Afia Atakora’s ‘Conjure Women’ is a powerful and raw story that is rooted in the important history & culture of plantation slaves in the time preceding the American Civil War, as well as after. A complex and immersive book, Conjure Women is beautifully written, and I almost struggle to believe that this is a debut novel - it is almost flawless. This is one of those books I will struggle to forget!
I absolutely recommend!

I thought I was going to love this book - it has all the markings of something I would like. The first few chapters were really promising, interesting and well written, but I just think that the pacing was off. I loved the writing and the premise, but in the end just couldn't finish it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This book shed new light on the issues of race and women's history of the American Civil War period. I've not read anything that discusses the period of slavery, the end of the Civil War and the years afterwards with as much eloquence or heart. Rue is a brilliant character and the whole supporting cast feels real and truthful to the period. I would recommend this book to anyone.

3.5 stars

I think I went into this book with the anticipation of a slightly more fantastical element. Unfortunately I had missed the mark a bit with that assumption. The book is historical fiction and tells the story of the Civil War from the perspective of a black woman. I was fully immersed in the time period and setting, the writing is beautiful. The book was a bit of a slow burn for me and although I did enjoy it I think I went in expecting something else. I will write a more in depth review and post it on Waterstones.com when staff return to work as we are not permitted to post bookseller reviews whilst on furlough.

Spanning eras and generations, Conjure Women is told through three core characters: May Belle (a wise healing woman), Rue (her daughter, reluctant to follow in her footsteps as a midwife) and Varina (their master's daughter). The birth of an accursed child spreads fear and superstition, while showcasing the women's bonds, passions and friendships. Told in snippets, pre- and post-Civil War, it's a brilliantly written book, each character complex and given more depth than the ocean. A gripping debut. Also what a cover!

I liked this book, but I didn't love it.

I enjoyed following Rue's journey from her younger years to becoming a woman. I completely understand her struggle in trying to appear a mother figure pillar in a society that is unsure of it's future. I admired how Afia expertly jumps in her narration between Slavetime, Wartime, Freedomtime to finally a time of Promise. You never feel lost or unsure what year it is.

The main theme through this debut is fear and you can sense that Rue is always apprehensive in every step she takes. Even the other characters never seem fully present when they are supposedly 'freed' and they pin all their hopes and dreams on either the preacher Bruh Abel or the conjurer Rue. The descriptions of the magic and the conjuring are brilliant and you are always rooting for Rue to bring these babies to life- which is magic in itself.

Yet, as I read I felt like there was something missing from this debut. There were parts, especially in The Ravaging, that were simply too long and slightly repetitive. I felt like the story took a while to move forward.

Overall I love Afia Atakora's imagination and her character building. I will definitely be on the look out for what she brings out next.

This is a great emotional explosion of a novel, filled with life and colour and gorgeous writing. Too often contemporary feminism is based of the narrow experience of middle aged, middle class, white women. Its so refreshing to read a narrative which is strongly influenced by feminist politics but also set in a different world and one that challenges us to revisit our assumptions

This wonderful debut novel was an unexpected, but very welcome surprise. Set in a tumultuous period of history, before and after the Civil War, this is different in that it doesn’t focus on the male perspective of these events and focuses on three women. Miss May Belle and her daughter Rue live at Manse Charles’s plantation in the Deep South. In the slave quarter’s the women share a hut to themselves which is seen as a great privilege. Miss May is valuable because she is a midwife and healer, as well as a conjuror of curses. If asked whether her daughter shares her abilities, Miss May tells them that her knowledge:

‘Keeps my child in his ownership and I make her worth the owning’.

We follow Rue into the post-war period where she carries on her mother’s work. Before this she was often found playing alongside Miss Varnia, Manse Charles’s daughter. Rue takes over from Miss May after her man is hanged and she can no longer partake in the joy of the mothers and their babies. Even though the plantation slaves were freed after the war, Rue is at the mercy of her incredible gift.

She was born to healing and stuck to it for life ...a secret curse of her own making’. It really is a curse when Rue helps in the birth of a baby born with startling black eyes is believed to be a curse.

