Hild

I’m a sucker for any story about a real woman in history.

Hild is the story of Hilda of Whitby, whom we meet as a child in 7th-century Britain. It's a novel that revels in language and sensory detail, when it comes to both the natural world and the human one. It is particularly interested in relationships between women.

This novel puts us into the mindset of a girl growing up in an age of political ferment, in the context of a whole set of traditions and stories, and helps us understand why she makes the choices she does.

There is an immediacy and specificity in Griffith’s descriptions of 7th century Anglo-Saxon Britain that completely immersed me in that unfamiliar time and place. She uses language like a magic wand to create a world that is hard and cold and dangerous. Life is peripatetic; 'home' is a concept rather than a place; days revolve around the laborious tasks that keep a people alive; years spin through the seasons of sowing, harvesting, feasting, and warring.

All is seen through the bright mind of Hild, a historical figure and a child when the book opens. Throughout, she is canny and quick,… show more.