opinions about bonfires.
She is also on the run from a persistent suitor created by an ill-advised spell. This is why most sensible people restrict their romantic experimentation to dating apps, where the worst likely outcome is discovering that “loves long country walks” actually means “owns three ferrets and has been banned from the local Harvester”.
Seeking somewhere quiet to lie low, Purslane accepts a job in Cheselborne Percy, a picturesque English village suffering from a marauding night monster. Teenagers are vanishing, a grimoire has been stolen, the locals appear to be concealing things, and gruesome attacks are becoming sufficiently frequent to threaten house prices.
There is also a vicar who broadcasts his thoughts, including several involving Purslane. This is awkward enough in ordinary circumstances, but particularly troubling when one is trying to investigate occult murders while maintaining a professional relationship with the Church of England.
Throughout all this, Purslane is determined not to ruin her vintage silk devoré dress. She also intends, should she be torn apart and eaten alive, to meet her fate wearing Louis heels. At last, a protagonist who understands that being devoured by an eldritch abomination is unfortunate, but being devoured in sensible footwear would be intolerable.
The novel is described as wry, confidential and nasty without plunging headfirst into full-on gore. It is being positioned for readers of T. Kingfisher’s A House With Good Bones, The Hollow Places and the Sworn Soldier series, combining horror, humour and a setting whose quaintness is clearly concealing several locked cellars and an alarming parish history.
Purslane the Witch works as a standalone novel but could become the first in a series. This is probably wise. Once you have created a freelance witch with good dresses, bad romantic luck and a professional interest in villages plagued by monsters, it would be wasteful to let her retire after solving only one supernatural catastrophe.
Grant has been publishing novels since 2009 and has accumulated nine novels, a novella, three short-story collections and more than fifty short stories. Her previous honours include the Dracula Society’s Children of the Night Award for Too Near the Dead, the Jimmy Perez Trophy at Shetland Noir for The Beach House, and an American Library Association Alex Award for the US edition of The Vanishing of Katharina Linden.
John Jarrold said he loved the voice from the opening page, praising the characters, setting, romance and wit. Wit is, after all, an essential survival tool when confronting ravening creatures. Silver bullets run out, ancient wards tend to crack at dramatically inconvenient moments, but sarcasm is infinitely renewable.
Here at SFcrowsnest, we approve of any novel in which an English village is revealed to be considerably more dangerous than it looks. Anyone who has attended a parish council meeting will already understand that the distance between genteel rural life and primal horror is measured in millimetres.
Purslane the Witch is now represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency. Somewhere in Cheselborne Percy, meanwhile, the monster is presumably checking its diary, the vicar is attempting not to think anything embarrassing, and Purslane is wondering whether blood comes out of silk devoré.
It probably does not.