The author delves into an unexpected result of the Civil War, some people brought up in slavery struggled with their freedom. Rue is one of these people, finding that freedom has a weight and responsibility she didn’t expect. May’s chapters are titled ‘Slaverytime’ and Rue’s are ‘Freedomtime’ to make the distinction and show the huge shift. The change was often not as positive as we imagine. I’m thinking of the novel The Long Song by Andrea Levy where the slave rebellion happens and they move to employment. However, the pay was so low and masters created rents so high that most families were worse off than before. Drawn from a huge amount of primary source material of the period, such as diaries or autobiographies written from oral accounts. The author really captures the oral tradition, with a narration that’s quite hazy and long winded. At first I thought the haziness was meant to echo the heat filled haze in the air, but on reading the background it was meant to give me the sense of old fashioned storytelling. The author managed to take me straight to a sense of time and place. The inclusion of minister Bruh Abel also shows how a mix of people’s Christian beliefs, animistic traditions and folk practices came together to create a complex culture. The split time frame creates tension as discoveries unfold and time period informs the other. This is a masterful piece of storytelling, with complex characterisation and a time brought vividly to life.

There were two stories going on in this book, one from Rue's perspective as a child and one as an adult. We switch between them, the childhood story often informing situations in the adult. I would have read an entire book just about Miss May Belle written from Rue's perspective. I found that entire story fascinating, even as it was an honest, and thus hard to read at times, story of life as a slave on a plantation. However, Rue as an adult was tedious, made poor choices, didn't seem to have much direction or reasons for her choices and was overall difficult to read.

If Afia Atakora wants to bring out a book just about Miss May Belle I would definitely read it. Her writing was wonderful and an unflinching narrative of slave times just before and during the Civil War.

I was so glad to have early access to this beautiful novel. Such gorgeous writing, full of life and knowing. Highly recommended

'She stopped again at the dolls, like to see if they had observed what she’d done. They hadn’t moved from their faithful vigil, staring blind and straight out at the dust motes Rue’d unsettled. “You’re not so pretty,” Rue whispered at them. “My mama’s gon’ make me a doll baby. One that smiles. Black. Sweet as can be.”

The novel begins when Rue delivers a baby whose white, scaled skin and black eyes identify him as a bad omen. The people on the old plantation are convinced that this child is responsible for the sickness that strikes down the other children of the community and Rue's affinity for the child relegates her from trusted, revered healer to suspicious, ungodly witch. But this isn't the only force for change acting on this Reconstruction era Black community: their former masters have all died; "freedom" has arrived and so has a charismatic preacher...

I know that, collectively, we are weary of slavery narratives, but there are several recent novels that focus on what survives rather than simply raw survival, honouring ancestry not merely sensationalising trauma. This is one of them. I was reminded to read this in a friend's Kwanzaa post in which she featured the novel in celebration of Ujima and relates the principal of collective work to the documentation and passing on of ancestral knowledge - seen in the novel through Atakora's descriptions of Rue, her mother and the service they provide their community, and seen in real life through the work of our historic and modern Black feminist writers and archivists.

It has been said that CONJURE WOMEN has echoes of HOMEGOING, BELOVED and THE CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTON. I definitely see that. Atakora's writing has you in the grips of anticipation, each held breath is a cry and a prayer. This is a glorious reminder of the importance of healing, forgiveness, redemption and truly living. Its time-travelling narrative and beautiful, poetic prose is the perfect vessel for such glorious, multi-generational literary fiction.

Conjure Women is a tale of intertwined lives that is masterfully wrapped around a secure understanding of history. So many tales and experiences are told through one voice, which makes this story rich and heady.

Somehow this book manages to tie together the ends of a sweeping story that encompasses the experiences of different women during the time of slavery in the Deep South, as well as how communities adapted afterwards to 'freedom' following the Civil War.

There is so much rich detail in this novel, as each character's knowledge, life and experience forms part of a tapestry of lives that are artfully drawn together under a backdrop of superstition.

This novel largely focuses on Rue, who has inherited the responsibility of being healer for her small community of ex-slaves from her strong-spirited and powerful mother, Miss May Belle. Rue understands that although healing itself is natural, much of what she does can be tied up in curses, in the land around her and in what she has inherited from her mother.

Bound together with Rue are the stories of May Belle and of Varina, the Master's daughter, who sees Rue as plaything, companion and object.

This a community full of secrets as they struggle to survive before and after the Civil War, as well as the secrets that they now hold that tie them all together.

What was a pleasure to read, alongside the strong clear voices of the characters, who take action in the only ways they know how, are the images and details of the natural world around the community. Quite rightfully, these aren't always explained or justified - they are just there for the reader in order to immerse you further in this harsh, warm and no-nonsense world.

