Wild and Wicked Things

by Francesca May

March 29, 2022 · Redhook

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Wild and Wicked Things is a fantasy novel of magic and mayhem on fictional Crow Island, where a group of young people throw endless, Gatsby-esque parties in the aftermath of WWI and practice illegal magic. I loved the imagery and the portrayal of the English side of the Lost Generation – the parties are equally beautiful and hollow, tainted by grief and cynicism. However, I found the book to be maddeningly repetitive and the characters to be frustrating in their insistence on making the worst decisions possible.

The book takes place right after WWI, in an England in which magic exists but is outlawed. Annie comes to Crow Island because her father, who abandoned his family long ago, died and left her a house. Annie is supposed to dispose of her father’s belongings. Instead she learns some unsettling things about her family history, and her own abilities with magic. She also develops a powerful attraction to her neighbor Emmeline, who lives next door to Annie’s cottage on the island. Emmaline wears trousers and button-down shirts, and throws wild parties every night that both attract and repel Annie. In the course of the story, Annie becomes entwined with the destinies of her neighbors, as well her long-lost friend, Bea, who has magical secrets of her own.

This book has great imagery, with parties lit by hanging lanterns, dresses in the latest style (Annie is shocked by the hemlines, and thrilled by Emmeline’s masculine apparel) an abundance of colorful drinks both consumed and dramatically spilled or dropped on the floor, and a general sense of out-of-control decadence that feels very Gatsby, right down to the cynicism and underlying desperation (Fitzgerald provides the opening epigraph). Meanwhile the town itself is rendered as having a superficial whimsy and the ocean, which is frequently observed in moonlight, is suitably lovely and mysterious. When things take a turn towards the horrific, the events are dripping with blood and smoky, spooky imagery.

Alas, the book, which is 432 pages long in hardback, is grindingly repetitive. Characters have essentially identical conversations and thoughts over and over again and I got to a point where I genuinely thought I might scream if I had to read one of those conversations again (I chose to skim a little instead). I don’t need to be told the exact same thing in the exact same way over and over again. To make matters worse, every single character in the book EXCELS at having impassioned conversations without actually imparting any information, instead trailing off or, with odd frequency, being interrupted by a distant scream.

It doesn’t help that these people make the worst possible decisions and never seem to learn from them. Time and time again a person decides to do a thing that is clearly a bad idea. The reader knows it’s a bad choice. Other characters know that it’s a bad choice and warn our poor decision maker not to make it. Even the poor decision maker often thinks, “This is a bad choice.” Yet, into the breach they go, wreaking havoc on themselves and everyone around them, just like everyone knew they would.

Although their ages are not given, I’m guessing these characters are in their very early twenties, a time with all the drama and impulsiveness that comes with being a teenager combined with just a teensy bit more life experience. As much as I complain in this book about the repetition and the poor decisions, I can’t deny that when I was in college, and for at least five years after graduation, my friends and I were also obsessed with repetitive, hand-wringing, emotional processing sessions, and we didn’t always make the best of choices. Many of these characters are also struggling with trauma which doesn’t help their decision making processes much. I believed that these characters would do the things they did, but I also wanted to stick each of them in time-out and tell them to just chill the fuck out because their drama and their mistakes were so darn frustrating, at times alienating, and eventually boring.

I was especially troubled by the fact that:

Up to a point, I have a lot of sympathy for Emmeline and her found family because they are all abuse survivors who clearly act out of trauma. However, because of Emmeline’s actions, I can’t be all, “Yay team!” about them, especially since the actual victim never gets justice.

I was also very troubled by the fact that…

The longer I read the book, the less I liked it, and the more I wrote about it, the more problems I encountered with it. And yet I’m sure this will be catnip for a lot of readers, and I totally get it. It’s gorgeously written, it portrays the Gatsby glamor and post-war desperation that many people are drawn to, and it has lesbian witches, which I am ALWAYS on board with. Expect a book that is more horror, especially towards the end of the story, than romance or fantasy, and enjoy the drama. Just be prepared for a lot of repetition and terrible ethics.