Sometimes the build-up to an ending can feel forced, the reader spotting what's going to happen long before it does, because that's the way that stories work. Instead, here, even if you knew what was likely, there was still so much more detail to the outcome that it felt more like a tale being told, than one being made.

This excellent narrative is centred on Rue, one of the 'conjure' women of the title, who works as midwife and herbalist for the other enslaved people on a plantation in 19th century America. When Bean, a pale-skinned child with strangely dark eyes is born, Rue is horrified: 'She felt then that she knew him for what he was, a secret retribution for a long-ago crime, the punishment she had been dreading.'. It is from this moment that the story begins to unfold.

In this wonderful debut novel, Afia Atakora has created strong women characters who live and breathe. Rue, her mother, Miss May Belle and a white woman, Varina, daughter of the owner of the plantation, are complex and conflicted and all linked in ways that are gradually revealed through the telling of the story. These are characters who will stay with you.

'Conjure Women' is a skillfully realised and rewarding read, set against the background of the Civil War and emancipation; and moving back and forward from 'Slavery time' to 'Exodus' to 'Wartime' Perhaps a little overlong and slow at times, this is a very ambitious novel. for a debut; and brings to life the harsh realities of living under terrible oppression and violence.

Afia Atakora could well be describing her own writing when she says: 'The words blossomed black out of his pen like fast, elegant little miracles.' This is writing of the highest calibre and I can't wait to read more from this author.

So firstly - the writing in this is beautiful. The characters feel incredibly real and you can really see the plantation in your mind's eye as you read. Rue is a seductive protagonist - she's observant and smart, but she doesn't always see the reality of the world - even though she thinks that she does. It means that you think that you know better than her about what is going on - and then every time, it turns out that you don't. You know that Rue's friendship with Varina is going to be a problem, but the narrative moves around in time so cleverly that you pick up scraps of the bigger story but the full picture never really becomes clear to you (even if you think it has) until Atakora wants you to be able to see it. Life on the plantation before the war is filled with violence and arbitrary punishment, life after the war is filled with a new peril.

Goodreads has this tagged with fantasy as well as historical fiction, and among the comparison novels is Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, but part of the skill of this is that it keeps you wondering if May Belle and her mother really can do magic. This was definitely a change from what I've been reading for the past few weeks, and it gave me a lot to think about. I'm still thinking about it now, still wondering, imagining. If you're feeling particularly anxious at the moment, maybe wait until you're feeling more resilient because this is very tense, with unexpected violence at various points that will horrify you. But if you want something to lift you away from the reality of a lockdown and to remind you that life could be - has been - so much worse, then this could be the book for you.

My thanks to Fourth Estate for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Conjure Women’ by Afia Atakora in exchange for an honest review.

It was published in ebook and audiobook editions on 7th April and I obtained its audiobook edition, narrated by Adenrele Ojo, and listened to it alongside reading the eARC. I found Ojo’s reading very compelling.

‘You’re free to decide your future. But how do you escape the ghosts of the past?’

Set on a Southern plantation before, during and after the American Civil War, its main focuses is upon three women. Miss Mae Belle, a conjure woman, who uses her knowledge to provide healing especially to the women in their community. Her daughter, Rue, then inherits her mother’s role after her death.

Growing up Rue is very close to Varina, the daughter of the cruel plantation owner, Marse Charles. Their friendship it’s not encouraged by Varina’s parents and even Mae Belle is wary of its ramifications. Without spoilers, the bond between Rue and Varina is an important one throughout the novel.

A charismatic black preacher, Bruh Abel, is also a central figure and highlights the relationship between the Christian religion and the traditional beliefs and folk magic within the slave community. “”Hoodoo” Miss May Belle used to say, “is black folks’ currency.””

In the first two parts the narrative moves between two time periods: ‘slaverytime’ (1854-60) and ‘freedomtime’ (1867-68). In the final three parts again there are shifts in time, focusing on the war and the promise following it that also saw the rise of the ‘white-hooded demons’. The final chapter set in 1929 left me weeping.

It’s quite an interesting way to tell the story. Initially I was a bit wary though I quickly adapted to the movement between the various time periods. Events in the past are hinted at in the later sections and then slowly revealed. I found myself completely caught up in this incredible tale.

Afia Atakora has been working on this novel since 2014 and drew heavily on “primary sources: first person accounts, diaries, autobiographies recounted through amanuenses. Most prominent of these were the WPA Slave Narratives.” I certainly felt a powerful sense of authenticity throughout.

In the same interview given to The Library Journal in October 2019, she talks about how she approached the complex history of the slave trade by focusing upon a few voices: “To imbue Conjure Women with that necessary specificity I really had to imagine myself as these people, and as Rue, one lone person in a vast history who does not think of herself as part of history at all, who has no knowledge of the ramifications of the world changing around her. Rue is just, day by day, trying to survive, same as we all are, and to come to that understanding was enlightening and eye-opening.”

I feel that this is a major work of historical fiction that deserves to be read widely. I found it a deeply moving and inspiring novel. I have already been enthusiastically recommending it to friends.

I was also very impressed by its striking cover art by Eleanor Taylor. There are also a few line illustrations of various plants decorating the opening to each part.

‘Conjure Women’ is an amazingly accomplished debut and one of my top reads for 2020. I am planning to obtain its hardback edition, when published on 16 April, 2020.

Thanks to NetGalley and The Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Excellent debut. Very well written from beginning to end. Perfectly set. I'm not the biggest fan of slavery era books but this book was more than that. Haunting and graceful in equal measure. I loved the wondering time line. Really forward to see what else Atakora has to offer.

This is a debut novel from the pen of Afia Atakora and it’s a brilliant read set around the American Civil War. The focus of the story is through three generations of women on a plantation: Miss May Belle, her daughter Rue and the daughter of their plantation owner/master, Varina.
Atakora is a beautiful writer, her skill with prose weaves the reader into the lives of these women: it’s an immersive journey back into the past. It is about the women, their roles based on their gender and skin colour. It’s about loss, hope, friendship, society, cruelty, violence, lust and magic.
This is a challenging book to read, it’s emotional and uncomfortable at times but Atakora’s writing craft balances this well. Slavery and oppression are always difficult to digest, but it’s such an important read, as well as speaking out beautifully about womanhood, motherhood and the bonds created between people.
A thought-provoking, and beautifully crafted novel of the female and enslavement.

A thought provoking story about freedom and what that really means, about the past and the way it still lives in the present and about the strength women need to wield in the world.

Rue is a very well rendered character. I found it hard to warm up to her mother, perhaps because she's always shown through Rue's eyes.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Conjure Women, Afia Atakora’s exquisite debut novel, is one of the most anticipated reads of 2020, and I must say that it didn't disappoint. Set before, during and after the American Civil War the story follows the intertwining lives of three multigenerational women working on a plantation in the Deep South. May Belle is a self-proclaimed healer, midwife and known as the local ’conjure’ woman who the community turns to help with many problems. Rue is her daughter and also a healer and wishes to follow in her beloved mother's footsteps but she isn't entirely convinced she possesses the same ’gifts’ as her mother. Varina is the daughter of the proprietor of the plantation, Marse Charles. We see the difference in the way the women are treated due to the colour of their skin and it makes for sobering but important reading. It discusses the impact of slavery and the struggle to build a life after emancipation takes place.

This is very much a character-driven novel and from the first few pages, the writing pulls you in as the poetic prose is difficult to resist. It slips seamlessly between different time periods and the slow burn nature of the story allows the author ample time to develop the cast of characters and each has a personality of their own. All three main characters are strong interesting women and are vividly portrayed. What is absolutely clear is that Atakora has extensively researched the topic of enslavement in modern America and infuses this fictional novel with the very real trials and tribulations of black slaves. This is a sad, melancholy but all too necessary and important book and it quickly becomes compulsive and mesmerising. Beautifully imagined, rich and brilliant, this is a story that will stay with me long after its completion. Many thanks to Fourth Estate for an ARC.

A moving and powerful story, populated with rich detail and well fleshed out characters.

Flipping between two main timeframes, before and after emancipation, the story is set on a plantation in America, and is led by two main characters - Miss May Belle and her daughter Miss Rue, the healers among the slave population.

In the latter time frame, Rue is revered and respected in her healing and midwifery role - but with the birth of a strikingly different child, magic and 'conjure' are suspected.

A tale of belief, of survival, and of faith in humanity. Beautifully written, this is a striking debut novel - hopefully the first of many from Afia Atakora.